Development Fund 2022/23: Students' use of mathematics in science
Dr Victoria Wong (School of Education, HASS) - Student's use of mathematics in science
Overview
Many students find using mathematics within science challenging both at school level and in many STEM disciplines at university level. It has been suggested that the problem may not be that students do not have the knowledge of mathematics, but that the difficulty comes when they must apply their knowledge in a scientific context. Although students’ difficulties are widely recognised, there has been limited research exploring how students bring mathematical and scientific knowledge together to solve problems.
The project aims to bring together the work on school level mathematics in science of Dr Victoria Wong from the School of Education, on mathematics in undergraduate level chemistry of Dr Alison Hill from Biosciences and on using small group studies in mathematics of Dr Taro Fujita from the School of Education.
Aims and activities
Using small group discussion to probe students’ understanding of mathematical concepts is an established method in mathematics education research, however it has not been widely used to probe students’ understanding of mathematics within other STEM subjects.
This exploratory study has two key questions:
- What insights can we find into how students bring mathematics to bear on science problems?
- Is this type of small discussion group an effective method for exploring the answers to the other research questions?
We will also look to see if our methods are likely to be useful in trying to answer these questions:
- What obstacles will be recognised and how will students work to overcome them?
- Is there a switching between talking about mathematics and talking about science?
- What does it mean for students to use mathematical thinking or mathematical tools in science?
- Do students who are high achievers or confident in mathematics use different methods to solve problems than those who are less confident?
The team anticipates that an application to a UKRI funding body will be made within one year of the project’s completion.
