Reflections upon the teaching of Mechanics to first year university students

This note details the experience of teaching mechanics to first year mathematics students at the University of Birmingham. In particular, we are interested in assessing the transition that students make between A-Level and university level mechanics. The importance of providing additional support to students studying mechanics at A-Level has previously been noted since, for whatever reason, it appears that the number of students studying mechanics at A-Level has been decreasing. The current study compares A-Level experience with mechanics performance in a first year module at university, and the implications are discussed…The article presents 2 case studies and attempts to correlate student performance at university level mechanics with entry results from A and AS Levels in mathematic, further mathematics and physics…