Addressing common deficiencies of mathematics skills among chemistry student teachers

Abstract

The need for the inclusion of a special mathematics course for students studying chemistry at the tertiary level of education has been justified by several reasons ranging from the mathematical processes involved in understanding chemistry, students’ inability to handle simple mathematical manipulations required in chemistry, and the lack of transfer of mathematical skills learned in mathematics class to chemistry. At a South African university, we faced the challenge of addressing common mathematical skill deficiencies among our chemistry student teachers (N = 82), who appeared unable to cope with basic mathematical skills required in understanding certain chemistry topics. To address this problem, students’ mathematical deficiency skills (DMS) were assessed using tests on various areas of mathematics relevant to some chemistry topics. The data was collected in two stages. DMS were first identified using a Semi-open Diagnostic Test, and then students who had the worst DMS were interviewed. The findings revealed that a lack of skills in these mathematics topics (e.g., algebra, curve sketching, simple differentiation and integration) causes students to struggle in producing the breadth of knowledge required to understand chemistry concepts such as kinetics, rates, and reaction mechanisms, as students lacked: (i) the ability to resolve the relational complexity among major mathematics concepts in chemistry problems, and (ii) the ability to process information and representation skill, number and pattern concept skill, and visual-spatial skill.