Abstract
Although studies on students’ difficulties in producing mathematical proofs have been carried out in different countries, few research workers have focussed their attention on the identification of mathematical proof schemes in university students. This information is potentially useful for secondary school teachers and university lecturers. In this article, we study mathematical proof schemes of students starting their studies at the University of Córdoba (Spain) and we relate these schemes to the meanings of mathematical proof in different institutional contexts: daily life, experimental sciences, professional mathematics,logicandfoundationsofmathematics.Themainconclusionofourresearchis the difficultyofthe deductive mathematical proof for these students. Moreover, wesuggest that the different institutional meanings of proof might help to explain this difficulty.
