Daily Life and Mathematic: Student and Content Constructions of the Concepts of Proposition, Theorem, and Proof

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore mathematics teaching department students’ perceptions on the concepts ofproposition, theorem, and proof which are very important for daily life, mathematical literacy and studyingmathematics; the common mathematical content used in constructing these concepts; and whether these constructionsand content construction match each other. A survey model was used for fulfilling the aim. The data was taken from329 first-grade mathematics teaching department students’ examination papers. The students were enrolled to anEducation Faculty of a state university located in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey and the data was collected inthe first semesters of academic years 2009-2010, 2010-2011, 2011-2012, 2012–2013 and 2013–2014. The numericaldistribution of the participants across years was, respectively, 82, 46, 52, 42 and 107. The data was descriptivelyanalysed. It was found out that the students better structured the concept of proposition (when compared to theconcepts of proof and theorem) in accordance with the content construction of concepts and the mathematicalexpressions used in construction of the concepts of theorem and proof by the students were far away from themathematical expressions used in the content of these concepts.