Boero
Boero
Boero
I would like to start with some local remarks concerning the coherency between
the first and second parts of NB's contribution, and wish to consider two points in
particular.
NB speaks of "freedom that one could give oneself, as a person, in the play of
an argument". Once again it seems to me that this comment is inappropriate for
Toulmin-type argumentation (and even for Ducrot-type argumentation).
Let us now come to the main issue in the second part of NB's contribution (pages
3 and 4): the role of argumentation in the approach to mathematical proof,
particularly the fact that argumentation might be an epistemological obstacle in
approaching mathematical proof.
Here I must say that a significant difference exists between the perspective
more or less explicitly indicated by NB and our own perspective ("our" refers to
the research group I lead in Genoa). This difference may help to understand why
I do not enter the discourse about argumentation as proposed by NB, but focus on
other aspects. The difference mainly consists in the fact that, from our
perspective, the distinction between "proving" as a process and "proof" as a
product is a major factor in discussion about the role of argumentation in
mathematical activities concerning theorems. What's more, the nature of these
activities is also considered differently.
In the framework outlined above, when dealing with the role of argumentation in
mathematical activities concerning theorems we must take different aspects of
those activities into account. I shall describe them as "phases" in the activities of
conjecture production and mathematical proof construction (although they cannot
be separated and put into a linear sequence in mathematicians' work - see later):
We may note that these six phases are usually interconnected in non-linear ways
in mathematicians' normal work. For instance, in the fifth phase a bug may be
discovered in the enchaining of arguments, and this may call for renewed
exploration of the problem situation and strengthening of hypotheses (first phase)
with a new statement (second phase).
I would also like to stress the importance of the distinction (which emerges
from the preceding description of the six "phases") between the statement of a
theorem as a product and conjecturing as a process, and between mathematical
proof as a product and (mathematical) proving as a process.
In the first two phases, argumentation concerns inner (and eventually public)
analysis of the problem situation, questioning the validity and meaningfulness of
the discovered regularity, refining hypotheses, discussing possible
formulation(s). In the third phase, argumentation plays three important roles:
producing (or resuming from the first phase &endash; "Cognitive Unity of
Theorems", Garuti et al, 1996, 1998) arguments for validation, discussing their
acceptability according to requirements about their nature (for instance, although
empirical arguments may be relevant in the first phase and even in the approach
to validation, they must be progressively excluded from this phase on), and
finding possible links leading from one to another. I could add that the nature of
the whole third phase is argumentative, and the fourth phase is also largely
argumentative (especially as concerns the control of argument enchaining). In the
fifth phase, argumentation may play a role when comparing the text under
production with current standards of "rigour", textual organisation, etc.
The preceding analysis can help when dealing with the problem of approaching
mathematical proof in school. In our opinion, two main problems must be faced:
So, when it comes to activities concerning theorems, we may state that there is an
important difference between working mathematicians and students: working
mathematicians are able to play not only the game of a rich and free
argumentation (especially in Phases I and III) but also the game of argumentation
under the increasing constraint of the strict rules inherent in the acceptability of
final products (especially in Phases II and V); by contrast, students face serious
difficulties in learning the rules of the latter game and passing from one game to
the other (but we must recognize that they also experience difficulties in free
argumentation in mathematics!).
I feel that both problems must be considered and tackled from the educational
point of view.
The nature of arguments (empirical or theoretical, etc) which students refer to not
only depends on the culture of theorems developed in the classroom, but also
relies strongly on the nature of the task. By their very nature, some tasks induce
children to produce and/or exploit empirical arguments (measurements, visual
evidence, etc). For instance, the plane geometry tasks that school students are
usually set enhance spontaneous recourse to measurements and visual evidence,
while appropriate space geometry tasks might prevent it. From these tasks,
students could learn (under the teacher's guidance) to exploit arguments
belonging to a set of reliable statements ("germ theory") concerning space. An
example is presented in Bartolini Bussi (1996): the problem situation concerns a
rectangular table with a small ball lying in the center; students have to draw the
ball on a perspective drawing of the table and validate their construction by
making reference to a "table of invariants" concerning plane representation of
space situations. Another example is presented in Boero et al (1996): in this case
students have to find out whether (and under what conditions) two non-parallel
sticks produce parallel shadows on the ground and validate their solutions by
making reference to geometrical properties of sun shadows (particularly, the
property by which vertical, parallel sticks produce parallel shadows on the
ground).
As concerns the nature of reasoning, the role of the teacher here becomes even
more significant. By making reference to appropriate "models" (or "voices",
according to Boero et al, 1997), the teacher should progressively emphasise
specific kinds of reasonings. Here again the choice of the task may help: in both
of the examples alluded to above, reasoning by examples, considering specific
cases, etc. clearly appears to be insufficient to students, and deductively
organised reasoning can prove powerful. In such situations, the teacher's task
becomes that of helping students to organise the only possible performant
reasoning according to some prescriptions and modes defined in the mathematics
community.
References
Bartolini Bussi, M.; Boero,P.; Ferri, F.; Garuti, R. and Mariotti, M.A.: 1997,
'Approaching geometry theorems in contexts', Proceedings of PME-XXI, Lahti,
vol.1, pp. 180-195
Boero, P.; Garuti, R. and Mariotti, M.A.: 1996, 'Some dynamic mental processes
underlying producing and proving conjectures', Proceedings of PME-XX,
Valencia, vol. 2, pp. 121-128
Douek, N.: 1998, 'Some Remarks about Argumentation and Mathematical Proof
and their Educational Implications', Proceedings of the CERME-I Conference,
Osnabrueck (to appear)
Garuti, R.; Boero, P.; Lemut, E.& Mariotti, M. A.:1996, 'Challenging the
traditional school approach to theorems: a hypothesis about the cognitive unity of
theorems', Proc. of PME-XX, Valencia, vol. 2, pp. 113-120
Garuti, R.; Boero,P. & Lemut, E.: 1998, 'Cognitive Unity of Theorems and
Difficulties of Proof', Proceedings of PME-XXII, vol. 2, pp. 345-352
Simon, M.: 1996, 'Beyond Inductive and Deductive Reasoning: The Search for a
Sense of Knowing', Educational Studies in Mathematics, 30, 197-210
Thurston, W.P: 1994, 'On Proof and Progress in Mathematics', Bull. of the
A.M.S., 30, 161-177