Dyscalculia, the Math Learning Disability - Video

    I've only encountered a small handful of folks with a "dyscalculia" label (but legions who think they have an innate inability to do math).   It absolutely affects my instructional strategies -- I try to ferret out the walls and work around them, and it's generally a huge challenge.

    There are so many more diverse ways to communicate in the non-math academic areas.   There *are* diverse ways to do it with math... but they aren't generally included in our curricula.   It's all about those equations and word problems and formulae... and even using the computer to do that if you're a slow writer is onerously complicated.   

Thanks Rochelle for posting this link and thanks, Sue, for your comment.

I fear that many people who are missing math CONCEPTS are being labeled as dyscalculic.

True dyscalculia (and I have seen only one among the students I have taught) is someone who, when asked, "What is 1 plus 2" answers, "Four??" and has no clue whether the answer is correct or not. True dyscalculics do not have that mental number line that allows them to count or compute accurately, or even to understand when an answer is right or wrong, much less why.

I believe that most people being labeled dyscalculic today are capable of learning math but may have missed one of the two basic concepts of number relationships:

Concept 1) Every counting number is an equal distance of "1" from its neighbors. They may lack this concept because they never experienced it by contralateral crawling (cross-body crawling: opposite hand and knee hitting the floor at the same time). This can be taught by patterned practice in cross-body work at a steady beat - the student's comfortable beat, which may be a great deal slower than the teacher's comfortable beat. Think of saying Jingle Bells at a very slow speed. See if your student can tap the steady, even beat of the melody as you say it. If not, the student may lack the physical, kinesthetic sense of the equal spaces between numbers on a number line.

In one study, almost 10% of community college students in basic math and pre-algebra classes appeared to lack this concept (over 300 students in the study).

Concept 2) A number and all the parts that make up that number exist at the same time. That is, when I have 9, I always have 6 and 3 (or some other combination that equals 9) within and at the same time as the 9. This "both - and" concept is something that we all grow into around age 8.

In the same study, another 10% of community college students in basic math and pre-algebra classes appeared to lack this concept (over 300 students in the study).

So we have 20% (about) of these students who lack concepts and skills as well. Throw in the student's assumption that the purpose of math is to get the answer (rather than to understand the number relationships) and you have a lot of math anxiety.

Math anxiety is not dyscalculia (though dyscalculics may certainly have anxiety about math). This is where I find the video misleading. Math anxiety is a whole separate issue.

Dorothea Steinke

Front Range Community College, Westminster, CO