High School Students’ and Their Teacher’s Experiences with Visual Proofs

Abstract

Proof is one of the main components of both mathematics and mathematics education. However, students and teachers at every level have difficulties in proof and proof teaching. Presenting alternative proof methods to students will not only provide rich learning environment but also allow the student to have different perspectives by providing alternative ways they can apply for constructing a proof. Visual proofs are one of the alternative proof methods. Although visual proofs are considered as useful tools in mathematics education, there are very few studies about the application of these proofs, especially in the high school curriculum. The visual proofs are seen as valuable tools for mathematics education; it is planned to investigate the views of high school students and their teacher about visual proof. Case study method is used in the study. Participants of the study consisted of four high school students who are ninth-graders. For the second semester sixteen activities of visual proofs were applied. Afterwards, interviews were carried out with the students and their teacher about their views on the visual proofs during the instruction period. The teacher said that after the visual proof activities the students started to wonder where the formulas come from, in other words, they started questioning, their interest levels increased, and the formulas were kept in their minds more. The high school students stated that they found the visual proof activities enjoyable, and they were happy when they understood the visual proofs and unhappy when they could not understand them.