This contribution focuses on reasoning about quadrilaterals provided by lower secondary school students when working with pre-prepared dynamic constructions. On this topic, we present an exploratory empirical qualitative study carried out within a GeoGebra Classroom environment, and our diagnostic instrument consists of a set of dynamic…

This article reports on the design and implementation of a didactic sequence in the frame of a design-based research study. The research aim is to test the hypothesis that affordances of dynamic geometry may support students' awareness of logical relationships between geometrical properties of constructed figures. We elaborate on the task design…

This study investigates the analogies used by a sample of secondary mathematics teachers when they described the concept of function. The study is concerned with understanding what analogies were used by the participant teachers and conceptions of functions positioned in those analogies. Using examples from a set of responses to five open-ended…

This paper extends work in the areas of quantitative reasoning and covariational reasoning at the undergraduate level. Task-based interviews were used to examine third-semester calculus students' reasoning about partial derivatives in five tasks, two of which are situated in a mathematics context. The other three tasks are situated in real-world…

A growing emphasis on computational thinking worldwide necessitates student proficiency in creating algorithms. Focusing on the use of counterexamples for developing student-invented algorithms, I reanalyze two pieces of data from previously published research, pertaining to two different cases of students' algorithmatizing activity. In both…

This study investigates middle school students' reasoning about parallelism and perpendicularity of two line segments. Data were collected from 83 middle school students through an identification task consisting of various examples and non-examples of the parallelism and perpendicularity of two line segments. One-to-one interviews were also…

In this paper, we investigate the ways in which 15 year-old students conceive interrelated issues of randomness. We deal with these issues of randomness as a whole and not separately from each other, in contrast to the research so far. In order to analyse the students' ways we introduce a modification of Kyburg's Schema [(1974). "The logical…

The goal of this paper was to investigate the role of formal constraints (e.g. definitions, theorems) in geometric reasoning. Four students participated in a task-based interview including 2D Euclidean geometric locus problems. Data were obtained from observations, interviews, and video recordings and analyzed by Toulmin's argumentation model. The…

Logical statements are prevalent in mathematics, science and everyday life. The most common logical statements are conditionals, 'If H … , then C … ', where 'H' is a hypothesis and 'C' is a conclusion. Reasoning about conditionals depends on four main conditional contexts (intuitive, abstract, symbolic or counterintuitive). This study tested a…

A few case studies have suggested students' struggles with the "temporal order" of epsilon and delta in the formal limit definition. This study problematizes this hypothesis by exploring students' claims in different contexts and uncovering productive resources from students to make sense of the critical relationship between epsilon and…

Research in psychology and in mathematics education has documented the ubiquity of "intuition traps" -- tasks that elicit non-normative responses from most people. Researchers in cognitive psychology often view these responses negatively, as a sign of irrational behaviour. Others, notably mathematics educators, view them as necessary…

In line with the latest positions of Gottlob Frege, this article puts forward the hypothesis that the cognitive bases of mathematics are geometric in nature. Starting from the geometry axioms of the "Elements" of Euclid, we introduce a geometric theory of proportions along the lines of the one introduced by Grassmann in…

While a significant amount of research has been devoted to exploring why university students struggle applying logic, limited work can be found on how students actually make sense of the notational and structural components used in association with logic. We adapt the theoretical framework of unitizing and reification, which have been effectively…

Few studies on calculus limits have centred their focus on student understanding of limits at infinity or infinite limits that involve continuous functions (as opposed to discrete sequences). This study examines student understanding of these types of limits using both pure mathematics and applied-science functions and formulas. Seven calculus…

There is more to understanding the concept of mean than simply knowing and applying the add-them-up and divide algorithm. In the following, we discuss a component of understanding the mean--inference from a fixed total--that has been largely ignored by researchers studying students understanding of mean. We add this component to the list of types…