Students’ Difficulties with Problem Posing in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

This study focuses on exploring students’ emerging difficulties during a problem posing task in an early childhood education classroom (4–5 years old). Through a single case study, and by considering the problems posed as an indicator of the students’ mathematical performance level, the difficulties inherent in the process of posing problems based on a given situation are characterised. The results reveal the existence of difficulties both in the exploration phase of the problem situation and in posing the problems themselves. This shows that the main difficulties are related to a lack of accuracy in language, which is typical of this stage, and to the notion of a non-mathematical problem that prevails in the students.