Young students posing problem‑solving tasks: what does posing a similar task imply to students?

The study focuses on problem solving and problem posing in mathematics teaching with six-year-olds. After being given a task in three-dimensional geometry, the children were asked to make a similar task for a friend. This article investigates how children interpret the term ‘similar’. In order to create a similar task, children had to change their perspective from looking for information to providing the necessary information, and from looking for a solution to asking a question. The children also had to reflect on the original mathematical task to create a similar assignment. Therefore, the task they created themselves would say something about how they interpreted the original task. The research questions are: 1) How do children interpret the term ‘similar’ when asked to make a similar task for a friend? 2) What can the tasks the children create say about what they have learned?

The results show that most children included three-dimensional aspects from the original task in the tasks they created themselves. However, not all the children’s tasks contained mathematical elements. The study indicates that children who are used to mathematical problem solving can also create their own tasks that pose problems.

The study collected data from three Swedish pre-school classes with 27 participating six-year-olds. The intervention was divided into two sessions: Problem solving and problem posing. In the first session, the children were asked to make a three-dimensional figure out of building blocks after looking at a two-dimensional image. In the second session, the task from the first session was repeated, and the children then had to make a similar task for a friend. The kindergarten teachers helped the children document the work process. The children’s notes and the photographs the children took of the constructions they made were then collected.

Palmér, H. & van Bommel, J. (2020). “Young students posing problem‑solving tasks: what does posing a similar task imply to students?”. ZDM – Mathematics Education, 52(2020):743–752.