Prospective teachers’ views about problem-posing activities

AbstractIn mathematics education community although problem posing is regarded as an appropriate teaching method, there is little known about the cognitive processes and the difficulties students face during problem posing activities. Besides, NCTM regards problem posing as a learning activity that stays at the hearth of doing mathematics and advices teachers to use this approach in the classroom as much as possible. However, we still need to know about the advantages and disadvantages of problem posing from the students’ point of view. In this respect, the aim of this study is to determine prospective teachers’ views about problem posing activities. Therefore, during spring term of 2005-2006 academic year 41 prospective science teachers who were attended to problem posing oriented Calculus-II (Mathematics-II) course were asked to write their responses to 3 questions asked. The data was analyzed by means of descriptive methods such as frequencies, percentages and content analysis by putting written responses into categories. The results indicate interesting views of prospective teachers about advantages and disadvantages of problem posing