The influence of college students’ mathematical literacy and information literacy on the ability to pose creative mathematical problems: based on the moderating-mediated effect of critical thinking tendency

The ability to pose creative mathematical problems rooted in real-world contexts — closely connected with mathematical modelling practice — is an important manifestation of creative thinking. In this study, 196 college students were surveyed to explore the effects of mathematical literacy, information literacy, and critical thinking tendency on the ability to pose creative mathematical problems. Different from pure intra-mathematical problem-posing tasks, our situational paradigm integrates real-life quantitative scenarios, which echoes the assessment orientation of mathematical literacy advocated by OECD. The results show that: (1) The overall situation of college students’ ability to pose creative mathematical problems is relatively good, but there are significant differences in the high-and-medium-score rate of thinking fluency, flexibility, and originality; (2) The main effect of the category ‘major’ is significant, while the main effects of grade and gender are not obvious; (3) Mathematical literacy, information literacy, and critical thinking tendency have a significant positive impact on the ability to pose creative mathematical problems, and there are significant positive correlations between mathematical literacy and information literacy and critical thinking tendency; (4) Critical thinking tendency shows a significant moderated-mediation effect in the influence of mathematical literacy and information literacy on the ability to pose creative mathematical problems.