Fostering and investigating students' pathways to formal reasoning: A design research project on structural scaffolding for 9 th graders

Kerstin Hein , Susanne Prediger (1)

1 TU - Technische Universität Dortmund [Dortmund]

Major obstacles for students learning formal reasoning are the lack of transparency of the logical structure of formal deductions, their theoretical status, and their verbal representation. For fostering students' learning of formal reasoning, making explicit the logical structures and unpacking their verbal representations is therefore necessary. In the design research project presented, a teaching-learning arrangement of angle theorems was designed in which given if-then-statements were to be connected with formal deductions based on the design principle of structural scaffolding. A case study of a pair of 9 th graders investigated students' pathways towards becoming aware of and using the logical structures and exemplifies the functioning of structural scaffolding.

Keywords: Formal proof; logical structure; verbal representation; structural scaffolding

Domains: Mathematics [math]; Humanities and Social Sciences

Kerstin Hein, Susanne Prediger. Fostering and investigating students' pathways to formal reasoning: A design research project on structural scaffolding for 9 th graders. CERME 10, Feb 2017, Dublin, Ireland. ⟨hal-01865663⟩