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Mathematics and its value for engineering students: what are the implications for teaching?

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journal contribution
posted on 2015-05-14, 13:47 authored by Diane Harris, Laura Black, Paul Hernandez-Martinez, Birgit Pepin, Julian Williams, TransMath Team
Mathematics has long been known to be problematic for university engineering students and their teachers, for example, Scanlan.[1] This paper presents recent data gathered from interviews with engineering students who experienced problems with mathematics and their lecturers during their transition through the first year in different programme contexts. Our interviews with the students reveal how they understand the relation between engineering and mathematics and we draw on the concept of ‘use- and exchange-value’ to explore this relationship more fully. This paper challenges both the pedagogical practice of teaching non-contextualized mathematics and the lack of transparency regarding the significance of mathematics to engineering. We conclude that the value of mathematics in engineering remains a central problem, and argue that mathematics should be a fundamental concern in the design and practice of first-year engineering.

Funding

As the author of this paper I recognize the contribution made by the team in collection of data, design of instruments and project, and discussions involving analyses and interpretations of the results. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council TransMaths Award RES-062-23-1213.

History

School

  • Science

Department

  • Mathematics Education Centre

Published in

International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology

Citation

HARRIS, D. ... et al, 2014. Mathematics and its value for engineering students: what are the implications for teaching? International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 46 (3), pp. 321-336.

Publisher

© Taylor and Francis Ltd.

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

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

2014

Notes

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology on 19th November 2014, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0020739X.2014.979893

ISSN

0020-739X

eISSN

1464-5211

Language

  • en

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