The influence of problem-posing task situation: Prospective primary teachers working with fractions

Abstract

This research presents a study on the problems posed by pre-service primary school teachers by focusing on the problem-posing tasks situation as the research variable. The investigation was carried out with 205 students of a bachelor’s degree in Primary Education Teacher in Spain. They were asked to pose problems with fractions based on two given initial situations: numerical and contextualized. For each problem, we analyze its plausibility, the meanings of fractions, the mathematical structure, and the reasonability of the context. Results indicate that mostly posed problems use part-whole or operator meaning of fractions, as well as the additive or multiplicative structure. There are no differences between the plausibility and reasonability of the problems based on the initial situation, although it has shown better results when the given situation is contextualized. In addition, in contextualized situations, teachers show greater ability in formulating problems with a wide variety of structures and meanings of fractions.