Search

Students as partners (SaP) is gaining attention in higher education (HE) as universities worldwide rethink pedagogical practices through a relationship-rich lens. Many studies have examined partnership practices, conceptions of learner-teacher partnerships and its application in various (mainly anglophone) contexts. However, relatively few studies have explored SaP issues in non-anglophone contexts (e.g., China). In this study, we interviewed 20 lecturers at a Chinese university to understand how they perceived the role of students in teaching and learning. Our reflexive thematic analysis found that many lecturers were open to, and some already practising forms of, partnership practices. But pragmatic, structural and cultural issues caused hesitation, particularly the cultural heritage of Confucian education and global HE competition drivers rewarding research outputs over teaching practices. This study is an initial step in exploring academics' perceptions of SaP in a changing Chinese HE system with a strong policy focus on student-centred approaches.

Learner-teacher relationships have a profound impact on teaching and learning quality with many universities focusing on relationship-rich educational experiences. Engaging students as partners (SaP) has emerged as a way of enhancing learner-teacher relationships with research reporting numerous benefits and challenges. In this article, we address a worrisome challenge identified in a recent scoping review that Confucianism is an obstacle to pedagogical partnership in Asian countries, specifically, in China. Acknowledging the many global influences shaping Chinese higher education and the long history documenting the contested interpretations and application of Confucian philosophy, we speak back to the findings of the scoping review by challenging the narrow view expressed about Confucianism. Our aim is to demonstrate that Confucian educational values are not the purported barrier some have suggested through illuminating axiological overlaps between historical Confucian educational values and modern SaP values commonly evoked in the literature. In doing so, we critically reflect on the influence of Confucian educational values in contemporary Chinese education and posit that cultural scripts offer a generative lens to examine culture in partnership practices. Importantly, moving beyond essentialising enables new opportunities for research and practice to arise as partnership praxis translates, evolves, and adapts across and within dynamic cultures.

Higher education communities are becoming more diverse and seeking to create more intercultural interaction and culturally responsive pedagogies. One promising approach gaining scholarly attention is engaging students in intercultural partnership practices. We have conducted a scoping review to investigate theorisations and practices of intercultural partnership in the current literature. In doing so, we identified 19 publications that explicitly explored learner-teacher partnership practices with learners and teachers from different cultural-linguistic contexts. Drawing on both descriptive and thematic analyses, we found an emerging scholarly attention to intercultural partnership motivated mainly by a 'what's working' study design with a tendency toward perceptions-based qualitative research methods. Thus, numerous benefits and challenges were identified, most overlapping with the broader partnership literature. However, there was a consistent undercurrent of culturally situated beliefs that shaped and complicated learner-teacher power dynamics. We encourage future research to focus on the process of intercultural partnership that contributes collective understanding about the unique power dynamics in such practices. Drawing on existing theories of translation and intercultural communication, we can develop new insights that advance the intercultural partnership theory-practice nexus.

Engaging students as partners in the scholarship of learning and teaching (SoTL) is a principle guiding good practice. Enthusiasm for student-faculty partnerships in learning and teaching continues to grow. In this essay, I want to invite readers to reflect with me about concerns of resistance to partnership practices. I interweave stories from my experiences with selected literature that is shifting the conversation about the 'challenge of resistance' in partnership work in learning and teaching. Positioning students as partners work as a values-based practice and in the context of 'scaling-up' partnership programs, I argue that our pre-occupation with resistance is problematic. Instead, we should accept resistance as part of a natural sense-making process that allows us to think together about the complexity of genuine pedagogical partnership.

COVID-19 caused substantial change in learning and teaching in higher education. In this article we explore how assessment changed in the initial semester of emergency remote teaching in an Australian university. Seventy academics responsible for courses (unit of study), representing a wide array of disciplines, completed an online survey at the end of the semester in June 2020. They answered questions regarding their experiences and actions in shifting their course online from face-to-face delivery at the point of the pivot online. A mixed methods approach identified that most academics did not change the composition and relative weighting of their assessment in response to the pivot. The dominant strategy was to translate existing on-campus assessment into an online format. The research provides insight into disciplinary norms for assessment and, we argue, signals how forms of assessment are valued based on their retention during a time of consequential change in pedagogy. For academics in our study, assessment was an afterthought to the more pressing focus on pedagogical interactions with students. Academic integrity matters were not a factor in their decision-making process during that initial move to remote emergency teaching. Linking assessment with pedagogy, whether online, on-campus and both, matters moving forward.

Engaging students as pedagogical partners aspires to reposition students with more agency within universities as egalitarian learning communities. The growing literature reports numerous beneficial outcomes of such positioning, yet many partnership opportunities are limited to small numbers of selected students in extra-curricular, quality-assurance efforts. Understanding how partnership can reach into the classroom space affords opportunities to expand both practices to more students and theorisations of partnership beyond the extra-curricular realm. Our study investigates how final-year undergraduate students experienced the shift toward partnership in the classroom. Thematic analysis of focus group conversations surfaced four interrelated themes that shared many similarities with existing literature, yet diverged in regards to the central place of conflict students navigated as power dynamics shifted. Conflict manifested as both internal (within individual students) and interpersonal (among students and between students and the teacher). We argue for deeper attention to conflict, including its generative potential, in partnership practices.

Engaging with students as partners (SaP) in learning and teaching is fundamental about quality learner-teacher relationships. It is a growing and contested arena of pedagogical practice that is dominated by western scholarship. Seeking to expand understanding of partnership approaches, we conducted a scoping review guided by the question: what is known from the current literature about SaP practices and theorisations in Asia? The review identified 18 studies with half published in the last two years and a high frequency of citations to a limited number of western scholars. This signals that partnership in Asia is in its infancy and influenced by western practices. Yet, Asian scholars raised distinct cultural considerations that positioned Confucianism as an obstacle to learner-teacher relationships through partnership praxis. We outline implications to guide future research into student-teacher relationships in Asia that evoke broader interpretations of Confucianism that are seemingly more compatible with partnership praxis.

Chinese universities are increasingly entering into transnational higher education partnerships with institutions in primarily English-speaking countries. With this increase in programmes, there is a growing body of research investigating both policy and practice. Our study contributes insight into how students in a China-Australia programme experienced assessment drawing on theorisations of sustainable assessment. We present findings from interviews with 10 Chinese students who shared stories and reflections of their experiences of assessment and learning that reveal the complex ways students negotiated qualitatively different assessment experiences, while displaying sophisticated levels of agency, between Chinese and Australian universities. In making sense of the interviews in relation to sustainable assessment, we evoke notions of cultural ignorance to illuminate aspects of a cross-cultural ignorance in teaching and learning practices. In doing so, we argue that conversations about cultural ignorance combined with principles of sustainable assessment can create space to support partners to better plan and coordinate for meaningful assessment and learning experiences for students in cross-cultural articulation programmes.

Chinese universities are actively pursuing cross-border collaborations in the form of transnational higher education programmes. Our study captures the experiences of Chinese students to illuminate how they navigate their learning journeys in a China-Australia articulation programme. To communicate the complexity of learning in modern transnational higher education programmes, we employed activity theory as the theoretical framework to explore cross-cultural contradictions shaping students' experiences of learning. Assessment, programme rules, teaching strategies, and class and campus settings created contradictions that students had to negotiate as in-between learning spaces. We argue that cross-system contradictions play important roles in transnational higher education programmes. Therefore, instead of seeking to eliminate these contradictions or smooth cross-educational differences, these contradictions should be leveraged as learning opportunities to enrich transnational higher education programmes.

Collaborative learning activities offer the potential to support mutual knowledge construction and shared understanding amongst students. Introducing collaborative tasks into large first-year undergraduate science classes to create learning environments that foster student engagement and enhance communication skills is appealing. However, implementing group work in classes of over 1000 students presents challenges for instructors in terms of task design, group management and assessment. Interdisciplinary scenario-inquiry tasks have been designed for small group work in a large science cohort, informed by literature and current pedagogical practices relating to the integration of collaborative and active learning strategies. Facilitation and assessment of these tasks was perceived as too complex and time consuming for a single instructor to complete manually, so a web-based task management technology was developed. Evaluation of the technology supported collaborative group activities, including peer assessment, was conducted through questionnaires, student interviews and analysis of the artefacts of the learning process. The capabilities and limitations of the technology, and the insights into group learning gained through its use are presented. In general, students felt supported through the task. Evidence of resource interdependence was found between students in functional groups.

A body of literature on students as partners (SaP) in higher education has emerged over the last decade that documents, shares, and evaluates SaP approaches. As is typical in emerging fields of inquiry, scholars differ regarding how they see the relationship between the developments in SaP practices and the theoretical explanations that guide, illuminate, and situate such practices. In this article we explore the relationship between theory and practice in SaP work through an analysis of interpretive framing employed in scholarship of SaP in teaching and learning in higher education. Through a conceptual review of selected publications, we describe three ways of framing partnership that represent distinct but related analytical approaches: building on concepts; drawing on constructs; and imagining through metaphors. We both affirm the expansive and creative theorising in scholarship of SaP in university teaching and learning and encourage further deliberate use and thoughtful development of interpretive framings that take seriously the disruptive ethos and messy human relational processes of partnership. We argue that these developmental processes move us toward formulating theories of partnership praxis.

This article explores the perceptions of participants following the first International Summer Institute (SI) on students as partners in higher education, a four-day professional development experience designed to foster student-staff partnerships. Approximately 9 months after the Institute, 10 participants were interviewed to understand their perceptions of student-staff partnership, and what role the SI played in supporting partnership working. We discuss the key themes that emerged from our interviews, and analyse these participant responses in comparison to responses collected during the 2016 SI. In evaluating our data, we consider the general efficacy of the SI and offer ideas for academic developers interested in supporting partnership work more generally.

Students as partners (SaP) is gaining momentum as both a practice and as a subject of analytic inquiry. This study draws on interviews to explore how formal, senior leaders responsible for teaching and learning conceptualise and imagine the implementation of SaP. While leaders saw SaP as occurring within a range of activities, the concept was typically discussed in terms of quality assurance activities, seldom conceived outside of a neoliberal discourse, and often at odds with theorising of SaP in the literature. Three, overlapping themes emerged from our analysis: (1) where partnership happens; (2) how partnership happens; and (3) benefits of partnership, which we interpreted through the lens of neoliberal rationalism. The findings have important implications for the compatibility of partnership practices with the neoliberal university and the role that formal leaders can play in shaping SaP practices.

A growing body of literature on students as partners in learning and teaching offers evidence on which academic developers can draw when supporting, advocating for, or engaging in partnerships. We extend a previous systematic review of the partnership literature by presenting an analysis and discussion of the positive and negative outcomes of partnership, and the inhibitors to partnership. Implications include the importance of academic developers supporting: the relational processes of partnership; institutional or structural change to address resistance; and the potential of partnership to make institutions more equitable and empowering spaces.

Engaging "students as partners" (SaP) in teaching and learning is an emerging yet contested topic in higher education. This study interviewed 16 students and staff working in partnership across 11 Australian universities to understand how they conceptualised SaP and the opportunities they believed SaP afforded their universities. Thematic analysis revealed three overlapping conceptions of partnership: "SaP as counter-narrative," "SaP as values-based practice," and "SaP as cultural change." The findings are first interpreted through the lens of liminality and an ethic of care. This is followed by a discussion of inclusivity of involvement, resistance, and reinforcement of neoliberal agendas despite good intentions. Finally, implications for cautious enactment of both practice and research are offered.

In the global higher education sector, government accountability initiatives are increasingly focused on degree-level competencies that may be expected from university graduates. The purpose of this paper was to examine the extent to which SoTL reflects this increased interest in student learning across the degree program. Articles (N = 136) published in three international SoTL journals, over the past three years, were systematically reviewed using a framework that concentrated on the extent to which they reflected a focus of (a) teaching-emphasis versus learning-emphasis and (b) unit-level (subject, course) versus degree-/program-level. Our analysis indicated that the majority of SoTL publications (47%) were focused at the level of a single unit with an emphasis on teaching practice; in contrast, only a small minority of SoTL publications (9%) were focused at the level of the overall degree with an emphasis on learning processes. Drawing on our review, we highlight SoTL publications that exemplify the inquiry into student learning at the level of the degree program and offer questions to guide future SoTL inquiries.

While there is a wealth of research evidencing the benefits of active-learning approaches, the extent to which these teaching practices are adopted in the sciences is not well known. The aim of this study is to establish an evidential baseline of teaching practices across a bachelor of science degree program at a large research-intensive Australian university. Our purpose is to contribute to knowledge on the adoption levels of evidence-based teaching practices by faculty within a science degree program and inform our science curriculum review in practical terms. We used the Teaching Practices Inventory (TPI) to measure the use of evidence-based teaching approaches in 129 courses (units of study) across 13 departments. We compared the results with those from a Canadian institution to identify areas in need of improvement at our institution. We applied a regression analysis to the data and found that the adoption of evidence-based teaching practices differs by discipline and is higher in first-year classes at our institution. The study demonstrates that the TPI can be used in different institutional contexts and provides data that can inform practice and policy.

In the biosciences, quantitative skills are an essential graduate learning outcome. Efforts to evidence student attainment at the whole of degree programme level are rare and making sense of such data is complex. We draw on assessment theories from Sadler (evaluative expertise) and Boud (sustainable assessment) to interpret final-year bioscience students' responses to an assessment task comprised of quantitative reasoning questions across 10 mathematical and statistical topics. The question guiding the study was: "do final year science students graduate knowing the quantitative skills that they have, and knowing the quantitative skills that they do not have?" Confidence indicators for the 10 topics gathered students' perceptions of their quantitative skills. Students were assigned to one of four categories: high performance-high confidence; low performance-low confidence; high performance-low confidence; or low performance-high confidence--with those in the first two categories demonstrating evaluative expertise. Results showed the majority of students effectively evaluated their quantitative skills as low performance-low confidence. We argue that the application of evaluative expertise to make sense of this graduate learning outcome can further the debate on how assuring graduate learning outcomes can enhance student learning.

The "Tutors@UQ" programme provides an example of a formalised, institution-wide, cross-discipline, academic development programme to enhance the quality of teaching that has been maintained for seven years despite a pattern of substantial organisational change. We present a case study of the programme framed around a four-phase model of educational change and interpreted through the lens of social network perspectives that explores the question: What factors enabled the programme to become successful and sustained over time? Shared responsibility for the creation, development, and on-going implementation achieved through collaborative partnerships emerged as a central factor for the sustainability of the tutor induction programme.

The development of transferrable skillsets, articulated in statements of graduate learning outcomes, is emphasised in undergraduate science degree programmes. Science students enrolled in dual (double) degrees comprise a significant minority of Australian science undergraduates. Research comparing perceptions of single and dual degree students on their science learning outcomes has rarely been explored. The Science Students Skills Inventory was used to compare the perceptions of single (n = 640) and dual (n = 266) degree undergraduate science students. The instrument explored science graduate learning outcomes across six indicators: importance; the extent to which outcomes were included; the extent to which they were assessed; improvement; confidence; and likely future use. Analysis of findings, employing the "planned-enacted-experienced" curricula framework, offers insight into potential avenues towards coherence of the "experienced" curriculum by arguing the need for shared perceptions of graduate learning outcomes for single and dual degree science students. The key contribution of this study is a shift towards progressive curriculum development that draws on both single and dual degree student perspectives to achieve graduate learning outcomes. Recommendations include: whole-of-programmes curricular pathways premised on progressive development of learning outcomes that are inclusive of dual degree students, explicit interdisciplinary learning opportunities, and adoption of dual/single status as a demographic variable reported in future research.

Higher education institutions globally are acknowledging the need to teach communication skills. This study used the Science Student Skills Inventory to gain insight into how science students perceive the development of communication skills across the degree programme. Responses were obtained from 635 undergraduate students enrolled in a Bachelor of Science at an Australian research-intensive university. Students rated their perceptions of two communication skills, scientific writing and oral scientific communication, across the following indicators: importance of, and improvement in, developing communication skills; the extent to which communication skills were included and assessed in the degree; confidence in using communication skills; and belief of future use of communication skills. While the majority of students perceived both communication skills to be important and of use in the future, their perceptions of the extent to which those skills were included and assessed were less, with oral communication being included and assessed less than scientific writing skills. Significant differences among year levels were discerned for most indicators, signifying a lack of coherent opportunities for students to learn and develop these skills across year levels. Results are discussed through the lens of progressive development of complex learning outcomes, with suggested areas for curriculum development and future research.

This study investigated students' perceptions of their graduate learning outcomes including content knowledge, communication, writing, teamwork, quantitative skills, and ethical thinking in two Australian universities. One university has a traditional discipline-orientated curriculum and the other, an interdisciplinary curriculum in the entry semester of first year. The Science Students Skills Inventory asked students (n = 613) in first and final years to rate their perceptions of the importance of developing graduate learning outcomes within the programme; how much they improved their graduate learning outcomes throughout their undergraduate science programme; how much they saw learning outcomes included in the programme; and how confident they were about their learning outcomes. A framework of progressive curriculum development was adopted to interpret results. Students in the discipline-oriented degree programme reported higher perceptions of scientific content knowledge and ethical thinking while students from the interdisciplinary curriculum indicated higher perceptions of oral communication and teamwork. Implications for curriculum development include ensuring progressive development from first to third years, a need for enhanced focus on scientific ethics, and career opportunities from first year onwards.

"Early career" in academia is typically defined in terms of research capability in the five years following PhD completion, with career progression from post-doctoral appointment to tenure, promotion and beyond. This ideal path assumes steady employment and continuous research development. With academic work increasingly casualised, experiences of "early career" are changing and definitions in use by institutions and research bodies do not reflect the lived experiences of early career academics (ECAs). This paper presents five collective narratives and a thematic analysis of survey data from 522 ECAs in three Australian universities. The results offer insights into the diverse experiences of the early stages of academic careers and provide an opportunity to reconsider current definitions. We argue that the employment context in higher education makes it crucial to consider scholars' self-definitions alongside existing objective indicators to redefine early career in academia.

Application of mathematical and statistical thinking and reasoning, typically referred to as quantitative skills, is essential for university bioscience students. First, this study developed an assessment task intended to gauge graduating students' quantitative skills. The Quantitative Skills Assessment of Science Students (QSASS) was the result, which examined 10 mathematical and statistical sub-topics. Second, the study established an evidential baseline of students' quantitative skills performance and confidence levels by piloting the QSASS with 187 final-year biosciences students at a research-intensive university. The study is framed within the planned-enacted-experienced curriculum model and contributes to science reform efforts focused on enhancing the quantitative skills of university graduates, particularly in the biosciences. The results found, on average, weak performance and low confidence on the QSASS, suggesting divergence between academics' intentions and students' experiences of learning quantitative skills. Implications for curriculum design and future studies are discussed.

Higher education policies are increasingly focused on graduate learning outcomes, which infer an emphasis on, and deep understanding of, curriculum development across degree programs. As disciplinary influences are known to shape teaching and learning activities, research situated in disciplinary contexts is useful to further an understanding of curriculum development. In the life sciences, several graduate learning outcomes are underpinned by quantitative skills or an ability to apply mathematical and statistical thinking and reasoning. Drawing on data from a national teaching project in Australia that explored quantitative skills in the implemented curricula of 13 life sciences degree programs, this article presents four program-level curricular models that emerged from the analysis. The findings are interpreted through the lens of discipline-specific research and general curriculum design theories to further our understanding of curriculum development for graduate learning outcomes. Implications for future research and to guide curriculum development practices in higher education are discussed.

Social network perspectives acknowledge the influence of disciplinary cultures on academics' teaching beliefs and practices with implications for academic developers. The contribution of academic developers in 18 scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) projects situated in the sciences are explored by drawing on data from a two-year national project in Australia within a case study research design. The application of a social network lens illuminated the contribution of eight academic developers as weak ties who infused SoTL knowledge "within" teams. Two heuristic cases of academic developers who also linked "across" networks are presented. Implications of social network perspective are discussed.

In this study, the Science Student Skills Inventory was used to gain understanding of student perceptions about their quantitative skills and compare perceptions of cohorts graduating before and after the implementation of a new science curriculum intent on developing quantitative skills. The study involved 600 responses from final-year undergraduate science students across four cohorts in an Australian research-intensive institution. Students rated their perceptions on a four-point Likert scale of: the importance of developing quantitative skills within the programme, how much they improved their quantitative skills throughout their undergraduate science programme, how much they saw quantitative skills included in the programme, how confident they were about their quantitative skills, and how much they believe they will use quantitative skills in the future. Descriptive statistics indicated overall low levels of perceptions with student perception of the importance of quantitative skills being greater than perceptions of improvement, inclusion in the programme, confidence, and future use. Statistical analysis of responses provided by the cohorts graduating before and after the new quantitative skills-intended curriculum revealed few differences. The cohorts graduating after implementation indicated that quantitative skills were included more in the curriculum, although this did not translate into them reporting higher levels of confidence or anticipated future use compared to the cohorts that graduated before the new curriculum was implemented. Implications for curriculum development are discussed and lines for further research are given.

This study reports on science student perceptions of their skills (scientific knowledge, oral communication, scientific writing, quantitative skills, teamwork and ethical thinking) as they approach graduation. The focus is on which teaching activities and assessment tasks over the whole programme of study students thought utilised each of the six nominated skills. In this quantitative study involving two Australian research-intensive universities, the teaching activities identified by students as developing the broadest number of skills were laboratory classes and tutorials. Lectures were only effective for developing scientific knowledge and, to a limited extent, ethical thinking. Assessment tasks that students perceived to utilise the broadest range of skills were assignments and oral presentations. The findings of this study document the students' perspective about their gains in skill sets, and the teaching activities and assessment tasks that require them to use and thus develop these skills. The findings provide an opportunity to evaluate the constructive alignment of skills development, teaching activities and assessment tasks from a student's perspective. Further research is required to actually measure the skills that students gain over their whole programme of study.

In this study, the Science Student Skills Inventory was used to gain understanding of student perceptions about their science skills set developed throughout their programme (scientific content knowledge, communication, scientific writing, teamwork, quantitative skills, and ethical thinking). The study involved 400 responses from undergraduate science students about to graduate from two Australian research-intensive institutions. For each skill, students rated on a four-point Likert scale their perception of the importance of developing the skill within the programme, how much they improved it throughout their undergraduate science programme, how much they saw the skill included in the programme, how confident they were about the skill, and how much they will use the skill in the future. Descriptive statistics indicate that overall, student perception of importance of these skills was greater than perceptions of improvement, inclusion in the programme, confidence, and future use. Quantitative skills and ethical thinking were perceived by more students to be less important. t-Test analyses revealed some differences in perception across different demographic groups (gender, age, graduate plans, and research experience). Most notably, gender showed significant differences across most skills. Implications for curriculum development are discussed, and lines for further research are given.

Early career academia is a challenging time, particularly as academics are facing increasing pressures to excel across a range of areas. Boyer argued for the "true scholar" versed in the overlapping areas of scholarship in research, teaching, integration and engagement. Academic developers have an important role to play in assisting the transition to academia, particularly as the diverse pathways leading to academia often mean limited knowledge or skills in curriculum development, teaching or assessment of learning. In a quantitative study, self-identified early career academics from three Australian universities reported attitudes and perceptions of teaching and research, and involvement in academic development. The implications of their responses for academic developers are discussed in terms of institutional and disciplinary differences.

There is international agreement that quantitative skills (QS) are an essential graduate competence in science. QS refer to the application of mathematical and statistical thinking and reasoning in science. This study reports on the use of the Science Students Skills Inventory to capture final year science students' perceptions of their QS across multiple indicators, at two Australian research-intensive universities. Statistical analysis reveals several variables predicting higher levels of self-rated competence in QS: students' grade point average, students' perceptions of inclusion of QS in the science degree programme, their confidence in QS, and their belief that QS will be useful in the future. The findings are discussed in terms of implications for designing science curricula more effectively to build students' QS throughout science degree programmes. Suggestions for further research are offered.

There is general agreement in Australia and beyond that quantitative skills (QS) in science, the ability to use mathematics and statistics in context, are important for science. QS in the life sciences are becoming ever more important as these sciences become more quantitative. Consequently, undergraduates studying the life sciences require better QS than at any time in the past. Ways in which mathematics and science academics are working together to build the QS of their undergraduate science students, together with the mathematics and statistics needed or desired in a science degree, are reported on in this paper. The emphasis is on the life sciences. Forty-eight academics from eleven Australian and two USA universities were interviewed about QS in science. Information is presented on: what QS academics want in their undergraduate science students; who is teaching QS; how mathematics and science departments work together to build QS in science and implications for building the QS of science students. This information leads to suggestions for improvement in QS within a science curriculum.

Mathematics and science are tightly interwoven, yet they are often treated as distinct disciplines in the educational context. This study details the development, implementation and outcomes of a teaching intervention that highlights the links between mathematics and science, in the form of a first-year interdisciplinary course. A mixed method study using surveys and focus groups was employed to investigate undergraduate science students' perceptions of their experiences. Findings reveal that students bring strong beliefs about the nature of mathematics and science from secondary school, which can impact significantly on the success of interdisciplinary science-mathematics courses at the tertiary level. Despite this, a range of beneficial outcomes can arise from such courses when they are delivered within a framework of analysing real-world issues. However, students with weak mathematical skills derived little benefit from an interdisciplinary approach and are likely to disengage from learning, in comparison with students who enter university with a solid foundation in mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]