What Do High School Teachers Mean by Saying “I Pose My Own Problems”?

Abstract

The aim of this chapter was to identify mathematics teachers’ conceptions of the notion of “problem posing.” The data were collected from a web-based survey, from about 150 high school mathematics teachers, followed by eight semi-structured interviews. An unexpected finding shows that more than 50% of the teachers see themselves as problem posers for their teaching. This finding is not in line with the literature, which gives the impression that not many mathematics teachers are active problem posers. In addition, we identified four types of teachers’ conceptions for “problem posing.” We found that the teachers tended to explain what problem posing meant to them in ways that would embrace their own practices. Our findings imply that most of the mathematics teachers are result-oriented—as opposed to being process-oriented—when they talk about problem posing. Moreover, many teachers who pose problems doubt the ability of their students to do so and consider problem-posing tasks inappropriate for their classrooms.