Proof and proving in current classroom materials

Research across many countries reports that teaching the key ideas of proof and proving to all students is not an easy task. This paper reports on the session of the BSRLM Geometry Working Group which examined current classroom material from the UK with the intention of uncovering the ‘opportunities for proof’ in geometry that are provided by such material. To carry out such an analysis three analytical frameworks are compared. Two of the analytical frameworks, while placing proof and proving in a wider context of learners’ mathematics, may not fully uncover the detail of proof and proving. The third analytical framework, while permitting a detailed analysis of explicit proof and proving, may not fully account for textbooks that devote most space to discussions of proof and proving and/or contain problems that implicitly provoke proof. This comparison reveals some of the complexity of textbook analysis and suggests that further work is needed on a suitable analytical framework.