Authentic Argumentation With Prospective Secondary Teachers: The Case of 0.999…
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Engaging prospective secondary teachers in mathematical argumentation is important, so that they can begin to learn to engage their own students in creating and critiquing arguments. Often, when we attempt to engage prospective secondary teachers in argumentation around topics from secondary mathematics classes, the argumentation is not authentic, as they believe they already know the answers. I suggest that there are problems related to the secondary curriculum around which we can engage students in authentic argumentation, and I propose one of them is whether 0.999… = 1. Purposefully engaging and supporting students in discussing this problem, and others like it, can lead to productive discussions that go beyond the answer to the question, including, for instance, what counts as evidence in mathematics.
Contributor Notes
AnnaMarie Conner, 105 Aderhold Hall, Department of Mathematics and Science Education, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602; aconner@uga.edu
1 This paper is based on work supported by the University of Georgia Research Foundation under Grant No. FRG772 and the National Science Foundation through the Center for Proficiency in Teaching Mathematics under Grant No. 0227586. Opinions, findings, and conclusions in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.
