ERIC Number: EJ1490303
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1863-9690
EISSN: EISSN-1863-9704
Available Date: 2025-05-12
Textbooks as a Resource for Teaching Mathematics through Problem Posing: Catalyzing Instructional Change
Stephen Hwang1; Jaepil Han1; Faith Muirhead1; Amy Brown1; Matthew Melville2; Jinfa Cai1
ZDM: Mathematics Education, v57 n5 p987-1001 2025
Research has shown that teaching mathematics through problem posing, or problem-posing based learning (P-PBL), is a student-centered instructional approach that can improve students' cognitive and affective aspects of learning. However, since textbooks continue to include very few opportunities for problem posing, researchers have been working to support teachers to integrate problem posing into classroom instruction, drawing on textbooks as a resource. In this paper, we describe how teachers in the P-PBL Project have engaged in instructional change with support from researchers around a high-quality middle school mathematics textbook series. Through curriculum analysis and cases drawn from meetings with project teachers, teacher journals, and classroom observations, we examine problem-posing tasks in textbooks and how project teachers use textbooks as a resource for P-PBL. We found that, for a given curriculum, problem posing catalyzes changes in teachers' classroom instruction, but care must be taken to connect such changes to textbook lesson learning goals. This study also shows the affordances and challenges of textbooks the teachers encountered as they learned about P-PBL. To conclude, we propose promising future directions for research based on observations stemming from our work with teachers.
Descriptors: Mathematics Instruction, Problem Solving, Student Centered Learning, Textbooks, Textbook Content, Affordances, Barriers
Springer. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail: customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://link.springer.com/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: 2101552
Author Affiliations: 1University of Delaware, Newark, USA; 2Purdue University-Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, IN, USA

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