Rachel Thompson

The thresholds concepts framework was used to identify the underlying dysfunctional attitudes and stances students may adopt that can preclude them from engaging in our discipline practices. In the sciences numeracy skills are integral to the professional practice of data handling, data presentation and interpretation. We have found that students lacking in numerical confidence are more hesitant to engage in these activities, which impacts of their learning of the discipline by directly inhibiting how well the students tackle threshold concepts with numeracy elements. While mathematics can be enabling, we postulate that the transfer of numeracy skills can be inhibited by a transfer in “maths anxiety”, a “transferable anxiety”, that doesn’t appear unique to a particular discipline. In the classroom, this often translates to a hierarchical standoff: “I can’t do maths” versus “they can’t do maths”. Students who default to this position are at risk of not engaging in our practice as the...