Students’ Use of Intuitive Reasoning to Decide on the Validity of Mathematical Statements

Chih-Hsien Huang^1,

¹Ming Chi University of Technology

Cite this paper:
Chih-Hsien Huang. Students’ Use of Intuitive Reasoning to Decide on the Validity of Mathematical Statements. American Journal of Educational Research. 2016; 4(14):1025-1029. doi: 10.12691/education-4-14-7

Abstract

This study explored students’ approaches to mathematical statements with unknown truth values. Task-based interviews utilizing the think-aloud method revealed students’ reasoning processes in depth. The students in this study used three distinct types of intuitive reasoning to decide the truth value of mathematical statements. The results of this study indicate that in each intuitive response there seems to be an underlying logical schema, or a mental model intuitively accepted by the students, which interacts with the specific restrictions of the presented mathematical statement.

Keywords:
intuitive reasoning intuitive representation mathematical statement

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