Pupils’ view of problems: the evolution from kindergarten to the end of primary school

Educators and several national standards highlight the role that problem solving should play in students’ mathematics education: problem solving is recognized as one of the most significant activities of doing mathematics. From the research point of view, nowadays, it is well established that cognitive and affective factors come into play in problem solving activities, but some affective issues remain unexplored. In particular, we want to study pupils’ attitudes towards (mathematical) problems, analyzing their evolution from kindergarten (where the word ‘mathematics’ is rarely explicitly mentioned) to primary school. In a well-defined affective theoretical framework, where attitude is a three-dimensional construct including beliefs and emotions, we carried out a qualitative and narrative study involving 284 students of seven different Italian schools: 121 from kindergarten and grade 1 and 163 from grade 3 to 5. Analyzing the qualitative data collected, we described primary students’ attitudes towards problems and we compared these with those developed in kindergarten, where the word ‘mathematics’ is not explicitly mentioned.