its always easier to  answer these isf ypu post smaler but well formed
fragments, but

> I am using saxon 8 and <xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
8's rather old, why not 9?


> Now I want to modify the text in the <span class="questionHeader"> based 
> on its parent <question>'s position.

isn't it the ancestor problem?

It's not clear if in fact you want to count questions or problems

but 
<xsl:value-of select="substring-before(.,':')"/>
<xsl:number format="a" from="group" level="any"/>
<xsl:value-of select="substring-after(.,':')"/>
might do what you want , or perhaps add count="question" or
count+"problem", depending.

David

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