This thesis considered the repercussions in higher education of the changes in the
teaching and learning of mechanics in schools/colleges in England. Within the last
decade there has been an abundance of reports detailing concerns about the
insufficient mathematical ability of students entenng numerate degree programmes. In
2003, at an Engineering Professors Council meeting, Prof: Mike Savage indicated
concern not only about students' knowledge of mathematics upon arrival, but also of
mechanics. Thus, this thesis considered if there was now also a mechamcs problem.
In this thesis, following a review of pre-university mathematics qualifications, three
primary areas were considered: the schools' perspective; students' knowledge of
mechanics upon arrival at university; and engineering academics' perspective. In
addition, linear multiple regression models were created to predict students' first year
performance.
In both 2004 and 2006 questionnaires were sent to 497 schools to determine the
availability and uptake of specific modules in Mathematics A-levels. Changes
detected in these undoubtedly have repercussions for higher education educators
lecturing first year students.
Questionnaires, interviews and a mechanics diagnostic test were given to engineering
students to establish the level to which they had studied mechanics prior to entry to
university and to determine what knowledge of mechanics they had. Nearly a third of
(1087) questionnaire replies gave indication that little or no mechanics had been
studied, which has repercussions for those teaching a first year university module in
mechanics.
Questionnaires and interviews were also used to gain engineering academics'
perspective and one of the major issues was found to be a misalignment between
expectation and reality. Finally, linear multiple regression models, created to predict
students' first year performance, highlighted variables such as a student's mathematics
diagnostic test result and whether they made use of the mathematics learning support
centre as being important.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publication date
2006
Notes
A Doctoral Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.