Examination of problem posing skills of elementary mathematics teacher candidates: The example of vectors in

Although problem posing is frequently researched in mathematics education, research on problem posing still needs to be conducted. Mathematical problem-posing, a fundamental activity of mathematical thinking, has attracted more attention from mathematics education researchers in recent years. Many researchers also emphasize the need to examine problem-posing processes. This study examined elementary mathematics teacher candidates' problem-posing processes on vectors in space. The case study model, one of the qualitative research designs, was used in the study. The participants comprised six teacher candidates studying in a university's Elementary Mathematics Teaching Program in the northeastern part of Türkiye. We collected data on three activity cards and a think-aloud protocol. The activity cards were carried out individually with each teacher candidate without any time limit. We used the descriptive analysis method to analyze the data. The opinions of teacher candidates based on the problems they posed were taken and conveyed with appropriate content. The activity cards and think-aloud protocol findings showed that some teacher candidates had difficulty creating a context for mathematical operations. The most important result of the study was that when posing a vector problem, students thought of the problem as a similarity problem and posed a problem suitable for the similarity problem. In addition, findings pointed out that the problem posed by some teacher candidates needed to be revised in terms of language and expression. This study was conducted under certain limitations. The first of these limitations is that since the study was conducted with a qualitative research design, it only provides an opportunity for analytical generalizations. Future researchers can make generalizations by examining the problem-posing process on vectors in space using mixed methods.