How preservice teachers enact mathematical argumentation and proof in class - an activity-theoretical perspective

Thomas Bauer (1) , Eva Müller-Hill (2)

1 Philipps Universität Marburg = Philipps University of Marburg
2 University of Rostock

Argumentation and proof as core activities in mathematics should be staged continuously and meaningfully in mathematics lessons. But to what extent are preservice teachers at the end of their studies able to adequately introduce mathematical argumentation and proof as activities into their classroom planning and staging? Activity theory makes a valuable contribution to answering this question by emphasizing the importance of prospective teachers’ development of motives and goals, corresponding modes of action, subjective constructions of meaning and the ability to identify appropriate objects for argumentation and proving activities in the classroom. In this work-in-progress paper, we outline an activity-theoretical framework and present empirical research tools based on it for analyzing prospective teachers’ classroom enactments. We apply these to case studies from an exploratory, qualitative study with preservice teachers in their final year of study. We present first results and draw conclusions towards future work.

Mots clés: Argumentation; proof; activity theory; preservice teacher education; second discontinuity

Domaines: Mathématiques [math]

Thomas Bauer, Eva Müller-Hill. How preservice teachers enact mathematical argumentation and proof in class - an activity-theoretical perspective. Twelfth Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME12), Feb 2022, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. ⟨hal-03746837v2⟩