Features of Generalising Tasks: Help Or Hurdle to Expressing Generality‪?‬

Introduction Suppose you intend to use the two problems shown in Figures 1 and 2 in a lesson on pattern generalisation and need to decide on their sequencing. On what criteria have you based your decisions? What criteria have you used to base your decision on? For teachers attempting to do this, there are some ways to help them approach it and make informed choices. One way to gauge the complexity of generalising problems is to look at their features, and this is basically what this article aims to explore and discuss further. This article sets out with two objectives: (1) to offer teachers a framework for considering the difficulty level of generalising problems in terms of task features, and (2) to raise issues for discussion on the possible influence the task features have on students' generalisation and reasoning.