TY - JOUR
T1 - An Oral Proof in a Geometry Class
T2 - How Linguistic Tools Can Help Map the Content of a Proof
AU - González, Gloriana
AU - Herbst, Patricio
N1 - Funding Information:
Research reported in this article was carried out with the support of NSF CAREER grant REC 0133619 to the second author and while the first author was a doctoral student, under the direction of the second author, at the University of Michigan. While contributing to that project, the first author was supported by a Rackham Merit Fellowship from the University of Michigan. Opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily represent the views of the National Science Foundation or the University of Michigan. A prior version of this article was presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Chicago. We thank Mary J. Schleppegrell for feedback on the linguistic analysis. We appreciate the careful comments by the executive editor, John P. Smith III, and the anonymous reviewers to the content of this article.
PY - 2013/7
Y1 - 2013/7
N2 - Recommendations that teachers promote argument and discourse in their mathematics classrooms anticipate researchers' needs for methods for examining and analyzing such talk. One form of discourse is oral arguments, including proofs. We ask: How can we track the development of an oral argument by a teacher and her/his students? We illustrate a method that combines Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Toulmin's argumentation scheme to examine how speakers logically connect different parts of an argument. We suggest that conjunction analysis can aid a researcher to map the content of a proof that has been constructed in class discussion. Using data from a discussion of a geometry proof, we show that different types of conjunctions enabled the teacher and the students to connect various components of an argument and, also, different arguments. The article illustrates how conjunction analysis can support and deepen what Toulmin's scheme for arguments can reveal about oral discussions.
AB - Recommendations that teachers promote argument and discourse in their mathematics classrooms anticipate researchers' needs for methods for examining and analyzing such talk. One form of discourse is oral arguments, including proofs. We ask: How can we track the development of an oral argument by a teacher and her/his students? We illustrate a method that combines Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Toulmin's argumentation scheme to examine how speakers logically connect different parts of an argument. We suggest that conjunction analysis can aid a researcher to map the content of a proof that has been constructed in class discussion. Using data from a discussion of a geometry proof, we show that different types of conjunctions enabled the teacher and the students to connect various components of an argument and, also, different arguments. The article illustrates how conjunction analysis can support and deepen what Toulmin's scheme for arguments can reveal about oral discussions.
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U2 - 10.1080/07370008.2013.799166
DO - 10.1080/07370008.2013.799166
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84880014691
SN - 0737-0008
VL - 31
SP - 271
EP - 313
JO - Cognition and Instruction
JF - Cognition and Instruction
IS - 3
ER -