Nurturing problem solving and problem posing practices

Members of the mathematics team are leading current research nationally and internationally in relation to problem solving and problem posing.

Given the increased focus on the selection or development of a quality problem (problem posing) in the process of problem solving, in 2012, the researchers led the design and implementation of a 6-week problem solving/posing intervention to develop pre-service teachers’ problem posing understandings and abilities. Subsequently, in 2019, we engaged pre-service teachers in a letter writing initiative in collaboration with primary teachers and 5th class pupils in a partner school, exploring the impact of the opportunity to pose problems for pupils on PSTs’ problem-posing understandings and practices. Again, in 2023, we engaged PSTs in group problem posing, working in collaboration with 4th class pupils in a partner school.

This work has informed our practice within both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. One of the outputs of this work, the Framework for Posing Elementary Mathematics Problems (F-PosE), has been embedded into our core modules to support pre-service teachers in noticing desirable features of mathematics problems and inform their selection and modification of problems for use in primary classrooms.

This work has also been influential across our Lesson Study work.