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I am teaching an introductory course on proofs in mathematics in a mid-size American public university, and trying to develop some kind of consistent grading meta-scheme for grading proofs. I am writing to see if anyone can refer me to math ed papers about grading proofs, or if anyone has such a meta-strategy that was helpful to use in the past.

Such a meta-strategy might look like: grade each proof out of 20 points, assigning 5 points to each of

  • Correctness - are definitions and previous results used correctly

  • Logic (micro) - does each step follow from the previous step

  • Logic (macro) - has the student understood what is to be proved, and chosen a path that is appropriate (i.e. correctly set-up a proof by contradiction, or direct proof, or etc)

  • Readability - has the writer used sufficient language to communicate the intended arguments

(Incidentally, this is what I came up with this morning, in an attempt to start grading the first exam, but I suspect there are educators else where who have thought longer and harder about this problem, and I am dying to hear what they have to say.)

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This paper: "An assessment model for proof comprehension in undergraduate mathematics" can be used as a starter. As a starter, You have to work on it to convert the ideas discussed into grades.

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    $\begingroup$ Dear David. Proof learning and teaching has a vast literature. But, I am afraid to say that most of it is about what students could not learn and what lecturers could not achieve! There is hardly any concrete answer to such a concrete question as you asked. Even the paper that I have suggested though with a very nice and related title, just provides some very rough ideas never used in a real class. I would be very happy to be in touch if you make any concrete progress. $\endgroup$
    – Amir Asghari
    Commented Feb 1, 2015 at 23:13
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    $\begingroup$ Could you summarize the most relevant parts of the document. SE discourages link only answers. $\endgroup$
    – WetlabStudent
    Commented Jul 23, 2015 at 7:32

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