Preparation of students for tertiary studies requiring mathematics

Abstract

Mathematics education in Queensland seems to be on a neverending downwards spiral. This is the opinion of the majority of the staff in the School of Maths and Physics at James Cook University. Over recent years the staff in our School have struggled to output students at a standard third year tertiary mathematics level. There are two reasons for this: firstly the intake is from a less well prepared student body and secondly, perhaps more critically, the indicators used to measure the ability of secondary school leavers are most often useless. It is at this lower end where decisions about which subjects a student is to pursue are paramount, both in the short term (success in a semester) and the long term (completion of a degree). In this article

Quantifying the advantage of secondary mathematics study for accounting and finance undergraduates

“…We suspect that given the content of the Mathematics B and C curricula described in , having a working knowledge of calculus and algebra offers a technical advantage and promotes the higher‐order logical skills necessary to succeed in these particular tertiary studies. This is consistent with the findings of Belward et al. (2007) who highlight algebra and calculus as the key missing components in students’ secondary mathematics education.…”

“…Some authors have sought to measure the ‘mathematics effect’ by performing empirical studies, based on their own tests, relating to the presence of basic mathematics skills in undergraduates taking business (Standing, 2006; Standing et al ., 2006), education (Peard, 2004), economics (Ballard and Johnson, 2004) and mathematics itself (Belward et al ., 2007), and how these affect performance at university. With the exception of Peard (2004), these studies have found that newly enrolled undergraduates’ mathematics skills were inadequate for the subjects they elected to take.…”

“…Given the evidence from cogent disciplines (Byrne and Lyons, 2001; Ballard and Johnson, 2004; Belward et al ., 2007), it would seem reasonable to propose that selecting more advanced mathematics courses at secondary school better prepares students for studying business course work programmes at university. In recent years, the established practice of requiring such courses for entry has been challenged.…”

“…However, changes in the mathematics curriculum at high school have prompted some to suggest that standards are slipping in secondary mathematics education (e.g. Belward et al ., 2007). This particular comment was backed up through a comparative study of final exam performance at James Cook University, which found that students were struggling with material that had been ‘second nature’ to previous cohorts of students.…”

Numeracy of First Year Commerce Students: Preliminary Analysis of an Intervention

“…Numeracy has been shown to influence the performance of rst year students (Maris and Jacobs, 1995;Alcock et al, 2008) and that students without a maths prerequisite are less prepared for tertiary study (Ballard and Johnson, 2004;Standing, 2006;Belward et al, 2007;Rainsbury and Darroch, 2009). This paper examines whether conducting a mathematical aptitude test ('maths quiz') in orientation week, followed by offering students a workshop program ('maths workshop') to develop (or in some cases refresh) their maths skills influences their performance in a 1 st year course.…”