Students' intentions to study non‐compulsory mathematics: the importance of how good you think you are

Increasing the number of students who study mathematics once it is no longer compulsory remains a priority for England. A longitudinal cohort from England (1085 students) was surveyed at Years 10 and 12. Students' self-beliefs of ability influenced their GCSE mathematics grades and their intended and actual mathematics subject-choices; the degree of under-confidence or over-confidence related to these self-beliefs was also influential. Additional factors that significantly influenced students' intentions at Year 10 to study mathematics in Year 12 were the advice or pressure to do so, the extrinsic motivation associated with mathematics, their gender and the emotional response associated with doing mathematics. These same factors were also significant influences on students' intentions at Year 12 to study mathematics at university, with the addition of their intrinsic motivation associated with mathematics. Although gender was not a significant influence on GCSE mathematics grades or whether students actually studied A-Level mathematics, boys were associated with higher intentions to study mathematics into Year 12, 13 and university. Additionally, girls were generally more under-confident than boys in their self-beliefs

Geographers Count: A Report on Quantitative Methods in Geography

This report is drawn from a project funded to better support the teachers of quantitative methods in UK social science. In it we identify the types of quantitative methods taught in the geography curricula for UK schools and universities, and discuss attitudes towards those methods amongst students and teachers. We argue that geography has benefitted from its position at the intersection of the sciences, social sciences and humanities, retaining a quantitative component. Consequently, levels of basic numeracy and data handling have remained relatively high, leaving the discipline well placed to respond to the call for greater quantitative training within the social sciences in the UK. However, we also suspect that the typical levels of quantitative training in university human geography courses are not sufficiently high to compete on the international stage. As the title suggests, our report is focused on geography. However we raise issues germane to other disciplines including what actually we mean by quantitative methods, what should be taught in a twenty-first century curriculum, how to meaningfully embed those methods in the substantive themes and teaching of a discipline, and whether more should be expected as a minimum standard of quantitative competence than the existing Quality Assurance Agency benchmarks require