Hello everyone and welcome back to the What in
the World is Dyscalculia podcast. I'm happy to
have you here with us today. I'm Dr. Honora Wall,
the narrator for our podcast bringing you information
about the math learning disability and other
types of neurodivergence and interesting research
articles about education in general. This podcast
is sponsored by eduCalc Learning and you can
find out more about our teacher training options
and our online math classes for individuals who
have dyscalculia at eduCalcLearning .com. I would
also encourage you to visit thedtri .org, home
of the Dyscalculia Training and Research Institute
and that has a lot of information. for schools
including our new NBD math program and also offers
more insight into research around dyscalculia.
They are both great sources of free information,
resources, training, whatever you need, we are
here to help. And an interesting little bit of
help that I want to bring to you today was a
recent research study that was conducted and
published through the University of Padua in
Italy and it's really fascinating. It's a great
article about how humans develop that mental
number line, how we develop counting. And of
course this is a crucial part of understanding
the math learning disability because people with
dyscalculia do not seem to develop that internal
mental number line in the same way or at the
same time as a neurotypical development. And
all that really means for us in the classroom
is that we need to continue to use external tools
like a number line, a one to one hundreds chart,
and manipulatives in our early education, moving
into a blend of those support tools plus a multiplication
list as we get farther into elementary, and then
moving into a calculator. I like to do that somewhere
around fourth or fifth grade depending on the
topic. So you start to learn which tool works
best under which condition, which is really the
same as knowing when to use a hammer versus when
to use a screwdriver. These are just tools that
help us get the job done. For people with dyscalculia,
we need to always offer these tools. These are
part of the proper accommodations for a student
with dyscalculia. They are not interventions
that we do for a limited amount of time expecting
that the person will no longer need them. These
are things that continue because the differences
in learning, understanding, remembering, and
recalling math continue to be issues throughout
adulthood. Not insurmountable issues by any means,
just something that we support. The same way
we would let someone with vision issues wear
their prescription glasses at all times. Now
I know that for some teachers this is a big shift
in mentality. We are expecting our students to
come into class, learn what a number line is,
learn how to count, and then move on to the next
phase. And we don't think of those external tools
as being something that should continue. That's
why our research is so important because it helps
us see the fundamental differences in brain development
that underscore the math disability. So what
did this research study say? Well, it was conducted,
as I said, in Italy at the University of Padua
and the researchers were looking to see what
sort of in utero, of course they use chicken
so is in egg not in utero, but what sort of pre
birth brain development may or may not be tied
to a mental number line and to counting. So this
is sort of what you might want to think of as
a preliminary research model. I say preliminary
because it was done with chicks with little baby
chicken eggs, and we need to study this in other
species and then build up to studying it in humans.
So there are going to be some differences and
that's a big part of being research -informed,
not necessarily research -based. This research
study is incredibly important and gives us some
really fantastic information. but it's more of
a guidepost of where we need to go with future
research. It helps us understand what's probably
happening with people who have dyscalculia, but
it's not a one -to -one connection. I want to
make that part clear. Okay, so what happened
in the study? Well, the researchers took some
chicks, little eggs for baby chickens, and At
a certain time before they were ready to hatch
they changed the light exposure with the eggs
because what we know about chicks is that their
brain development is highly impacted by light
exposure before they hatch. We know that many
many many species, not just people, have the
ability to count and this is very important especially
in food and different parts of survival and that
was the important part for the chicks so before
the eggs hatched different groups were exposed
to light in different ways and then after the
chicks hatched they were trained to find food
under bottle caps and the food was always placed
under the fourth bottle cap in the training.
Then they took their different control groups.
They covered one eye or the other because we
know a lot of information about how the brain
of a chick is tied across the sphere. So the
left eye is tied to the right part of the brain
and the right eye is tied to the left part of
the brain. Now again, human brains are much more
complex and much more cross exposure and we do
know more different things. But if you're trying
to do a research study and reduce the number
of variables then you want to go with a chick
because you can have a much stronger I guess
I would say control or organization and identifying
features with that brain. Okay, the chicks were
trained to find food under the fourth bottle
cap in a row and then they would manipulate in
part of the experiment the food would be under
the fourth bottle cap from the left. Sometimes
it would be a very straight left to right setting
of bottle caps. and sometimes they would mix
them up so they were might be higher or lower
than the other they weren't in a very linear
pattern and then they studied whether or not
the chicks could find the food and how long it
took and how successful they were here's what
happened the chicks who had the proper light
exposure before hatching were able to consistently
and quickly find food moving from left to right,
finding that fourth bottle cap. And they did
very well if the bottle caps were linear or if
they were spread out in different patterns. The
chicks had to count to get to the fourth bottle
cap in order to find the food. That's the important
part. They had to know the difference between
the first bottle cap and the fourth. when they
looked at chicks whose light exposure had been
interfered with or modified before hatching,
those chicks had a real problem. They were not
able to successfully accurately count from the
first bottle cap to the fourth. Sometimes they
started on the left side counting like we would
think of as one two three four sometimes they
started from the right sometimes they were just
randomly picking they did not show evidence of
having a mental number line and what the researchers
are saying is that the results showed that a
mental number line is not something abstract
that we are simply taught in school it is tied
to spatial arrangement of objects within the
environment. It is tied to a biological underpinning
in brain development and our sense of number
is grounded in our biology and in our neurology
and how our brains work. This is really key and
very groundbreaking information. we're able to
see this evidence of how the brain holds this
math information, not just formulas or adding
and subtracting, but just understanding numbers
and understanding counting and understanding
order. So really fascinating work and the University
of Padua is doing a lot of research into dyscalculia.
Hopefully, I can put them on part of a European
tour one day and see a lot of our friends and
followers in the UK, in Ireland, Scotland also,
and visit this university because they're doing
some great work. What does it mean for teachers,
especially here in the US? It means that your
teaching can be perfectly on point. You can be
doing an amazing job. Your manipulatives and
your classroom instruction could be completely
above par. Just fantastic and wonderful. And
still, your students who have a math learning
disability are going to struggle because their
mental number line is going to be different.
You are still going to do the same instruction.
You're going to do more direct and explicit instruction.
You're still going to use manipulatives and those
kind of abstract visual tools like a printed
number line or a 1 to 100 chart, but you're going
to make sure that students who are struggling
in math have access to those tools and manipulatives
longer than you would expect. you're going to
provide an external support that reinforces the
internal mental number line. For our older students,
and by that I mean third, fourth, fifth grade,
you're still going to have those external tools
available. Now, as students get older, they're
not going to want to use manipulatives in front
of everyone else. They're probably not going
to want to use their one -to -one hundreds chart
or have number lines printed on their desk or
use a multiplication list. It's our job as educators
to create a space where we expect and insist
that students use their tools to verify their
guesses and check their work. When we do that,
those accommodations become expectations of precision.
And now we're changing the way they're being
used and the way students are perceiving other
students using these tools. Students who do not
have a math learning disability, who have a really
strong mental number line, who have great number
sense, they're going to move away from needing
to use those tools naturally on their own. And
that's really the key to scaffolding. We support
until the student is ready to move away on their
own. They decide when they're ready. We make
sure they have all the tools available for their
success and then we insist that they are successful.
There's no reason for students to have a D or
an F in your class. If there are a lot of students
having D's and F's in your class I would highly
recommend that you look at your interventions
and your accommodations. You look at the alignment
between your instruction, your practice, and
your assessments. Because when we get out of
alignment, we really mess the whole thing up.
If people would just fix that alignment piece,
then we'd have a lot more students and adults
with a stronger sense of numeracy and better
math mastery. But I digress. Those are topics
for another podcast. The main thing I want you
to take away from today's talk is that research
exists that shows number sense, mental number
line, and counting skills are part of our natural
development. And that can be typical or atypical.
That is not a deficit. It is a difference and
it can be supported. That's why our accommodations
are so crucial for students who have dyscalculia.
So if you want to know more about that study,
you can find it online in a lot of different
places. And as you know, we're trying to get
more of our research articles and links onto
the websites, both eduCalcLearning .com and the
DTRI .org. Just keep checking back. I'm a little
behind with getting those research articles linked
because there's just a lot to do. A lot to do
in the very exciting world of studying dyscalculia.
If you have questions about this article or about
anything else related to the math learning disability,
please reach out to me. honora@thedtri .org or honora
at educalclearning .com. If you're a teacher,
you might want to join the Facebook support group.
And if you are looking for support for your student
or your child, check out our websites. If you're
a school that wants to really revamp what's going
on with your bottom 30 % of math students, check
out nbdmath .org because that's really an exciting,
exciting program. I'm very proud of the work
we're doing there. And of course, check out our
social media reels. We've got those in a lot
of different places, so lots of free information,
lots of targeted, detailed information, and as
always, I'm happy to do some virtual or in -person
training. for your teachers at any time. I'm
Dr. Honora Wall and thank you very much for listening
to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast.
We'll talk again soon.