Investigation of problem posing activities in primary school mathematics textbooks and workbooks

The aim of this study is to examine the problem-posing activities in the mathematics textbooks and workbooks approved by the Ministry of National Education (MEB) for use in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-grade levels of primary school. The sources in the research consist of all the textbooks and workbooks used in the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 academic years for primary school mathematics, obtained through the Educational Informatics Network. In this context, the document analysis technique, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. The problem-posing activities in the books were analyzed using the descriptive analysis technique, considering their distribution according to the types of problem-posing activities and the learning and sub-learning areas. In this context, it was observed that the majority of the problem-posing activity examples were semi-structured problem-posing activities, that there were no free problem-posing activities, and that structured problem-posing activities were very few in number. Similarly, it was determined that the learning and sub-learning areas were conducted in a spiral manner, and as the grade level increased, the problem-posing activities used in the books increased. Based on these results, suggestions were made to enrich the content of primary school mathematics textbooks and workbooks in terms of problem-posing activities and to pay attention to the distribution of problem-posing activities in learning and sub-learning areas.