Cross-national perspectives on mathematical problem posing

Abstract

This special issue represents an important step forward in advancing research on mathematical problem posing (MPP) by examining the treatment of MPP in the mathematics curriculum standards and textbooks across several Asian and non-Asian countries. In this commentary, we briefly discuss the articles included and reflect on what they reveal about the role and treatment of MPP in mathematics curricula. We argue that the research reports in this issue highlight both commonalities and striking differences in how MPP is treated across educational systems. Collectively, these studies make a valuable contribution to the field and provide a foundation for further research in this vein. We conclude with observations on how curriculum research related to MPP might be strengthened, positioning these studies not only within the growing corpus of research on MPP but also within the broader tradition of national and cross-national curriculum studies.

Mathematical problem solving has been a longstanding focus of attention among mathematics education scholars (Silver, 1985). Moreover, mathematical problem solving is a well-established, visible goal in the mathematics curriculum standards of virtually every country in the world, and it is a topic commonly treated in mathematics textbooks used in classrooms across the globe. Closely related to the topic of problem solving is problem posing, which may refer to the act of either reformulating an existing problem or generating a new problem (Silver, 1994). Synonyms for problem posing include problem finding, problem discovery, and problem generation.

Mathematical problem posing (MPP) is a relative newcomer to the professional discourse surrounding mathematics education. However, there is clear evidence that the topic has captured the attention of more than a few mathematics education scholars. A recent search of Google Scholar citations for the topic “mathematics problem posing” yielded over 400,000 citations, the majority of which are of relatively recent vintage. The growth of research in this area has been substantial, spurred not only by the publication of The Art of Problem Posing by Brown and Walter (1983) which proposed strategies for using problem posing to engage students in mathematical thinking, but also by the publication of foundational papers by Kilpatrick (1987) and Silver (1994) that highlighted the scholarly and practical value of conducting more systematic investigations into MPP.

It is important to recognize that research on mathematical problem posing remains in its early stages, especially when compared to the more established body of work on mathematical problem solving. The field continues to present many more questions than answers for both researchers and the broader mathematics education community. Nevertheless, some progress has been made, with scholars exploring MPP from a range of perspectives, including investigating the cognitive and affective processes involved in MPP, probing ways to support students’ engagement in problem posing, and examining the impact of incorporating MPP into curriculum and instruction (Cai et al., 2023; Silver, 2013).

Despite the growing interest in MPP among mathematics education scholars, as suggested by the increasing number of citations on platforms like Google Scholar, it remains the case across the globe that normative mathematics instruction does not feature MPP. The situation today is not markedly different from that described nearly four decades ago by Kilpatrick (1987) in his seminal chapter, “Problem Formulating: Where Do Good Problems Come From?” He began that chapter with an insightful observation: based on their school experiences, most students would likely identify teachers and textbooks as the sole sources of mathematics problems. In other words, students are seldom given opportunities in school to develop the disposition or skills needed toward seeing themselves as having a role to play in posing mathematics problems.

Advocates for MPP have proposed several possible reasons for including MPP as a feature of mathematics curriculum and instruction. One reason is that the posing of mathematics problems can be viewed as an important mathematical process or a key aspect of mathematical practice that would be valuable for students to learn. A second reason is that MPP can be seen as an instructional approach that can be used to support students’ learning of mathematical content or other mathematical processes/practices (e.g., problem solving, generalization). Yet another reason to view MPP as an important component of mathematics curriculum is its great potential to positively influence students’ motivation to engage with mathematics, their sense of personal autonomy and agency, and their development of a positive disposition toward mathematical activity.

Given that MPP is a topic with potentially important practical and educational application and that the topic has captured considerable attention from mathematics education scholars across the world, it seems reasonable at this time to probe the extent to which MPP is also receiving attention from other segments of the international education community. Transforming MPP interest into MPP enactment in mathematics classroom instruction is likely only if MPP appears in national curriculum recommendations and textbooks that illustrate and embody MPP principles and actions. It is these aspects of attention to MPP that the articles in this special issue of the Asian Journal for Mathematics Education (AJME) address, extending a line of recent inquiry on this topic (e.g., Cai & Howson, 2013; Cai & Jiang, 2017; Cai et al., 2016). These articles represent an important step forward in advancing MPP research by examining the treatment of MPP in the mathematics curriculum standards and textbooks in several Asian and non-Asian countries.

In the following sections, we first offer a brief discussion of the articles included in this special issue, followed by a reflection on the insights they provide into how MPP is being treated as a component of the mathematics curriculum. We conclude with observations on potential directions for strengthening MPP research in curriculum.

1. What's in each article?

This special issue features five articles that focus on the inclusion and placement of MPP in mathematics curriculum standards and/or textbooks in mainland China, Germany, South Korea, the Philippines, and Singapore. Additionally, one article compares the language of MPP in curricula across England, the United States, and Singapore, and another examines the implementation of MPP in a few U.S. classrooms. Collectively, this set of articles represents the first collection of international studies on MPP in mathematics curricula, considering MPP implementation in classrooms as part of the enacted curriculum. In this section, we briefly summarize some highlights from each article.

1.1 MPP in Chinese curriculum standards

This study (Cai et al., 2025) revealed that problem posing is clearly emphasized, with over 80 mentions, in the 173-page 2022 Chinese mathematics curriculum standards. It is conceptualized as one of the four key abilities for Chinese students: discovering problems, posing problems, analyzing problems, and solving problems. Discovering and posing problems are newly introduced in the 2022 standards, building upon the previous focus on analyzing and solving problems. This change reflects a deliberate intention to broaden students’ experiences in mathematical practices, encouraging them to observe the real world from a mathematical perspective while discovering and posing problems. It also marks a shift from passive to active learning, fostering greater student ownership and identity in the learning process. Rather than providing an in-depth analysis of the 2022 standards or new mathematics textbooks, the article then offers an extensive interpretation and discussion of problem posing, drawing on relevant research on MPP. It highlights that the 2022 standards do not provide detailed guidance on how to integrate problem posing into textbooks and daily classroom instruction.

1.2 MPP in Korean elementary curricula and textbooks

After analyzing six successive curriculum revisions and corresponding textbooks, Pang and Lee (2025) demonstrated the expanding inclusion of MPP in Korean curricula and the improved alignment between curricula and textbooks over the years. Focusing on MPP tasks, the study further analyzed and coded MPP (which comprised about 1% of all textbook tasks) in 20 elementary school textbooks. The results revealed that MPP tasks remain unevenly distributed across different content areas, with a concentration in the numbers and operations domain, as well as across different types of problems. The study also emphasized the importance of incorporating attention to the affective dimension of MPP (e.g., fostering positive experiences, confidence, and engagement), as reflected in recently published textbooks.

1.3 MPP in the Philippine mathematics curriculum

After reviewing the recently released mathematics curriculum for Grades 1, 4, and 7, Vistro-Yu et al. (2025) noted that MPP is absent in the Philippine curriculum. The term is unfamiliar to many educators and largely unheard of among school mathematics teachers. Believing in the value of MPP in mathematics education, the author introduced the concept of “curriculum pockets” to describe identifiable opportunities for incorporating MPP into curriculum and instruction. The article provides numerous examples to demonstrate how these curriculum pockets can be created and utilized. For instance, under the Section “Communicating and reasoning mathematically,” the author hypothetically added “pose questions” to the current learning objective:

KS2.2: reason and communicate using precise mathematical language to discuss ideas, investigate problems, pose questions, and justify solutions

In the classroom, when teaching about extending or creating patterns, the author argued that “Grade 1 students may be tasked with asking their classmates to extend a pattern they designed, or collaboratively design a pattern inspired by their surroundings.”

1.4 MPP in the Singapore mathematics curriculum

Toh and Chua (2025) found limited information about MPP in Singapore's mathematics syllabuses, teaching guides, school textbooks, and teachers’ resource books. To gain insights into teachers’ practices, the author reviewed existing literature, identifying 21 publications on problem-posing activities in Singapore classrooms. These studies suggested that problem-posing activities are used in some classrooms to help develop students’ understanding of mathematical concepts. Teachers also integrate problem posing into problem-solving activities rather than treating it as an independent task. Additionally, students are capable of posing their own problems during activities. The author argued that problem posing should be emphasized as part of pedagogical innovations and integrated into the curriculum to achieve broader objectives such as mathematical investigation and modeling.

1.5 MPP in German primary school textbooks

This study (Baumanns & Rott, 2025) revealed that problem posing is rarely mentioned in German primary school curriculum standards, with the few occurrences primarily linked to mathematical modeling. After examining two popular textbooks, the author found that MPP was infrequently included, with significant variations across the two textbooks and grade levels. MPP is mainly incorporated into the content area of numbers and operations, often in the form of structured and routine tasks.

1.6 Comparing MPP language in England, the United States, and Singapore secondary mathematics curricula

This study (Bokhove, 2025) focused on the use of idiomatic language as a way to better understand how MPP is conceptualized and presented in the mathematics curricula of three English-speaking countries: England, the United States, and Singapore. One set of curriculum standards was identified and selected from each of these three education systems: Mathematics Programmes of Study: Key Stage 3—National Curriculum in England (England; Department for Education, 2013), Common Core State Standards (U.S.; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), and G1 MATHEMATICS SYLLABUS—Secondary One to Four Implementation (Singapore, starting with 2020 Secondary One Cohort; Ministry of Education Singapore, 2024). The study revealed that “problem posing” is essentially absent as a distinct element in all three curriculum standards except for the Singapore curriculum, which offers some limited attention to metacognitive behaviors in the problem-posing process. At the same time, the author acknowledges the protentional and implicit inclusion of problem posing as an integral part of problem solving and mathematical practices in these curriculum standards.

1.7 Implementing MPP in U.S. middle school classrooms

Despite the clear and consistent emphasis on MPP in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) mathematics curriculum standards documents (e.g., NCTM, 1989, 1991, 2000), Muirhead et al. (2025) acknowledged the limited exposure of MPP in U.S. textbooks. This study examined how two middle school teachers could learn to teach mathematics through MPP, either by redesigning an activity to include MPP prompts for students or by converting a problem-solving task into a problem-posing task. The results showed encouraging changes, including increased student participation and agency, a wider variety of problems posed by different students, and greater opportunities for students to learn from one another in the classroom.

2. What have we learned from these articles?

These studies provide an opportunity for us to learn about the inclusion and integration of MPP in mathematics curricula across seven education systems. In this section, we briefly summarize a few insights gleaned from this work.

2.1 To what extent is attention to MPP represented in national curricula?

Collectively, the results reported in these studies suggest that MPP is not yet widely included in mathematics curriculum standards and textbooks across the world. Several of the articles in this special issue address the amount and nature of attention paid to MPP in national curriculum standards documents. The articles reveal a considerable range of attention.

In four of the seven countries treated in these articles, the authors reported little or no attention to MPP. In the Philippines, for example, the authors' review of the recently released mathematics curriculum standards for Grades 1, 4, and 7 found that MPP was not mentioned. An analysis of Mathematics Programs of Study: Key Stage 3—National Curriculum in England (2013) similarly reported an absence of attention toward MPP. In another article, we learn of a similar dearth of attention to MPP in German primary school curriculum standards, with only a few occurrences linked to mathematical modeling. The analysis of attention toward MPP in Singapore also found only a few instances. The examination of the G1 MATHEMATICS SYLLABUS—Secondary One to Four Implementation (2024) revealed that MPP received some limited attention related to metacognitive behaviors in the problem-posing process.

In two countries there appear to be evidence of more attention to MPP in mathematics curriculum standards. For example, an analysis of six successive revisions revealed the expanding inclusion of MPP in the Korean mathematics curriculum. The examination of the 2022 Chinese mathematics curriculum standards counted 81 mentions of MPP.

As might be expected, the picture is less clear in the United States, which does not have an official national curriculum and instead has a decentralized approach relying on state-level curriculum standards. Nevertheless, there are a few publications that have served as guides to many states in the development of their curriculum standards. One source is a pair of reports from NCTM: Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989) and Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (2000). Another source is the more recently published Common Core State Standards (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). As reported in articles in this special issue, MPP is hardly featured as a distinct component in the Core Standards (Bokhove, 2025), but it does receive attention in the NCTM documents (Muirhead et al., 2025).

In sum, the research reported in this issue indicates that the inclusion of MPP in mathematics curricula varies widely, ranging from its complete absence in the Philippines and England, to very limited mention in Germany and Singapore, to somewhat increased inclusion in recent curricula in South Korea, and explicit emphasis in mainland China. Even within the same education system, such as in the United States, the NCTM Standards and Common Core State Standards place dramatically different emphases and levels of specificity on the inclusion and integration of MPP.

2.2 How is MPP treated when it appears in national curriculum standards?

The analysis of the Chinese mathematics curriculum standards revealed a clear and explicit treatment of MPP (Cai et al., 2025). MPP is identified as one of four key student competencies: discovering problems, posing problems, analyzing problems, and solving problems. Notably, “discovering” and “posing” problems are new additions in the 2022 standards, expanding upon the earlier emphasis on analysis and solution. This revision reflects a deliberate shift toward enriching students’ engagement with mathematical practices by encouraging them to observe the real world through a mathematical lens and to actively formulate their own problems. It also signifies a broader pedagogical move from passive to active learning, promoting greater student agency and identity in the learning process.

2.3 How is MPP treated when it appears in mathematics textbooks?

In the articles that reported examining mathematics textbooks, there was either no inclusion or limited inclusion of MPP, a finding consistent with previous research (e.g., Cai & Jiang, 2017; Divrik et al., 2020). In textbooks that do include MPP tasks, these tasks predominantly appear in the content area of numbers and operations, often in the form of structured and routine tasks.

There is little to no specific consideration of the affective dimension of MPP tasks except in recently published Korean textbooks, where students’ positive experiences and confidence with MPP tasks, particularly those emphasizing collaboration, are made explicit.

2.4 How might MPP be more prominently represented in mathematics classroom instruction?

Collectively, the results suggest that the inclusion of MPP in mathematics curriculum standards and textbooks is quite limited across these education systems. This presents significant challenges for teachers attempting to implement MPP in classrooms. However, the case study of MPP implementation in U.S. middle school classrooms demonstrates that teachers can be trained to integrate MPP by modifying mathematical problems even when the textbooks they use do not include such components. Also encouraging is the identification of so-called curriculum pockets, which are topics that hold promise as strategic sites for the inclusion of MPP tasks in a curriculum. Nevertheless, some research (e.g., Leung, 2013) has indicated that we would be wise to expect, even when MPP is represented in national curriculum standards, that enactment in classrooms will require time and considerable teacher support.

3. What next?

The research reports in this special issue reveal both commonalities and a few dramatic differences in how MPP is treated across diverse education systems. Collectively, these studies make an important contribution to the field and lay a foundation for future research. To help chart productive directions for subsequent inquiry, it is useful to consider these studies not only as part of the expanding body of research on MPP, but also as members of a rich tradition of national and cross-national curriculum studies.

In contrast to students’ learning of language and literacy, it is widely acknowledged that students’ learning of mathematics largely occurs in and depends on school. Moreover, the mathematics curriculum is a key determinant of students’ school learning experiences and outcomes across educational systems worldwide (Schmidt et al., 1997). The initial search for features of mathematics curriculum and instructional practices in other countries that might be associated with differential student performance can be traced back to the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in their First International Mathematics Study (FIMS) in 1964. When the first international study of mathematics achievement was organized, an international committee drafted an outline of topics that might be covered in a mathematics curriculum (and thus suitable for inclusion in an international assessment of mathematics achievement) and sent it to the national coordinating groups for participating countries with instructions to judge whether the topic was covered in that country's curriculum. The results made it very clear that topical coverage varied dramatically across countries (Husén, 1967). Since then, interest in national and cross-national curriculum analyses has continued and has been spurred in recent decades by the availability of a new wave of large-scale international mathematics assessments (e.g., TIMSS, Programme for International Student Assessment) and by the publication of influential curriculum documents in the United States (e.g., NCTM, 1989, 2000), which had notable ripple effects across the globe (Li & Lappan, 2014). While it is important to recognize that any attempt to compare education across countries represents a daunting task, aptly characterized by Husén (1983) as “comparing the incomparable,” several key conceptual tools have nonetheless been developed and found valuable in analyzing mathematics curricula and their influence on teaching and learning. These concepts, summarized below, offer useful notions or frameworks for guiding further inquiry and research on MPP from a curriculum perspective.

3.1 Curriculum transformation framework

To contextualize factors contributing to students’ learning outcomes, the Third International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS) examined curriculum materials and outlined the process of curriculum transformation as a framework for understanding the relationship between curriculum and student learning (Schmidt et al., 1997, 2002). In this work, students’ performance was regarded as the achieved/attained curriculum, whereas the content outlined in curriculum guidelines was considered the intended curriculum. The transformation from the intended to the achieved curriculum was further characterized by several stages: textbooks (which may also be considered part of the intended curriculum), the planned curriculum (e.g., teachers’ lesson plans based on the intended curriculum), and the enacted/implemented curriculum (e.g., the actual content teachers teach in classrooms). The findings from TIMSS and other similar studies illustrated the power of these various notions of curriculum in examining mathematics curriculum and its transformation within an international context (e.g., Schmidt et al., 2002).

Hirsch and Reys (2009) also argued for attention to multiple meanings that might be ascribed to curriculum, including at least the following varieties: the intended curriculum, the textbook curriculum, the implemented curriculum, and the assessed curriculum. The distinctions among these several versions of curriculum serve as useful and important reminders not only that the pathway from official curriculum statements in a country to assessed student outcomes is unlikely to be a straight line but also that a comprehensive comparison across countries would entail examination of all these versions of curriculum and perhaps even others.

The articles in this special issue primarily focus on the inclusion of MPP in the intended curriculum (including textbooks), with one paper examining MPP implementation in classrooms as part of the enacted curriculum. As MPP begins to take hold in intended curricula across the world, we believe there would be considerable merit in pursuing all aspects of the curriculum transformation framework to understand how MPP is enacted and assessed in schools. Although numerous studies have explored students’ engagement with MPP in specific local contexts, many questions remain unanswered when MPP is examined through the lens of curriculum transformation. For example, what strategies do teachers employ when designing and planning MPP activities for classroom instruction? How is MPP integrated into broader content instruction? In what ways do curriculum standards and textbooks shape teachers’ instructional planning? How do teachers’ beliefs influence their approach to teaching MPP? And how does teachers’ own competence in MPP impact their instructional effectiveness? These questions point to a broader set of issues that warrant further investigations, particularly as we begin to consider MPP not just as a pedagogical tool but as an independent and integral construct within the mathematics curriculum, with implications at multiple levels of curriculum design and implementation.

3.2 Opportunity to learn

Carroll (1963) proposed a model of student learning in school that highlighted two key factors: quality of instruction and time allotted for learning (opportunity to learn; OTL). The concept of OTL was further explored and developed by the IEA in FIMS in 1964 and the Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS) in 1980. OTL provided a valuable framework for assessing the alignment between intended and achieved curricula within a country, and it suggested ways to explain observed cross-national variation in student achievement between and among countries. For instance, by comparing curricula and achievement in Japan and the United States, Westbury (1992) found that the lower achievement of U.S. students was likely due to curriculum variation within the United States that affected students’ OTL in ways that led to curriculum exposure that was less closely aligned with the SIMS tests when compared to students’ experience with the curriculum in Japan. Through this analysis, OTL was shown to be a powerful notion to inform and guide interpretation of cross-national studies of curriculum transformation and student achievement, with the caveat that cross-national studies may need to delve deeper than simply considering a country as a unit of analysis.

A similar observation can be made in the analysis of how MPP is included and represented in curricula. The concept of OTL, whether used explicitly or implicitly, has informed many of the studies in this special issue as a lens for examining the presence and evolution of MPP in curriculum documents. However, we urge caution against oversimplification, especially in decentralized education systems where curriculum standards and textbooks can vary significantly across regions or jurisdictions. Treating a country as a single, undifferentiated unit of analysis risks overlooking the complexities and nuances inherent in curricula and their transformation. Further research should more closely investigate the inclusion of MPP across diverse curricular formats and structures within each educational system.

Moreover, the varied use of the term problem posing adds an additional layer of complexity to examining its presence and representation in curriculum documents. As the concept has been interpreted in multiple ways within the mathematics education literature (e.g., Ruthven, 2020), this diversity can make it challenging to identify and analyze its curricular manifestations consistently. To enhance the rigor and comparability of curriculum analyses, particularly those focused on OTL in MPP, it is important for researchers to work toward a more unified and clearly articulated definition of MPP within this context.

3.3 Task analysis framework

The development or use of a framework is a common approach in educational research for conducting task analysis. In examining the inclusion of MPP in mathematics curricula, the authors of articles in this special issue adopted or developed at least three different frameworks to identify and classify MPP tasks. Each appears to assume that MPP can and should be treated as an independent task:

Baumanns and Rott's (2022) framework: (1) problem posing as an activity of generating new or reformulating given problems, (2) emerging tasks on the spectrum between routine and nonroutine problems, and (3) metacognitive behavior in problem-posing processes.

Baumanns and Rott's study of German textbooks (Baumanns & Rott, 2025): (1) the number of MPP tasks relative to all tasks, (2) distribution across mathematical content areas, (3) the structure of problem-posing tasks (structured vs. unstructured), and (4) the nature of the posed problems (routine vs. nonroutine).

Cai and Jiang's (2017) classification of four types of MPP tasks: (1) posing problems aligned with a given operation, (2) posing problems that maintain a similar mathematical relationship or structure, (3) posing additional problems based on provided information and a sample problem, and (4) posing problems based solely on given information.

We recognize the need for investigators to use research methods that suit their specific project goals and needs, but the use of several different analytic frameworks complicates any effort to synthesize across investigations. Moving forward, we hope it may be possible for researchers to choose and consistently use one of the several existing frameworks or for work to be done to consolidate existing frameworks to create a tool that can guide MPP curriculum analysis and facilitate the aggregation of findings across independent investigations. Such an approach would be a scientific advance for researchers interested in MPP as it appears in curriculum.

We also suggest the inclusion of other forms of task analysis in future studies of tasks included and presented in curricula, both within and across educational systems. For example, Li (2000) developed a framework to examine the cross-national similarities and differences in textbook problems between the United States and China. These problems, which followed the content presentation of addition and subtraction of integers, were analyzed in terms of mathematical features, contextual features, and performance requirements. The results revealed differing learning opportunities afforded by the textbook problems in the two countries. For instance, the requirement for problem posing was included in a few problems in U.S. textbooks but not in Chinese ones. Additionally, all Chinese textbooks, but none of the U.S. textbooks, presented integer operations as a subset of rational number operations. As a result, the relevant problems presented in the common content sections varied. This task analysis underscores the need to move beyond treating MPP as an undifferentiated unit and instead take an in-depth look at its various dimensions and its association with content treatment in different curricula.

Focusing on task analysis can also serve as a valuable approach to trace the transformation of MPP from the intended to the implemented curriculum, as demonstrated by the QUASAR project (Silver & Stein, 1996), which focused on the cognitive demands of tasks (Stein et al., 2000). This approach presents another potential avenue for researchers to explore how MPP, when treated as an independent task, may undergo changes in its specific requirements as it moves from the intended curriculum to the implemented one.

One additional point that warrants attention is an observation by Karp (2023): “As a rule, in the process of instruction, schoolchildren usually encounter not separate problems, but problem sets… we believe it is important to investigate how problem sets are actually constructed in practice, how their construction has changed in history, and what theoretical possibilities for their construction exist” (p. 460). Karp reminds us to think beyond individual MPP problems when examining textbooks. Even if a researcher chooses not to engage in the kinds of task analyses suggested above, it would be useful to consider the context in which an MPP task appears in a textbook. Does it appear as a singular opportunity, or is it found within a set of other problems? If the latter, are the others MPP or non-MPP tasks? What does this collection of problems, including and surrounding the MPP task, appear to be organized to accomplish? What does the inclusion of one or more MPP tasks in a collection tell us about the rationale for including MPP (e.g., as a mathematical practice, to learn other mathematical material, or to motivate and develop student agency)?

3.4 Historical, cultural, and sociocultural context perspectives

The study of mathematics curriculum must account for the rich and multifaceted contexts in which it is situated, including history, value, and policy issues as well as sociocultural factors (Kulm & Li, 2009). As Schoenfeld (2014) suggested, mathematics curricula and the changes they undergo are shaped by a wide array of cultural values and practices. In a similar vein, Silver (2014) emphasized the inherent complexity of understanding curriculum changes, particularly in relation to instructional practice, and underscored the need to attend carefully to a range of influencing factors including cultural context:

The effects of curriculum changes are mediated by a number of factors and actors, among which are teachers and students. The implemented curriculum is largely a function of the actions and reactions of teachers and students in classrooms, and it is constrained by a complex array of cultural, historical, political, and social factors. (p. 149)

Educators and scholars often concentrate on specific aspects of curriculum and instruction in their research, while historical and cultural influences are frequently assumed to be embedded within educational artifacts and, as a result, are sometimes overlooked. Yet these elements can offer critical explanatory power and are essential for developing a deeper understanding of curriculum practices. This oversight becomes even more complex when considering a researcher's own educational and cultural background in relation to the curriculum being studied. A lack of explicit attention to cultural relevance in the mathematics curriculum can create interpretive challenges for both authors and readers. Moreover, since the concept of culture can be understood and unpacked in diverse ways (Carlone & Johnson, 2012), examining cultural relevance in curriculum and instruction requires varied and context-sensitive approaches (Ding et al., 2023; Li & Ginsburg, 2006).

At first glance, historical and cultural factors may appear less significant when comparing education systems within the same geographic region. However, Li and Leung (2009) demonstrated that curriculum practices and changes can differ markedly even among closely situated systems. Their analysis of six high-achieving East Asian education systems (i.e., Hong Kong, Japan, Mainland China, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) revealed substantial variation. These differences underscore the powerful influence of sociocultural and political contexts on curriculum development and reform. As such, a comprehensive understanding of curriculum issues must go beyond purely academic considerations to include the broader cultural and political forces that shape educational practice.

Several articles in this collection underscore the importance of historical and cultural context, such as the studies examining curriculum standards in South Korea and the Philippines. These contributions highlight the value of situating analyses of MPP within broader societal frameworks. We encourage researchers and educators to continue exploring the nuanced complexities of MPP inclusion, recognizing that its representation and implementation may differ substantially across cultural contexts. A more context-sensitive approach is essential for understanding how MPP is interpreted, prioritized, and enacted within diverse educational systems.

Emphasizing the cultural dimension of the mathematics curriculum does not diminish the value of cross-national curriculum studies. On the contrary, international studies of curriculum and instruction offer rich opportunities for insight and improvement in both policy and practice (Li, 2008; Silver, 2009). We are convinced that adopting an international perspective, as this special issue exemplifies, creates a valuable platform for educators and researchers to reflect on diverse approaches, engage in meaningful dialogue, and advance both research and practice related to MPP across varied educational contexts.