The complexity of the epistemological genesis of mathematical proof

Travelling through Tokyo and Singapore, it is a great pleasure to make a stop and meet colleagues and friends, hence one talk and two seminars. First at the Joetsu Seminar of Research on Mathematics Education in Tokyo on September the 13th, then in Singapore for a seminar at the Mathematics and Mathematics Education (MME) laboratory of the National Institute of Education (NIE) on September the 18th.

Abstract
Early learning of mathematics is first rooted in pragmatic evidences or learners’ confidence in the facts and procedures taught. Nonetheless, learners develop a true knowledge which works as a tool in significant problem situations, and which is accessible to falsification and argumentation. As teachers know, they could validate what they claim to be true, but based on means in general not conforming to mathematical standards. Teaching these standards requires an evolution of their understanding of what can count as a proof in the mathematical classroom, as well as an evolution of their mathematical knowing. This claim is discussed from the perspective of modelling the learners ways of knowing (the model cK¢), within the framework of the theory of didactical situations, bridging the semiotic system they use, the type of actions they perform and the controls they implement either to construct or to validate the solutions they propose to a problem.

Although this presentation is self-content, it could be interesting to complement it with the CINVESTAV talk which focused more on the didactical situations of validation [ppt], one of the specific situations of the Theory of didactical situations [ppt]