From uncertainty to understanding: building quantitative skills in bioscience

The confidence gap in bioscience

In bioscience, maths anxiety often stems from a mismatch between expectations and reality. Some students may not initially realise how prevalent quantitative skills will be across their degree, particularly if they chose life sciences as an alternative to subjects where maths is more explicitly foregrounded before university.

Research highlighted in a Cambridge Mathematics Espresso briefing shows that maths anxiety can negatively affect both cognitive and affective domains. There is a documented negative correlation between maths anxiety and performance on maths tests, often explained by avoidance of mathematical tasks and disruption of working memory. In practice, this means anxiety can reduce students' capacity to engage with numerical problems even when they have underlying skills to succeed.

This creates a confidence gap. Students may disengage not because they lack ability, but because anxiety interferes with their willingness to attempt quantitative work or persist when problems feel challenging.

Making maths relevant in bioscience

Across bioscience departments, educators are finding that confidence grows when quantitative skills are introduced in a way that feels relevant, accessible, and proportionate to students' starting points. Rather than assuming a shared background in maths, effective approaches acknowledge the wide range of experiences students bring with them.

This principle underpins the design of our Quantitative Skills Smart Worksheets. The Smart Worksheet Library aims to provide a welcoming, low-stakes environment where students can practise at a pace that works for them. Questions are embedded within bioscience contexts to increase relevance and interest, while avoiding assumptions about specific disciplinary knowledge.

For example, a core challenge for students is mastering units and conversions within biomedical contexts, such as analysing patient samples to support diagnosis and care. In the Smart Worksheets, students practise converting between scientific notation and standard units commonly used in biology, including grams (g), milligrams (mg), and microlitres (μL). This foundational work is then extended into applied scenarios, such as calculating the total amount of an active drug in a packet of tablets or determining the correct concentration for antibiotic dilutions and experimental buffers.

Students also work through more complex analytical tasks, including calculating the concentration of  EDTA in a blood collection tube or using an eyepiece graticule under a microscope to determine the diameter of a white blood cell (WBC). These measurements are then used to identify specific cell types, for example distinguishing a small lymphocyte (7-8 μm) from a larger monocyte (15-22 μm) based on size. By linking numerical work directly to biological interpretation, the resource shifts attention away from abstract calculation and towards the quantitative reasoning that underpins diagnostic decision-making.

The resources are deliberately scaffolded, starting with small, independent questions and gradually building towards broader scenarios. This creates a smooth difficulty curve that supports understanding as well as confidence, helping students see quantitative reasoning as something they can engage with step by step rather than all at once.

The development of these resources builds on earlier work, including an award-winning Numeracy worksheet developed with the University of Kent and a subsequent set of Scientific Numeracy worksheets , reflecting a sustained commitment to supporting numeracy through context and careful design.

Safe practice builds confidence

Building confidence in quantitative skills requires more than exposure to content - students need space to try, reflect and try again. When students practise without fear of judgement, their understanding deepens and their confidence begins to grow. This is the value of a genuinely low-stakes environment - it turns practice into exploration rather than performance.

Our Quantitative Skills Smart Worksheets support this by offering interactive, repeatable practice with immediate, structured feedback. Students can work through calculations at their own pace, check their reasoning, and learn from errors in real time , much like the learning cycle that underpins long-term conceptual understanding.

Since their launch in 2024, the Quantitative Skills resources  have seen more than 6,000 attempts by 3,000 learners, generating approximately 181,000 answers. Each attempt represents a moment of practice that helps students build both competence and trust in their own work.

Collaboration, context and confidence

Addressing maths anxiety in biosciences isn’t about simplifying the content, it’s about recognising how confidence and ability interact. Evidence suggests these factors can reinforce each other, creating either a dangerous cycle of avoidance or a moving cycle of engagement and improvement. Breaking negative cycles requires small, supported steps that allow students to rebuild trust in their own reasoning.

That is why each Quantitative Skills resource is created in close collaboration with academics who understand the nuances of numeracy in their discipline. Their insight ensures the support isn’t generic; it reflects the real challenges students encounter in their lectures, labs, and assessments.

As more departments embed contextualised numeracy into their teaching, the message becomes clear: when students are supported to make sense of the numbers, they begin to trust themselves, and that confidence transforms how they learn.