2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Complete Evidence-Based Practice Paper examines the initial results of a coordinated curricular redesign aimed at promoting integration between Mathematics and Physics in the first year of engineering programs.

Developing integrated and conceptually coherent curricula remains a central challenge in engineering education, particularly within foundational STEM courses that support all engineering programs. The traditional fragmentation between disciplines such as Mathematics and Physics often limits students’ ability to transfer knowledge across contexts, reducing opportunities for multidisciplinary reasoning and negatively impacting both academic performance and persistence. This issue is especially critical in the first year, where high failure and attrition rates are frequently associated with difficulties in foundational courses.

In Brazil, this challenge has been intensified by recent structural changes in secondary education. A national reform implemented in 2019 has led to significant variations in curriculum coverage and depth, contributing to increasingly heterogeneous student profiles entering higher education. Many students begin engineering programs with gaps in fundamental mathematical and scientific concepts, as well as limited experience with abstract reasoning and formal academic language. At the same time, changes in learning habits associated with the widespread use of digital technologies have further impacted how students engage with content. These transformations reinforce the need for pedagogical strategies that integrate disciplines, support conceptual continuity, and respond to students’ prior knowledge.

In response to this scenario, a coordinated initiative was developed to align content, sequencing, and pedagogical practices between first-year Mathematics and Physics courses within an engineering program. Prior to the beginning of classes, incoming students were invited to participate in an institutional diagnostic assessment designed to identify gaps in foundational knowledge. Participation exceeded 80% of the incoming cohort. Based on the results, a set of pedagogical interventions was implemented, including the reorganization of instructional time, the introduction of structured problem-solving sessions, the development of learning pathways to support prerequisite knowledge, and the intentional alignment of concepts and representations across disciplines.

This study adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative analyses of academic performance indicators and institutional retention data with qualitative analyses derived from faculty reflections, pedagogical documents, and classroom observations. Quantitative data include exam averages, final course averages, approval rates, and first-year attrition rates, compared across two consecutive academic years. Statistical analyses were conducted to evaluate the significance of observed differences. Qualitative data were analyzed through an interpretive framework aimed at identifying patterns related to instructional practices, student engagement, and curricular coherence.

The results indicate differentiated impacts across disciplines. In Physics, statistically significant improvements were observed in exam averages, final course averages, and approval rates. In Mathematics, although exam averages did not show statistically significant variation, final course averages increased significantly. Additionally, institutional data reveal a substantial reduction in first-year attrition rates between the two cohorts analyzed. These findings suggest that the implemented interventions were associated with measurable improvements in academic performance and student persistence, particularly when considering the first-year experience as an integrated system rather than a set of isolated courses.

Qualitative evidence provides complementary insights into these results, suggesting increased student engagement, greater continuity between mathematical and physical representations, and improved alignment in content sequencing across disciplines. While these findings are based on faculty reports and observational data rather than standardized perception instruments, they contribute to the interpretation of the observed quantitative trends.

The results presented correspond to the first stage of a broader curricular reform process and will support longitudinal monitoring of future cohorts. This study contributes to ongoing discussions on curriculum integration in engineering education by providing empirical evidence and a structured account of an institutional effort to redesign foundational STEM courses with an emphasis on coherence, alignment, and student persistence.