Xinghe Chen
2026
MalruleLib: Large-Scale Executable Misconception Reasoning with Step Traces for Modeling Student Thinking in Mathematics
Xinghe Chen | Naiming Liu | Shashank Sonkar
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Xinghe Chen | Naiming Liu | Shashank Sonkar
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Student mistakes in mathematics are often systematic: a learner applies a coherent but wrong procedure and repeats it across contexts. We introduce MalruleLib, a learning-science-grounded framework that translates documented misconceptions into executable procedures, drawing on 67 learning-science and mathematics education sources, and generates step-by-step traces of malrule-consistent student work. We formalize a core student-modeling problem as Malrule Reasoning Accuracy (MRA): infer a misconception from one worked mistake and predict the student’s next answer under cross-template rephrasing. Across nine language models (4B - 120B), accuracy drops from 66% on direct problem solving to 40% on cross-template misconception prediction. MalruleLib encodes 101 malrules over 498 parameterized problem templates and produces paired dual-path traces for both correct reasoning and malrule-consistent student reasoning. Because malrules are executable and templates are parameterizable, MalruleLib can generate over one million instances, enabling scalable supervision and controlled evaluation. Using MalruleLib, we observe cross-template degradations of 10 - 21%, while providing student step traces improves prediction by 3 - 15%. We release MalruleLib as infrastructure for educational AI that models student procedures across contexts, enabling diagnosis and feedback that targets the underlying misconception.