An Investigation of High School Students’ Mathematical Problem Posing in the United States and China

Abstract

In the literature, problem posing is claimed to be important in learning mathematics. This study investigated US and Chinese high school students’ attitudes and abilities in posing mathematical problems. All of the participants were taking advanced mathematics in high school. A mathematics content test and a mathematical problem-posing test were administered to the students. The mathematical content test was adapted from the National Assessment of Educational Progress for 12th graders. The problem-posing test included three situations, namely a free problem-posing situation, a semi-structured problem-posing situation, and a structured problem-posing situation. Students who scored 39 or above out of 50 points were interviewed. During the interviews, the majority of the students reported that they had not had any prior experience in posing mathematical problems. Many students did not have a specific strategy for posing problems, and many had difficulty explaining their problem-posing processes. Most of the US students for various reasons said that problem posing was important in mathematics. Most Chinese students said that problem posing was not important in high school learning because of college entrance examinations.