1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,640 Hello and welcome to this episode of What in the World is Dyscalculia. 2 00:00:06,640 --> 00:00:12,700 I'm Dr. Honora Wall and What in the World is Dyscalculia is sponsored by EducCalc 3 00:00:12,700 --> 00:00:13,700 Learning. 4 00:00:13,700 --> 00:00:19,240 You can visit EduCalcLearning.com for more information, for advice and tips if you're 5 00:00:19,240 --> 00:00:23,200 a person with dyscalculia, and training 6 00:00:23,200 --> 00:00:29,480 If you're an educator, interventionist, tutor, teacher, or parent doing homeschool and see 7 00:00:29,480 --> 00:00:37,280 our online courses for students who have Dyscalculia, we know that you can succeed in math and 8 00:00:37,280 --> 00:00:45,880 we know that the traditional K-12 math system is not really designed to instruct or assess 9 00:00:45,880 --> 00:00:48,160 students with Dyscalculia properly. 10 00:00:48,160 --> 00:00:54,480 I want to talk today about an interesting question that came up in a social media group 11 00:00:54,480 --> 00:00:55,480 recently. 12 00:00:55,480 --> 00:01:00,040 There are two thoughts I have about this question. 13 00:01:00,040 --> 00:01:05,040 One is the question itself and one is a broader research question. 14 00:01:05,040 --> 00:01:12,180 To paraphrase, the person posting was asking if anyone knew of research studies that talked 15 00:01:12,180 --> 00:01:20,480 about typical child development as for the important orientation of numbers. 16 00:01:20,480 --> 00:01:25,040 It took a few tries of people asking them to clarify what they meant. 17 00:01:25,040 --> 00:01:32,920 It seems that the root of the question was for younger children, it's very easy to confuse 18 00:01:32,920 --> 00:01:40,080 the number six and the number nine because they look very similar and they almost look 19 00:01:40,080 --> 00:01:42,880 upside down from one another. 20 00:01:42,880 --> 00:01:54,880 Is there a typical age when we expect that orientation to be set? 21 00:01:54,880 --> 00:02:01,520 The first question that people were posting in response was to make sure she wasn't confusing 22 00:02:01,520 --> 00:02:08,000 Dyscalculia with dyslexia where quite a few times people can transpose letters, although 23 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:16,560 that is the most basic interpretation or identification and oversimplification of dyslexia. 24 00:02:16,560 --> 00:02:21,800 I do know some people who transpose numbers, especially more than three numbers at a time 25 00:02:21,800 --> 00:02:28,440 like the longer the string, the easier it is to transpose and that can be very common. 26 00:02:28,440 --> 00:02:35,000 As far as writing numbers upside down or backwards reversed, I haven't seen too much of that 27 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:43,240 in my personal work and more importantly to this person's question, I haven't seen any 28 00:02:43,240 --> 00:02:50,200 research studies that have really looked at this in depth and tracked it in terms of typical 29 00:02:50,200 --> 00:02:51,600 child development. 30 00:02:51,600 --> 00:02:56,440 If you happen to have some, please email me the links or the name of the researcher so 31 00:02:56,440 --> 00:02:59,720 I can find out more. 32 00:02:59,720 --> 00:03:09,840 You can reach me at honora at educalclearning.com or through our non-profit, honora at thedtri.org 33 00:03:09,840 --> 00:03:14,200 and we have been getting some more visitors to the Dyscalculia training and research institute 34 00:03:14,200 --> 00:03:16,440 website which is great. 35 00:03:16,440 --> 00:03:22,640 We're talking to a lot of people about funding for research opportunities and making some 36 00:03:22,640 --> 00:03:27,920 products for training teachers so we're going to have some interesting stuff that I think 37 00:03:27,920 --> 00:03:31,280 will be really useful coming out of the non-profit very soon. 38 00:03:31,280 --> 00:03:33,800 Make sure you're checking that resource as well. 39 00:03:33,800 --> 00:03:41,000 Getting back to the research and to this individual's question. 40 00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:44,960 I don't know any more about her question so I don't know if she had a particular student 41 00:03:44,960 --> 00:03:50,440 in mind or if she was trying to use this as an early screener of some kind. 42 00:03:50,440 --> 00:03:53,280 I can't speak to that part. 43 00:03:53,280 --> 00:04:00,000 I would say I would not use transposing numbers or flipping the orientation of a number as 44 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:01,320 a screener. 45 00:04:01,320 --> 00:04:07,380 I would use sub-itization questions as a screener and I would use some number sense, how comfortable 46 00:04:07,380 --> 00:04:11,480 does a student seem with numbers in general. 47 00:04:11,480 --> 00:04:19,080 I would also look for transfer if a student is getting better at their basic facts. 48 00:04:19,080 --> 00:04:22,960 Multiplying numbers that are small. 49 00:04:22,960 --> 00:04:23,960 Adding numbers under 10. 50 00:04:23,960 --> 00:04:29,940 If you're starting to see an increase, a little bit more fluency and automaticity but losing 51 00:04:29,940 --> 00:04:33,520 it as the numbers get bigger or the strings get bigger. 52 00:04:33,520 --> 00:04:41,440 If you see a disconnect between doing just the multiplication work like the programs that 53 00:04:41,440 --> 00:04:46,080 are designed to ask you your times tables for the fours over and over again. 54 00:04:46,080 --> 00:04:49,720 The student is getting better at that but then they're not really transferring that 55 00:04:49,720 --> 00:04:53,920 into 123 times 42. 56 00:04:53,920 --> 00:04:58,800 That lack of transfer could be a better screener than just how they're writing or transposing 57 00:04:58,800 --> 00:05:03,040 numbers. 58 00:05:03,040 --> 00:05:08,360 Another thing that I was thinking as I was reading the comment and the other comments 59 00:05:08,360 --> 00:05:14,240 underneath it is how many excellent research questions there are out there. 60 00:05:14,240 --> 00:05:19,880 As I said I don't know of anyone who's looked at typical human development or child development 61 00:05:19,880 --> 00:05:27,600 specifically in writing numbers properly, forming numbers properly. 62 00:05:27,600 --> 00:05:35,200 Is there a certain age when the number formation in Arabic digit form is really set? 63 00:05:35,200 --> 00:05:40,760 If you are a researcher or if you're thinking about getting into a master's or a doctorate 64 00:05:40,760 --> 00:05:47,040 program, there are so many questions in the realm of dyscalculia that we need answers to. 65 00:05:47,040 --> 00:05:51,880 I would encourage you to think about some of these really excellent questions. 66 00:05:51,880 --> 00:05:58,960 You could do a lit review or just a summary of what's out there in different research 67 00:05:58,960 --> 00:05:59,960 questions. 68 00:05:59,960 --> 00:06:05,920 One of the problems that I found when I was doing my dissertation is that we have a lot 69 00:06:05,920 --> 00:06:10,560 of studies for typically developing students. 70 00:06:10,560 --> 00:06:21,160 We have a lot of studies that include low numeracy students or ELL students or anyone 71 00:06:21,160 --> 00:06:25,720 identified as a special education student. 72 00:06:25,720 --> 00:06:31,440 But those things do not have the same cause and therefore they don't have the same effect 73 00:06:31,440 --> 00:06:34,240 and impact as dyscalculia. 74 00:06:34,240 --> 00:06:41,160 So finding something that is actually applicable to the math learning disability is much more 75 00:06:41,160 --> 00:06:43,160 challenging. 76 00:06:43,160 --> 00:06:47,320 And I'm a firm believer if you see a problem you got to jump in and try to fix it. 77 00:06:47,320 --> 00:06:53,680 Be part of the solution and that can come in the form of asking other people who you 78 00:06:53,680 --> 00:06:58,800 work with if they know of any research, having those conversations and getting into research 79 00:06:58,800 --> 00:07:00,440 on your own. 80 00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:04,280 Especially if you're in a PhD program or you're thinking about that. 81 00:07:04,280 --> 00:07:09,800 If you are working in the college of education and you're talking to your college of education 82 00:07:09,800 --> 00:07:15,720 students or even better your math department students, get some research studies going. 83 00:07:15,720 --> 00:07:21,200 Of course there are funding issues, IRB approval issues, finding the right population size 84 00:07:21,200 --> 00:07:23,520 issues so these are complex. 85 00:07:23,520 --> 00:07:30,920 I think that's an important thing for people who are not into research to remember. 86 00:07:30,920 --> 00:07:38,560 We have a big drive right now in the world of education to make everything research based 87 00:07:38,560 --> 00:07:42,760 which is a great idea if the research actually exists. 88 00:07:42,760 --> 00:07:45,640 But sometimes it doesn't. 89 00:07:45,640 --> 00:07:49,360 And we can't just pull a research study out of thin air. 90 00:07:49,360 --> 00:07:55,040 Doing an actual scientific appropriate peer reviewed research study is going to take a 91 00:07:55,040 --> 00:07:58,200 couple of years at best. 92 00:07:58,200 --> 00:08:02,360 A really fast one is going to take a year. 93 00:08:02,360 --> 00:08:07,080 Anything longitudinal or having multiple groups or it just takes time. 94 00:08:07,080 --> 00:08:10,520 So we can't just turn around and pull research out of thin air. 95 00:08:10,520 --> 00:08:14,320 We can extrapolate from the research that's already out there. 96 00:08:14,320 --> 00:08:20,800 We can talk to experts and we can put together the best information we possibly can. 97 00:08:20,800 --> 00:08:26,040 But if you're looking for a research based answer to everything you're probably going 98 00:08:26,040 --> 00:08:27,560 to be pretty disappointed. 99 00:08:27,560 --> 00:08:29,680 This is still a new field. 100 00:08:29,680 --> 00:08:34,280 Now if you are interested in helping people out of dyscalculia that's very exciting because 101 00:08:34,280 --> 00:08:39,800 there's lots of areas where we can all pitch in and find things that actually help. 102 00:08:39,800 --> 00:08:45,600 But we have to be detectives and not only rely on published research because that's 103 00:08:45,600 --> 00:08:52,080 a growing field and we need to give it time to grow. 104 00:08:52,080 --> 00:08:57,800 So I guess the upshot of this conversation is I saw this post and I thought people have 105 00:08:57,800 --> 00:09:03,840 great questions but not everything has a research based answer. 106 00:09:03,840 --> 00:09:09,760 And some of our questions feel like they might relate to dyscalculia but they don't really. 107 00:09:09,760 --> 00:09:15,520 For example writing a number upside down is not typically a part of dyscalculia. 108 00:09:15,520 --> 00:09:20,960 And as we look at older students I don't see that in any of my middle high school college 109 00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:25,480 or adult students or people who have dyscalculia. 110 00:09:25,480 --> 00:09:29,840 I work with a lot of adults who are getting more comfortable with math in the workplace 111 00:09:29,840 --> 00:09:35,400 and transposing a long string of digits might be an issue. 112 00:09:35,400 --> 00:09:40,600 But writing upside down that orientation is not really an issue. 113 00:09:40,600 --> 00:09:45,840 And even if we knew when a student should typically develop orientation I don't see 114 00:09:45,840 --> 00:09:47,480 how that would really help. 115 00:09:47,480 --> 00:09:52,800 In a pragmatic sense I am a pragmatic curriculum person. 116 00:09:52,800 --> 00:09:58,360 That is my focus area that is my research theoretical lens. 117 00:09:58,360 --> 00:10:03,960 How does this actually help a student who's trying to pass a class right now. 118 00:10:03,960 --> 00:10:08,720 And fixing orientation I'm not sure is the thing that's going to really help a student 119 00:10:08,720 --> 00:10:13,360 throughout the K16 system or help an adult in the workplace. 120 00:10:13,360 --> 00:10:16,160 So an interesting thing to think about. 121 00:10:16,160 --> 00:10:19,000 Interesting thing to talk about. 122 00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:22,240 Not a whole lot of pragmatic results in my opinion. 123 00:10:22,240 --> 00:10:23,920 I could be very wrong. 124 00:10:23,920 --> 00:10:27,840 And I am interested in hearing your opinion. 125 00:10:27,840 --> 00:10:29,040 I hope you share it with me. 126 00:10:29,040 --> 00:10:34,760 You can find me on all sorts of social media platforms. 127 00:10:34,760 --> 00:10:38,680 We are on Tiktok. 128 00:10:38,680 --> 00:10:41,680 Dr. Wall underscore MLD. 129 00:10:41,680 --> 00:10:46,240 For those videos and we put all of those videos on YouTube and our podcast is on YouTube as 130 00:10:46,240 --> 00:10:52,080 well so that people can access the information with whatever platform they are most comfortable 131 00:10:52,080 --> 00:10:53,080 with. 132 00:10:53,080 --> 00:10:58,280 And I would love to have your comments, your feedback and any other questions about possible 133 00:10:58,280 --> 00:11:05,880 topics for future episodes of the what in the world is Dyscalculia podcast. 134 00:11:05,880 --> 00:11:31,920 I'm Dr. Honora Wall with educalclearning.com and the DTRI.org.