Quantitative skills, defined as the application of mathematical and/or statistical thinking and reasoning in specific contexts, are growing in importance within undergraduate science curricula, as methodological and technological advancements transform the practice of modern science into an interdisciplinary endeavour increasingly dependent upon mathematics and statistics. While the need for science undergraduates and graduates to demonstrate greater proficiency in quantitative skills is acknowledged internationally, so is the deficit in students’ basic mathematical skills. Traditionally, first-year science undergraduates have often been required to complete free-standing mathematics or statistics units that aim to refresh and/or build upon the students’ secondary level mathematics experiences. But significant numbers of science undergraduates find it difficult transferring their mathematical knowledge and skills to science-specific contexts. This leaves academics with the challenge to design curricula and interventions that integrate mathematics and statistics in such a way that graduates emerge confident and proficient in the application of quantitative skills in their chosen scientific discipline.
This special edition of iJMEST, prompted by the Quantitative Skills (QS) in Science project (www.qsinscience.com.au), provides a timely opportunity for science and mathematics communities to exchange experiences and share current practice. The nine articles published in this special issue offer valuable insights into the different perspectives of mathematicians/statisticians and those within individual science disciplines when supporting the development of undergraduates’ quantitative skills.
We begin at the end of the undergraduate programme with Matthews et al. exploring graduating science students’ perceptions of their quantitative skills. The authors invited final-year undergraduates from two Australian universities to complete a Science Students Skills Inventory with the aim of capturing the students’ experiences of their undergraduate science curricula. The authors present descriptive statistics for groups of students exhibiting high, average or low scores for self-evaluation of their quantitative skills, and use regression analyses to investigate which factors were associated with the students’ self-evaluation of their skills.
Too often discussion about undergraduates’ quantitative skills takes place in the context of the more traditional sciences. In a departure from convention, Wilson's case study describes her experiences of providing learning support to undergraduates enrolled in courses in exercise science, and highlights the challenges associated with getting students to face up to and address their skills deficit. She presents the results of online surveys used to gauge the students’ and their tutors’ perceptions of the quantitative skills considered essential for exercise science courses, and discusses the influence of the students’ backgrounds in school mathematics upon their perceptions.
We move from exploring undergraduates’ and their tutors’ perceptions of the importance of quantitative skills and students’ levels of skill to examining the curriculum in more detail. Quinnell et al. propose a model for the signature pedagogy of science that aims to prepare students for the complexity of professional scientific practice. Within this model the authors map the points at which students are required to apply quantitative skills, as part of the ‘hidden curriculum’, and highlight that it is often at these points that students disengage with the learning process. They explore some of the reasons for this disengagement, and use three theoretical frameworks, namely threshold concepts, triadic thinking dispositions and mindfulness in learning, to examine the reasoning and thinking that students must develop if they are to successfully apply their skills to quantitative tasks.
Often mathematics/statistics and science faculty must work together to strengthen students’ quantitative skills, reflecting and reinforcing the interdisciplinary nature of modern science. Several of the papers stress the importance of establishing a shared vision among colleagues from disparate disciplines. In their essay, Thompson et al. provide an overview of how, over a 10-year period, a multidisciplinary team at the University of Maryland embarked upon a major revision of the undergraduate biological science curriculum, with a view to increasing their students’ appreciation of the importance of mathematics in modern biology. They describe the design of new modules aimed at strengthening the quantitative skills of their undergraduates through the embedding of more mathematical content into their bioscience curriculum, with an emphasis on the development of quantitative skills in biological contexts. Their curriculum changes, which included the development of the MathBench Biology modules, and revisions to their ancillary courses in mathematics and physics, reinforce the importance and effectiveness of a multidisciplinary approach to tackling the quantitative skills deficit.
Two further papers illustrate how, in the absence of any centralised mathematics support facility within an institution, science and mathematics tutors can work collaboratively to design and deliver mathematics support programmes. Rylands et al. explore the quantitative skills that academics want in their undergraduate science students and ask who is responsible for teaching these skills. They discuss how mathematicians and scientists at universities in Australia and the USA are working together to develop the knowledge and skills in mathematics and statistics that their science undergraduates need in order to successfully complete their degree programmes. They also explore some of the barriers to successful collaborations between these groups of academics and the implications for supporting the development of science students’ quantitative skills. Jackson and Johnson describe how the development of the extra-curricular Maths Skills programme at La Trobe University involved a collaborative approach between science subject co-ordinators and mathematicians. Through the use of subject-specific contexts, drop-in sessions, worksheets and a commercially available online tutoring programme (MyMathTest), the Maths Skills programme aimed not only to assist students in developing their basic mathematics skills, but also to reinforce the relevance of mathematics in the context of the students’ chosen academic disciplines.
Poladian highlights some of the unique challenges facing those mathematicians and statisticians tasked with delivering compulsory mathematics service units for life science undergraduates. He describes how a focus on mathematical models, using contemporary and authentic content, and sequencing qualitative approaches before quantitative methods can bring about positive changes in student engagement and in their attitudes towards mathematics, as well as recognition of the relevance of mathematics to their chosen subject.
Everingham et al. describe the lessons learned from designing and implementing changes to a first-year interdisciplinary quantitative skills course and offer valuable insights for those facing similar challenges. They discuss the feedback received from students and describe how this influenced further changes, in particular a greater emphasis on subject relevance, increased student support in tutorials and modifications to assessment practices. They summarise the impact that the changes had on various factors influencing student learning, including behavioural engagement, confidence in mathematics, mathematics learning anxiety, mathematics evaluation anxiety and confidence in using technology to support mathematics learning.
Vila and Sanz contribute to the growing international evidence that bioscience undergraduates’ mathematical skills have declined over recent years, through their analysis of Spanish undergraduates’ answers to examination questions on a plant physiology course over a 12-year period. They also describe the introduction of a laboratory session designed to strengthen students’ application of their mathematical knowledge, and the introduction of self-assessment online tests. They discuss the role that self-efficacy can play in determining students’ engagement with and performance in academic tasks requiring the application of their mathematical skills.
These nine papers not only highlight many of the challenges confronting mathematics and science faculty as they work together to persuade undergraduates of the importance of mathematics and statistics to their chosen scientific discipline, but also offer tried and tested strategies and interventions aimed at helping support students in the development of their quantitative skills.