Hello and welcome to this episode of What in the World is Dyscalculia.
I'm Dr. Honora Wall and What in the World is Dyscalculia is sponsored by EducCalc
Learning.
You can visit EduCalcLearning.com for more information, for advice and tips if you're
a person with dyscalculia, and training
If you're an educator, interventionist, tutor, teacher, or parent doing homeschool and see
our online courses for students who have Dyscalculia, we know that you can succeed in math and
we know that the traditional K-12 math system is not really designed to instruct or assess
students with Dyscalculia properly.
I want to talk today about an interesting question that came up in a social media group
recently.
There are two thoughts I have about this question.
One is the question itself and one is a broader research question.
To paraphrase, the person posting was asking if anyone knew of research studies that talked
about typical child development as for the important orientation of numbers.
It took a few tries of people asking them to clarify what they meant.
It seems that the root of the question was for younger children, it's very easy to confuse
the number six and the number nine because they look very similar and they almost look
upside down from one another.
Is there a typical age when we expect that orientation to be set?
The first question that people were posting in response was to make sure she wasn't confusing
Dyscalculia with dyslexia where quite a few times people can transpose letters, although
that is the most basic interpretation or identification and oversimplification of dyslexia.
I do know some people who transpose numbers, especially more than three numbers at a time
like the longer the string, the easier it is to transpose and that can be very common.
As far as writing numbers upside down or backwards reversed, I haven't seen too much of that
in my personal work and more importantly to this person's question, I haven't seen any
research studies that have really looked at this in depth and tracked it in terms of typical
child development.
If you happen to have some, please email me the links or the name of the researcher so
I can find out more.
You can reach me at honora at educalclearning.com or through our non-profit, honora at thedtri.org
and we have been getting some more visitors to the Dyscalculia training and research institute
website which is great.
We're talking to a lot of people about funding for research opportunities and making some
products for training teachers so we're going to have some interesting stuff that I think
will be really useful coming out of the non-profit very soon.
Make sure you're checking that resource as well.
Getting back to the research and to this individual's question.
I don't know any more about her question so I don't know if she had a particular student
in mind or if she was trying to use this as an early screener of some kind.
I can't speak to that part.
I would say I would not use transposing numbers or flipping the orientation of a number as
a screener.
I would use sub-itization questions as a screener and I would use some number sense, how comfortable
does a student seem with numbers in general.
I would also look for transfer if a student is getting better at their basic facts.
Multiplying numbers that are small.
Adding numbers under 10.
If you're starting to see an increase, a little bit more fluency and automaticity but losing
it as the numbers get bigger or the strings get bigger.
If you see a disconnect between doing just the multiplication work like the programs that
are designed to ask you your times tables for the fours over and over again.
The student is getting better at that but then they're not really transferring that
into 123 times 42.
That lack of transfer could be a better screener than just how they're writing or transposing
numbers.
Another thing that I was thinking as I was reading the comment and the other comments
underneath it is how many excellent research questions there are out there.
As I said I don't know of anyone who's looked at typical human development or child development
specifically in writing numbers properly, forming numbers properly.
Is there a certain age when the number formation in Arabic digit form is really set?
If you are a researcher or if you're thinking about getting into a master's or a doctorate
program, there are so many questions in the realm of dyscalculia that we need answers to.
I would encourage you to think about some of these really excellent questions.
You could do a lit review or just a summary of what's out there in different research
questions.
One of the problems that I found when I was doing my dissertation is that we have a lot
of studies for typically developing students.
We have a lot of studies that include low numeracy students or ELL students or anyone
identified as a special education student.
But those things do not have the same cause and therefore they don't have the same effect
and impact as dyscalculia.
So finding something that is actually applicable to the math learning disability is much more
challenging.
And I'm a firm believer if you see a problem you got to jump in and try to fix it.
Be part of the solution and that can come in the form of asking other people who you
work with if they know of any research, having those conversations and getting into research
on your own.
Especially if you're in a PhD program or you're thinking about that.
If you are working in the college of education and you're talking to your college of education
students or even better your math department students, get some research studies going.
Of course there are funding issues, IRB approval issues, finding the right population size
issues so these are complex.
I think that's an important thing for people who are not into research to remember.
We have a big drive right now in the world of education to make everything research based
which is a great idea if the research actually exists.
But sometimes it doesn't.
And we can't just pull a research study out of thin air.
Doing an actual scientific appropriate peer reviewed research study is going to take a
couple of years at best.
A really fast one is going to take a year.
Anything longitudinal or having multiple groups or it just takes time.
So we can't just turn around and pull research out of thin air.
We can extrapolate from the research that's already out there.
We can talk to experts and we can put together the best information we possibly can.
But if you're looking for a research based answer to everything you're probably going
to be pretty disappointed.
This is still a new field.
Now if you are interested in helping people out of dyscalculia that's very exciting because
there's lots of areas where we can all pitch in and find things that actually help.
But we have to be detectives and not only rely on published research because that's
a growing field and we need to give it time to grow.
So I guess the upshot of this conversation is I saw this post and I thought people have
great questions but not everything has a research based answer.
And some of our questions feel like they might relate to dyscalculia but they don't really.
For example writing a number upside down is not typically a part of dyscalculia.
And as we look at older students I don't see that in any of my middle high school college
or adult students or people who have dyscalculia.
I work with a lot of adults who are getting more comfortable with math in the workplace
and transposing a long string of digits might be an issue.
But writing upside down that orientation is not really an issue.
And even if we knew when a student should typically develop orientation I don't see
how that would really help.
In a pragmatic sense I am a pragmatic curriculum person.
That is my focus area that is my research theoretical lens.
How does this actually help a student who's trying to pass a class right now.
And fixing orientation I'm not sure is the thing that's going to really help a student
throughout the K16 system or help an adult in the workplace.
So an interesting thing to think about.
Interesting thing to talk about.
Not a whole lot of pragmatic results in my opinion.
I could be very wrong.
And I am interested in hearing your opinion.
I hope you share it with me.
You can find me on all sorts of social media platforms.
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Dr. Wall underscore MLD.
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And I would love to have your comments, your feedback and any other questions about possible
topics for future episodes of the what in the world is Dyscalculia podcast.
I'm Dr. Honora Wall with educalclearning.com and the DTRI.org.