Context, calculations and conversations

Every science department has topics that teachers quietly hope someone else gets on the timetable. Sometimes, it’s radioactivity or organic chemistry; more often than we’d perhaps like to admit, though, it’s the maths.

That isn’t because science teachers can’t do maths. Rather, teachers need to accurately apply maths to the scientific context. If we struggle with this, how do we expect our students to manage it?

Confident and comfortable

Students know when we’re comfortable and when we’re not. If we rush through calculations or treat them as an interruption to the real science, they quickly absorb the message that the maths aspect of science isn’t actually science.

When I’m teaching density, for example, I pause before touching the calculator. We’ll discuss what sort of answer we expect, whether the units look sensible and whether an unusually large or small value would be realistic. Only then do we calculate.

You model to students how scientists think

Those conversations are often more valuable than the arithmetic itself, because you model to students how scientists think. Maths in science isn’t about substituting numbers into a formula; it’s about questioning results, checking assumptions and deciding whether an answer makes sense.

Improving our own confidence with maths rarely requires studying advanced mathematics. More often, it means being honest about the areas we are least comfortable teaching and investing time in strengthening those areas.

Test yourself first

Before teaching a calculation, complete a related exam question yourself to review it and break it down into its core points. It’s one of the most effective things you can do, as it will reveal the hidden mathematical demands that experts often take for granted – from selecting the correct equation and rearranging it to converting units, substituting values accurately and applying appropriate rounding.

By working through the question in advance, teachers can identify where students are most likely to struggle, distinguish between mathematical and scientific misconceptions and explicitly model the thinking process behind each step.

This not only improves the quality of your explanations but also helps students develop procedural fluency and confidence, ensuring that mathematical barriers do not prevent them from demonstrating their scientific understanding.

Team talk

Talking openly with colleagues is essential. Discussing example exam questions together will help you identify context-specific challenges that may not be immediately obvious. It will, for example, help you anticipate misconceptions, agree consistent modelling approaches and share strategies for making the mathematical thinking explicit. This not only improves consistency across the department, it also helps students bridge the gap between mathematical knowledge and its application in science.

Science is not asking them to learn a different kind of maths

Make maths visible every lesson

If students are going to maximise the marks available in exams, they need to become fluent in the calculations and processes that underpin the science. When those mechanics become automatic, they have more capacity to think about what the question is really asking.

Making those links explicit helps students transfer knowledge instead of treating every calculation as something new. Science is not asking them to learn a different kind of maths; it is asking them to apply familiar maths to answer scientific questions.

Ultimately, improving confidence with maths in science is not about becoming a maths teacher. It is about helping students recognise that the maths they already know can unlock the science in front of them. When we make those connections explicit and model our reasoning, we do more than improve numeracy, we help students think like scientists.