Advanced mathematical thinking. David Tall (Ed.).

Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic

Publishers, 1991. xvii + 289 pp. ISBN 0-7923-1456.

Yes, Virginia, Some Children Do Grow Up To Be Mathematicians

Patrick W. Thompson
San Diego State University
Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education

If in the distant future an archaeologist were to try to build an image of mathematics

education based on artifacts from the educational research community, she might conclude that, as

late as 1990, mathematics had not progressed past proportional reasoning.

All joking aside, it is fair to say that the preponderance of mathematics education research

has been on elementary mathematics, and this research is often carried out with such a tight focus

that it is hard to imagine by what mechanisms one level of concept development can possibly be

transformed into more sophisticated levels. There might be several reasons for this, but I suspect a

primary one is that much of mathematics education research has not been conducted within a larger

perspective of mathematical thinking—a perspective that keeps firmly in mind that children, over

time and when taught appropriately, often do learn sophisticated and advanced mathematics. For

example, models of children’s competent additive reasoning will tend to be quite different when the

researcher focuses only on their ability to solve simple addition and subtraction problems than

when she keeps clearly in mind that the knowledge structures presently being imputed to children

must provide a foundation for their conceptualization of integers (Steffe, Cobb, & von Glasersfeld,

1988; Thompson, in press; Thompson & Dreyfus, 1988; Vergnaud, 1982). Similarly, models of

children’s multiplicative reasoning will tend to be quite different when the researcher focuses only

on their ability to solve simple multiplication and division problems than when she keeps clearly in

mind that the knowledge structures presently being imputed to children might provide a foundation

for children’s conceptualization of multiplicative variation—viz., direct and inverse variation, linear

function, exponential function, and concomitant rates of change (Harel & Confrey, in press).
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Until recently, mathematics education researchers had to rely mainly on their own

mathematical experience and introspection to situate their research on elementary mathematical

concepts within a larger curricular and conceptual perspective. The bits of research on advanced

mathematical reasoning and understanding were scattered and not widely accessible. On the other

hand, while mathematics education researchers have focused largely on the development of

elementary concepts, university mathematicians have seen little relevance of this research to their

practice or to their teaching. With the publication of Advanced Mathematical Thinking this situation

is changed considerably. This book can help mathematics educators place their research within a

broader perspective of the development of mathematical reasoning, and it can help mathematicians

see the deep connections between mathematics education research and their own teaching.

Advanced Mathematical Thinking is the product of five years of collaboration among the

authors, under the auspices of the Advanced Mathematical Thinking Working Group of the

International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics (PME). The authors met each year as part

of the PME’s annual meetings and communicated among themselves between meetings.

David Tall introduces the book with an overview and closes the book with reflections on its

contents. Tall’s introduction, besides giving an overview, sets the tone for the book with a

masterful weaving of current cognitive, pedagogical, and curricular issues with a historical account

of tensions within the community between mathematical practice and teaching. I especially enjoyed

his quotes from famous mathematicians, such as Poincaré, which served as a reminder that

thoughtful reflection on learning and teaching are not unique to mathematics education. In his

introduction, Tall summarizes the contents of book quite nicely.

In the remainder of the first part of this book we consider the

cognitive processes involved in advanced mathematical thinking and
the two complementary attributes of the discipline: creativity in
generating new ideas and the mathematician’s notion of proof in
convincing his peers of the truth of his assertions.

In the second part of the book we turn to cognitive theories that

are proving of value in analysing the difficulties that students face
and providing insights into the learning process that can be used in
designing new ways of helping students construct mathematical
ideas for themselves. First the differences between concept
definitions and students’ concept images are considered, then the
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nature of the mental objects which mathematicians construct: the

conceptual entities that are the essence of advanced mathematics.
This leads to the theory of reflective abstraction in which processes
are encapsulated as mental objects which prove to be easier to
manipulate at higher levels of abstraction.

In the third part of the text we review various advanced

mathematical concepts from a cognitive viewpoint, showing the
cognitive obstacles that can occur during their development from
cognitive viewpoints. These involve the central ideas of function,
limit, more advanced concepts of analysis, infinity, and proof. We
then move on to look at the new paradigm: the use of the computer
and its cognitive effects in advanced mathematical thinking. (p. 21)

The book’s structure is nice. The first part portrays that which needs

explication—advanced mathematical reasoning—setting it apart from elementary mathematics while

at the same time making it evident that it can be a natural outgrowth of issues entailed in elementary

mathematics. The second part provides a more technical focus on the elements of advanced

mathematical reasoning, making specific what was portrayed more generally in the first part. The

third part focuses on the learning and teaching of important conceptual domains.

The chapters on the nature of advanced mathematical thinking are by Tommy Dreyfus,

Gontran Ervynck, and Gila Hanna. Dreyfus’ ostensible task is to explicate the dialectic between

representing and translating as advanced mathematical processes. But he does much more. He also

illustrates that this dialectic is present when students reason competently in elementary

mathematics, and argues convincingly that teachers must cultivate this dialectic early on and

consistently for students to progress to advanced levels. Dreyfus also does an excellent job of

making it evident that many university students often “succeed” in advanced courses without these

processes because of an instructor’s emphasis on correct performance instead of deep

understanding. Dreyfus’ observations are completely consistent with an emerging research trend

that shows correct performance cannot be taken as an indicator of understanding (Seldon, Mason,

& Seldon, 1989). While Dreyfus focuses on reasoning processes, Ervynck attempts to elucidate

the leaps of insight that we swear happen but have little control over—either personally or

pedagogically. Although Hadamard’s (1954) account of invention gives a better testament to

creativity than does Ervynck’s, Ervynck assumes the enormous task of exploring how we might
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shape instruction to engender students’ creativity, a task that was completely aside Hadamard’s

objective. The section closes with Hanna’s brief discussion of the necessity to consider social

dimensions of mathematical proof when attempting to understand proof either cognitively or

historically.
The chapters on cognitive theory are by Shlomo Vinner, Guershon Harel and Jim Kaput,

and Ed Dubinsky. Vinner expands his and David Tall’s distinction between concept definitions and

concept images (Tall & Vinner, 1981; Vinner & Dreyfus, 1989) to provide insight into college

students’ understandings of important ideas like function and derivative. It is important to note that

the distinction between concept definition and concept image does not explicate competent

understanding of any specific concept. Rather its importance is that it enables us to make

constructive sense of students’ frequent inability to reason coherently from the basis of a

technically-defined vocabulary and gives hints as to pedagogical and curricular directions that

might support students’ development of these abilities. Harel and Kaput’s chapter, on conceptual

entities and symbols, continues an emerging line of research on students’ constructions of

mathematical objects (Dubinsky & Lewin, 1986; Greeno, 1983; Harel, 1989; Sfard, 1991; Sfard &

Linchevski, in press; Thompson, 1985). Their chapter is a welcome synthesis of this line of theory

development, presented in the format of case studies of specific concepts. It also extends prior

work on mathematical objects by explicating the important role of symbolization in the entification

process. While Cajori’s (1929) analysis of mathematical notations is crucial to understanding the

development of mathematics historically, Harel’s and Kaput’s chapter goes in a complementary

direction. They highlight the importance of a dialectic among students’ creating mathematical

objects, their use of notation to express their reasoning, and notational characteristics that can

facilitate or obstruct students’ achievements in both regards. For example, the derivative of a
df(x)
function f might be expressed as dx or Dx(f), but the two often do not coincide in terms of what

mathematicians have in mind when using them. Attending to students’ internalization of notations

as a vehicle for expression is quite different from the community’s adoption of customary and

conventional notational systems (Thompson, 1992). Ed Dubinsky closes this section with an
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excellent discussion of Piaget’s notion of reflective abstraction. His chapter, together with von

Glasersfeld (1991), should constitute basic reading for anyone wishing to gain an understanding of

this difficult construct.

The last section, on teaching and learning advanced mathematical thinking, is where many

of the ideas brought out in the first two sections get applied to the undergraduate curriculum. Aline

Robert and Rolph Schwarzenberger open the section with a general overview of research issues in

undergraduate mathematics education. Ted Eisenberg discusses research on functions, Bernard

Cornu discusses research on concepts of limit, Michèle Artigue discusses research on students’

learning of functional analysis (including differential equations), Dina Tirosh discusses students’

concepts of infinity and transfinite cardinal numbers, and Daniel Alibert and Michael Thomas

discuss research on proof. Eisenberg, Cornu, and Artigue each draw heavily on the

Tall/Vinner/Dreyfus notion of concept image to gain insight into students’ difficulties within their

various areas of focus. Alibert and Thomas continue Hana’s earlier discussion of social

dimensions of proof, but also address cognitive obstacles to students’ understanding of proof by

relating Uri Leron’s very interesting approach to the structuring of proof presentation (Leron,

1983; Leron, 1985). They close with a discussion of Grenoble’s creative experiment in teaching

mathematics by structuring courses so that students engage in “scientific debate.” By “scientific

debate” they mean that students generate mathematical propositions and then debate their validity;

acceptance of validity is determined by vote—where the vote is about whether someone’s

demonstration is sufficiently convincing. It is interesting that false statements, along with their

counterexamples, and validated statements are treated with equal importance.

The final chapter (aside from Tall’s reflections), by Ed Dubinsky and David Tall, is about

advanced mathematical thinking and computers. On the one hand, it is largely about Tall’s Graphic

Calculus and Dubinsky’s ISETL programming language. On the other hand, it is about a

fundamental re-thinking of the calculus (including differential equations) and students’ engagement

with the concept of function. I suspect that anyone whose interest is piqued by this chapter will

need to go to original sources before they can appreciate the power of these uses of computers.
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To return to my introductory comments, I consider it imperative that the mathematics

education community regain the sense that mathematics is a deep and abstract intellectual

achievement. Lest I be misunderstood, I should also say that I do not support the view that school

mathematics should focus on preparing students for college. But at the same time, we must

acknowledge that school mathematics must provide an adequate foundation for advancement, and

without a vision for what they might grow into, it is highly unlikely that students’ intellectual

preparation will be appropriate.

The importance of Advanced Mathematical Thinking for school mathematics education is

more than its revelatory value. The book’s authors are all mathematicians, but at the same time

most have conducted research in school mathematics education. This shows itself in the book’s

continuing emphasis that advanced mathematical thinking does not begin after high school. As far

as professional mathematics education can influence it, it must begin in first grade.

My final comment is that, if the book has a shortcoming, it is that it is the first of its kind

and has little to build on. Tall remarked that the preponderance of cited literature is published

within the previous ten years. As such, it is understandable that the content has more to do with the

authors’ emerging reconceptions of mathematics and less to do with actual thinking. David Tall

acknowledged as much in his reflections. Put in perspective, however, this is hardly a

shortcoming, for research on thinking is highly influenced by the kind of thinking researchers

seek, and this book has the potential of changing our image of what to seek.

Finally, I give two quotations from David Tall’s reflections that he offered to university

mathematicians. They are appropriate to mathematics teachers at all levels.

It is no longer viable, if indeed it ever was, to lay the burden of

failure of our students on their supposed stupidity, when now the
reasons behind their difficulties may be seen to be in part to be due
to the epistemological nature of mathematics and in part to
misconceptions by mathematicians of how students learn. We often
teach certain skills because we know that these will bring visible,
albeit limited, success, but we now know, somewhat furtively, that
the acquiring of those skills may develop concept imagery that
contains the seeds of future conflict. (p. 251 ff.)

We cheated our students because we did not tell the truth about
the way mathematics works, possibly because we sought the Holy
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Grail of mathematical precision, possibly because we rarely reflected

on, and therefore never realized, the true ways in which
mathematicians operate. (p. 255)

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Dubinsky, E., & Lewin, P. (1986). Reflective abstraction and mathematics education: The genetic
decomposition of induction and compactness. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 5(1), 55-
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Greeno, J. (1983). Conceptual entities. In D. Gentner & A. L. Stevens (Eds.), Mental Models
(pp. 227-252). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Thompson, P. W. (1985). Experience, problem solving, and learning mathematics: Considerations

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