Dyscalculia Workshop

7 May 2019

Research in dyscalculia is 20 years behind research in dyslexia.

We are accustomed to accepting deficits in maths. This is common in popular culture.

More prevalent in males. Affects 4-7% or population.

Developmental Dyscalculia
Occurs from birth. Someone with dyscalculia can’t see the sets within a set, so can’t say how many dots
there are in a larger set of dots without counting one-to-one. This is domain specific, i.e. only affects
number sense and ​not​ reading or writing, or even other areas of maths like algebra.

Can’t see how many of each type of fruit there are in a fruit bowl unless the count one by one.

Symptoms:
● Anxious
● Can’t process numbers or use correct operation to solve problems
● Can’t learn times tables
● Struggle with telling the time
● Difficulty being in time, with dates and remembering PINs
The Brain:
● Frontal lobe for strategies
● Parietal lobe for visual and spatial representations and estimation. Retrieval of numerosity and facts.
Dyscalculia shows up in this part of the brain.

Presentation of Dyscalculia:
● Congenital
● Linked to premature births
● Foetal alcohol syndrome
● Acalculia is acquired dyscalculia, due to brain trauma.

Dyscalculia is heightened by language of maths, e.g. ​two​, ​to​ and ​too​, and statements such as “three and
three is six”.

Maths Anxiety
Tends to present at Years 3 & 4 at school, not before. There tends to be a trigger, usually an experience
with a teacher, a scary test, or lots of missed schooling (including time spent on Reading Recovery).

About 11% of children have maths anxiety, and about 40% are vulnerable to it and may develop it later on
in their schooling. So as much as half of children may have maths anxiety. More likely to affect females.

Looks like:
● Mind goes blank
● Work avoidance
● Physiological symptoms, e.g. rapid heart rate, sweating, shortness of breath
Prefrontal cortex is shut down due to anxiety, amygdala takes over. Fight/flight/freeze response activated,
and child can’t do maths. Vicious circle of increasing anxiety and therefore lower ability to do maths.

Contributing Factors
● Low maths self-efficacy, i.e. belief they can’t do it
● Dropped Stitch Theory - gaps in maths knowledge makes it harder for children. Reading Recovery
can be an issue here.
● Parental attitudes to maths. Evidence that parents who are confident with maths have children with
higher self-efficacy
● Societal and cultural norms
● Timed testing
● Lack of opportunities to discuss and debate answers, and a rush to move from topic to topic in
maths lessons

Impacts of Dyscalculia and Maths Anxiety

● Limitations in future career paths
● School avoidance
● Cycle of negativity towards maths with future children, a cycle of negativity from generation to
generation
● Inability to budget (for dyscalculia) and financial issues
Addressing Maths Anxiety
Maths learning journeys at the beginning of the year - understand children and how they feel about maths.
Identify gaps in knowledge and past struggles, e.g. with a teacher.
Identify children who don’t like answering questions.
Ask for offers if answers, don’t put anyone on the spot. Don’t randomly ask children to answer Qs.
Avoid timed tests, times tables and quick recalls e.g. how many equations they can recall in 2 minutes.

Addressing Dyscalculia
Brain plasticity shows we can retrain neural pathways to cope with things like sets.
● Perform assessment to test, checklists e.g. Brian Butterworth’s Dyscalculic Screener. 10 online
tests for $200, down to 7 year olds, but has to be done by a Level B assessor for NCER. There are
also physical tests but they take about 2 hours to complete.
● Meaningful learning, putting maths into everyday contexts
● Rote learning is unhelpful, due to the load on long term memory. Use commutativity, i.e. 2x4=4x2.
That way there is only one thing to learn and retrieve from the parietal lobe. Bonds to ten is the
same, make use of the family of facts.
● Language of maths needs to be consistent and agreed upon both in the classroom and at home.
Not ​minus,​ ​subtract​, ​take away​ and ​less​ all used interchangeably.
● Use concrete materials to show members in a set, use this as much as needed. This strengthens
number sense. Keep bringing it back as you work with larger numbers. ​Use materials even at the
number properties stage! This reduces the load on working memory.
● Number Sense and ​Number Catcher​ by Dr Anna Wilson are great websites. They’re free! Panmaths
(?) from the UK.
● Reinforce that numbers are made out of other numbers. Te reo is great for this, e.g. 21 is rua tekau
ma tahi, which shows the sets within the number.
● Abacuses are great for dyscalculia.
● Ten frames also help children with dyscalculia.
● Discourage guessing. Shouting out wrong answers actually reinforces these incorrect answers in
the parietal lobe, making it harder for them to learn the right answer.
● Be positive about your own ability to work on maths problems and have a go. Show how you’re
working through a problem, and that you can get it wrong too sometimes.