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The Proof in Secondary Classrooms (PISC) project was a five-year CAREER grant funded by the National Science Foundation (PI: Michelle Cirillo) in 2015.  The PISC project developed an intervention to support the teaching and learning of proof in the context of geometry. This study takes as its premise that if we introduce proof, by first teaching students particular sub-goals of proof, such as how to draw a conclusion from a given statement and a definition, then students will be more successful with constructing proofs on their own.

PISC drew on findings and artifacts from a previous 3-year study, funded by the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation, which considered the challenges of teaching proof in geometry. In this earlier study, classroom and interview data were collected before and after facilitating professional development in the areas of proof and classroom discourse. The PISC Project documented the effectiveness of an intervention developed through observations made in the previous project. The design and development research study made use of mixed methods and lesson study.