Author(s):
Much of the dialogue surrounding effective pedagogy for college-level general education science courses has been focused on how best to engender “science literacy”, yet students cannot be scientifically literate without also being quantitatively literate. Basic numerical skills such as graph reading, proportional reasoning, and estimation are essential scientific reasoning tools, and they benefit us in our daily lives as voters, consumers, and citizens as well. I will discuss results from the Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) assessment, an online multiple-choice assessment administered at the start and end of a semester of general education college science instruction and designed to measure numerical skills and affect. The QuaRCS has been administered to more than 10,000 students at dozens of institutions. I will briefly highlight themes that have emerged from this large dataset, including evidence supporting three broad conclusions : (1) affective variables such as numerical self-efficacy, a perception of math’s relevance to daily life, math anxiety level, and self-reported effort level are strongly predictive of students’ numeracy scores, (2) “achievement gaps” for various demographic groups narrow substantially by compensating for affective variables, and (3) the situations and contexts used in assessment questions affect their accessibility to students, impacting performance. These conclusions are important in their ability to inform effective curricular practices in science instruction. They are also an important part of the puzzle in the work that we all must do to reduce barriers to entry to STEM disciplines faced disproportionately by students from historically underrepresented groups.
