Differential Effect of Prompts on Students’ Posed Mathematical Problems and Unexpected Responses

• In Event: Student Learning, Reasoning, and Understanding in Mathematics Education

Abstract

Current problem-posing research has rarely focused on the influence of prompts on students’ problem-posing outcomes. To systemically vary prompts, we designed two problem-posing tasks with two different prompts (Pose-EMD vs. Pose-Challenge prompt). This study investigated the influence of prompt types on the distribution of student problem-posing responses, the complexity of solvable mathematical problems, and the characteristics of unexpected responses. We analyzed 230 middle school students’ 2,556 problem-posing responses. The analyses showed that the Pose-Challenge prompt did not encourage students to pose more word problems compared to the Pose-EMD prompt but rather to pose solvable mathematical problems with more complex linguistic structure. Additionally, students were more likely to produce unexpected responses that constructed completely new situations when given the Pose-Challenge prompt.

Authors

• Hua Ran, Jiangnan University

• Jinfa Cai, University of Delaware

• Stephen Hwang, University of Delaware