7^th Grade Students’ Mathematical Reasoning: empirical generalization strategies

The main goal of this paper is to identify the generalization strategies employed by Brazilian 7^th grade students when solving a mathematical task about sequences. The theoretical background adopted is about the mathematical reasoning processes at school mathematics, focusing on the generalization strategies and in the validation processes related. The data was collected by the audio recording of the students’ tasks solving and the data analysis was made with audio transcription, based on a frame made from the mathematical reasoning theoretical background and studies related to generalization strategies. The work results indicate that students tend to use generalization strategies and validation processes that favor the empirical data observation.

Keywords:
Mathematical reasoning; Generalization; Generalization strategies; Justification