Proof and Proving in Mathematics Education

Gila Hanna is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. She taught graduate courses in mathematics education and in measurement and evaluation; she also led a large number of research projects and supervised several Ph.D. and M.A. theses in mathematics education. Her primary research interests are the role of proof and truth in mathematics and mathematics education, and gender issues in mathematics teaching and learning. She has been Convenor of the International Organisation of Women and Mathematics Education (1988-1992), Vice-Chair of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group (1986-1990), and has served on several Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) adjudication committees and on the scientific program committees of a number of international conferences on mathematics education. From 1989 to 2000 she was Co-Editor of the international journal Educational Studies in Mathematics and is now one of its Advisory Editors. From 2000to 2007 she was Co-Founder and Co-Editor of the Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education. She served as Co-Chair of ICMI Study 19 on proof and proving in mathematics education. She has published extensively on proof and other aspects of mathematics education, and has delivered lectures at several universities as well as at numerous international conferences on mathematics education. In 2003 she was appointed “Fields Institute Fellow”, a lifetime appointment conferred on certain individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, its programs, and to the Canadian mathematical community. After teaching mathematics and science at high school for a few years, Michael de Villiers, received the Science Teacher of the Year award in South Africa in 1983. Later that same year he was appointed as a researcher at the Research Unit for Mathematics Education of the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He has been at the University of Durban-Westville since 1991 (Univ. of KwaZulu-Natal since 2004) where he teaches both under-graduate and graduate courses in mathematics & mathematics education. He has published 7 books and over 170 articles peer reviewed articles in mathematics and mathematics education, many of which have been in international journals. Two special points in a triangle have been named after him.  Between 1988-1997, he was editor of Pythagoras, the official research journal of the Association for Mathematics Education of South Africa (AMESA). He is a regular speaker at local and international conferences on mathematics and mathematics education. His main research interests are Geometry, Proof, Applications and Modelling, and the History and Philosophy of Mathematics. Since 1997, he has also been vice-chair of the SA Mathematics Olympiad Committee which is responsible for setting and organizing the nationwide South African Mathematics Olympiad, seeing a growth of participation from less than 10000 to over 60000 currently.

1. Aspects of proof in mathematics education: Gila Hanna and Michael de Villiers.- Part I: Proof and cognition.- 2. Cognitive development of proof: David Tall, Oleksiy Yevdokimov, Boris Koichu, Walter Whiteley, Margo Kondratieva, and Ying-Hao Cheng .- 3. Theorems as constructive visions: Giuseppe Longo.- Part II: Experimentation: Challenges and opportunities.- 4. Exploratory experimentation: Digitally-assisted discovery and proof: Jonathan M. Borwein.- 5. Experimental approaches to theoretical thinking: Artefacts and proofs.- Ferdinando Arzarello, Maria Giuseppina Bartolini Bussi, Allen Leung, Maria Alessandra Mariotti, and Ian Stevenson (With response by J. Borwein and J. Osborn).- Part III: Historical and educational perspectives of proof.- 6. Why proof?  A historian’s perspective: Judith V. Grabiner.- 7. Conceptions of proof – in research and in teaching: Richard Cabassut, AnnaMarie Conner, Filyet Asli Ersoz, Fulvia Furinghetti, Hans Niels Jahnke, and Francesca Morselli.- 8. Forms of proof and proving in the classroom: Tommy Dreyfus, Elena Nardi, and Roza Leikin.- 9. The need for proof and proving: mathematical and pedagogical perspectives: Orit Zaslavsky, Susan D. Nickerson, Andreas Stylianides, Ivy Kidron, and Greisy Winicki.- 10. Contemporary proofs for mathematics education: Frank Quinn.- Part IV: Proof in the school curriculum.- 11. Proof, Proving, and teacher-student interaction: Theories and contexts: Keith Jones and Patricio Herbst.- 12. From exploration to proof production: Feng-Jui Hsieh, Wang-Shian Horng, and Haw-Yaw Shy.- 13. Principles of task design for conjecturing and proving: Fou-Lai Lin, Kyeong-Hwa Lee, Kai-Lin Yang, Michal Tabach, and Gabriel Stylianides.- 14. Teachers’ professional learning of teaching proof and proving: Fou-Lai Lin, Kai-Lin Yang, Jane-Jane Lo, Pessia Tsamir, Dina Tirosh, and Gabriel Stylianides.- Part V: Argumentation and transition to tertiary level.- 15. Argumentation and proof in the mathematics classroom: Viviane Durand-Guerrier, Paolo Boero, Nadia Douek, Susanna Epp, and Denis Tanguay.- 16. Examining the role of logic in teaching proof: Viviane Durand-Guerrier, Paolo Boero, Nadia Douek, Susanna Epp, and Denis Tanguay.- 17. Transitions and proof and proving at tertiary level: Annie Selden.- Part VI: Lessons from the Eastern cultural traditions.- 18. Using documents from ancient China to teach mathematical proof: Karine Chemla .- 19. Proof in the Western and Eastern traditions: Implications for mathematics education: Man Keung Siu.- Acknowledgements.- Appendix 1: Discussion Document.- Appendix 2: Conference Proceedings: Table of contents.- Author Index.- Subject Index.