Improving primary school teachers’ problem-posing skills by using narrative texts

The aim of the study is to improve primary school teachers' mathematical problem-posing skills by using narrative texts. The explanatory mixed-method design was utilized in the study. While the quantitative data of the research were collected from 24 primary school teachers working in Trabzon, the qualitative data were obtained from 10 of these primary school teachers who were randomly selected. In the study, in order to improve the problem-posing skills of primary school teachers by using narrative texts, the teachers were given theoretical information about problem-posing, mind and intelligence games, dialogic reading, STEM, philosophy for children, orienteering, museum education, and animation creation with the help of Web 2.0 tools (each activity took three class hours) for six class hours a day for four days. The participants were asked to construct problems from the narrative text “The Cure for Unhappiness” as a pre- and post-test. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants to determine their thoughts on problem-posing. The Wilcoxon Ranked Signs test was conducted to determine the statistically significant increase in the mathematics content strand, type, and total number of problems that the teachers constructed in the post-test compared to the pre-test. The semi-structured interviews with the teachers were analyzed with descriptive analysis. The training on narrative-text-based problem-posing given to the teachers was found to increase their non-routine problem-posing skills, although there was a statistically significant decrease in the number of problems posed by the teachers and the number of routine problems they posed. The teachers, who stated that they were inadequate in problem-posing before the training, stated that the problem-posing training using narrative texts increased their problem-posing awareness.