Teachers’ Views and Pedagogical Reasoning About Problem-Posing Prompts

• In Event: Mathematics Tasks: Four Different Perspectives

Abstract

We present findings from a longitudinal study of how teachers view characteristics of problem-posing (PP) tasks and reason about how their students might respond to them. Through semi-structured, task-based interviews, we examined middle school mathematics teachers’ PP prompt preferences and pedagogical reasoning when explaining their preferences. The teachers’ views of PP prompts were mediated by characteristics of both problem situations and prompts, and the teachers actively sought to balance developing students’ mathematical thinking with pursuing specific lesson goals through problem-posing-based learning (P-PBL). Implications for PP research and teacher education are discussed.

Authors

• Jaepil Han, University of Wyoming

• Stephen Hwang, University of Delaware

• Faith Muirhead, University of Delaware

• Jinfa Cai, University of Delaware