Dyscalculia

How can the tutors support children with Dyscalculia?

Prevalence

Though research has been limited, experts estimated somewhere between 3-7% of school age children may have dyscalculia. It’s also currently thought that dyscalculia occurs equally in both genders. It can also occur in combination with other difficulties – a 2015 study, for example, suggested that 11% of children with dyscalculia also have ADHD.

Not all struggles with maths – even serious ones – are due to dyscalculia, however. Other conditions can affect a child’s ability to work out maths problems – such as dyslexia, visual or auditory processing problems, or ADHD.

Possible signs of Dyscalculia

A young person with dyscalculia may exhibit different problems at different ages.

For younger children, those may include:

• Difficulty recognizing numbers
• Delays in learning to count
• Struggling to connect numerical symbols with corresponding words (e.g. 5 to five)
• Difficulty recognizing patterns and placing things in order
• Losing track when counting

Older children, meanwhile, may show some of the following signs:

• Significant difficulty grasping basic functions like addition and subtraction, as well as learning simple times tables
• Difficulty estimating time – such as how long it may take to complete a task
• Struggling to process visual-spatial things like graphs and charts

How is Dyscalculia diagnosed?

There is at present no specific test for dyscalculia, as the condition is difficult to identify via a single test. Diagnosis and assessment therefore tends to rely on a range of investigations that can hone in on dyscalculia as the underlying reason for a child struggling with numbers.

One particular test used in diagnosis is the Feifer Assessment of Mathematics. This investigates three core elements of maths knowledge to determine whether or not an individual may be at risk of dyscalculia.

Helping a child with Dyscalculia

Each child may suffer from different forms of dyscalculia, which makes a tailormade tutoring programme the bedrock for providing the best support.

There are, however, a few other tools available which can provide additional help. One of the best known is The Number Race, an adaptive computer game for remediation of dyscalculia. A list of other apps that may help those with dyscalculia can be found here. The British Dyslexia Association have also published a pamphlet with links to research and resources for dyscalculia.