EJMT Abstract

This paper exemplified the design of an instructional support by means of computer-multimedia to dissolve students’ cognitive conflicts during the process of a mathematical proof problem, the pasture problem. Cognitive conflicts occur when there are expectations which are not fulfilled. The pasture problem provides cognitive conflicts and encourages students to explore and bridge the gap between conjectures and proofs. In the beginning of the problem-solving process, students made a conjecture concerning the solution of the pasture problem and proposed a reason why it was true. The reason was often rooted in common sense or based on previous learning. Through multimedia-represented cognitive conflicts, students are more capable of visualizing and accepting the new conjecture. Then, it led them to construct a new explanation for this new conjecture naturally. It is believed that through the multimedia-supported exploration students were guided to use deductive reasoning, construct reasons to support the new conjecture, and be motivated to solve the pasture problem.