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<p>Problem posing and mathematical modeling have recently emerged as a rapidly growing field of research, yet little is known about students’ modeling problem posing and solving in free situations. To address this gap, this study analyzed 732 student reports from a national mathematical modeling competition in China to investigate two central questions: what kinds of problems high school students prefer to pose, and how they perform when solving them. This study utilized a large-scale, uncontrolled setting where students, working individually or collaboratively outside formal school environments, posed and solved real-world problems on their own. The analysis reveals that students prefer to pose problems related to their personal daily lives, societal issues, and problems that can be solved by familiar solution methods, filling the research gap on students’ preferences for mathematical modeling problem posing without any restrictions. A detailed process analysis of the most frequently posed problem revealed that, during simplification, students formulated reasonable and varied assumptions grounded in personal experience. While they continued to advance their models by introducing new concepts in the mathematization stage, their solution pathways typically reverted to conventional, curriculum-based procedures,&#xa0;coupled with&#xa0;a systematic absence of a formal validation stage. This study contributes empirical evidence to the growing dialogue on integrating problem posing and mathematical modeling, highlighting both its potential and its challenges for mathematics education.</p>

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High School Students Tend to Pose What Kinds of Mathematical Modeling Problems and How They Solve Them in Free Situations: Evidence from Modeling Reports in China

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月24日

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  • Quanli Hu,
  • Yufeng Guo,
  • Zheng Zhang,
  • Qianqian Ye

摘要

Problem posing and mathematical modeling have recently emerged as a rapidly growing field of research, yet little is known about students’ modeling problem posing and solving in free situations. To address this gap, this study analyzed 732 student reports from a national mathematical modeling competition in China to investigate two central questions: what kinds of problems high school students prefer to pose, and how they perform when solving them. This study utilized a large-scale, uncontrolled setting where students, working individually or collaboratively outside formal school environments, posed and solved real-world problems on their own. The analysis reveals that students prefer to pose problems related to their personal daily lives, societal issues, and problems that can be solved by familiar solution methods, filling the research gap on students’ preferences for mathematical modeling problem posing without any restrictions. A detailed process analysis of the most frequently posed problem revealed that, during simplification, students formulated reasonable and varied assumptions grounded in personal experience. While they continued to advance their models by introducing new concepts in the mathematization stage, their solution pathways typically reverted to conventional, curriculum-based procedures, coupled with a systematic absence of a formal validation stage. This study contributes empirical evidence to the growing dialogue on integrating problem posing and mathematical modeling, highlighting both its potential and its challenges for mathematics education.