Inverted Tasks and Bracketed Tasks in Mathematical Problem Posing

Abstract

We present in this paper a pair of approaches to support mathematics educators and learners in formulating original tasks. In particular, we facilitate the posing of rich mathematical problems by using two novel methods that were created by a mathematics department at a K-12 school in the United States, and further developed alongside our students as well as a wider professional learning team of master teachers. We situate our work within the broader literature on mathematical problem posing and describe our strategies by including examples of their use in generating problems and by providing examples of authentic student-assigned tasks that were created with our approaches.

Keywords

• problem posing
• assessment
• evaluation
• task design
• inverted task
• bracketed task