Characteristics of Students with Learning Disabilities in Mathematics - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 19
About This Presentation
Title:

Characteristics of Students with Learning Disabilities in Mathematics

Description:

... have multiple parts (Mercer, 1997; Culatta, Tompkins, ... They are unsuccessful in oral problem solving (Mercer, 1997; Culatta, Tompkins, & Werts, 2003) ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:1727
Avg rating:5.0/5.0
Slides: 20
Provided by: ferdinan9
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Characteristics of Students with Learning Disabilities in Mathematics


1
Characteristics of Students with Learning
Disabilities in Mathematics
  • F. D. Rivera, Ph.D.
  • Department of Mathematics
  • San Jose State University, CA
  • Module 15, Session 1

2
Characteristics of Students with Learning
Disabilities in Math
  • 1.  They have trouble performing computations,
    doing problem solving, understanding terms and
    concepts, establishing correct inferences, and
    connecting prior or new knowledge (Jarrett, 1999,
    p. 3).

3
Characteristics of Students with Learning
Disabilities in Math
  • 2.  They have visual-spatial-motor or
    perceptual-motor deficiencies.
  • They lack the perceptual skills necessary for
    number sense and conceptual understanding,
    including poor spatial and written
    representational skills (Garrett, 1998).
  • Their motor skills are deficient as evidenced by
    how they write their numbers and symbols (i.e.,
    they are oftentimes illegible or slow) (Mercer,
    1997 Culatta, Tompkins, Werts, 2003).

4
Characteristics of Students with Learning
Disabilities in Math
  • 3.  They have weak memory skills related to
    achieving mastery, recall, and retrieval of
    facts.
  • They could not follow procedures and processes
    orally and in written form and deal with problems
    that have multiple parts (Mercer, 1997 Culatta,
    Tompkins, Werts, 2003 Bley Thornton, 1995).

5
Characteristics of Students with Learning
Disabilities in Math
  • 4. They have weak language skills as evidenced
    by their difficulty in processing terms that have
    multiple meanings.
  • They are unsuccessful in oral problem solving
    (Mercer, 1997 Culatta, Tompkins, Werts, 2003).
  • They especially find it difficult to understand
    mathematical terms and concepts. For instance,
    they easily get confused with spatial and
    quantitative references such as before, after,
    between, one more than, and one less than
    (Perspectives, 1998, p. 1) and have trouble with
    terms that have several available
    interpretations.

6
Characteristics of students with learning
disabilities in math
  • 5. They have weak abstract reasoning skills as
    indicated by their inability to deal with word
    problem solving, comparing, and interpreting
    symbols (Mercer, 1997 Culatta, Tompkins,
    Werts, 2003).

7
Characteristics of students with learning
disabilities in math
  • 6. They have weak metacognitive abilities as
    indicated by their inability to determine a
    priori strategies that could assist them solve a
    problem successfully.
  • They experience difficulty recognizing and
    establishing patterns of actions (or schemes)
    even if they are or have been presented with a
    series of similar problems and problem solutions
    (Mercer, 1997 Culatta, Tompkins, Werts, 2003
    Montague Applegate, 1993).

8
Characteristics of students with learning
disabilities in math
  • 7. They are usually developmentally delayed
    (Cawley Miller, 1989).

9
Characteristics of students with learning
disabilities in math
  • 8. They have weak generalization skills
    (Woodward, 1991 Rivera Smith, 1987) that
    affect the way they perform computations (Kirby
    Becker, 1988) and solve applied problems
    (Montague, 1992).

10
Characteristics of Students with Learning
Disabilities in Math
  • 9. They are not entirely deficient in all domains
    of the mathematics being learned. For instance,
    some children may have poor skills in one or
    several areas in arithmetic but have average to
    better skills in other areas (Geary, 2004).

11
Characteristics of Students with Learning
Disabilities in Math
  • 10. They can recall formulas and use them but
    they do not understand why they work
    (Perspectives, 1998).

12
Characteristics of Students with Learning
Disabilities in Math
  • 11. They have difficulty seeing the forest from
    the trees, and vice-versa. That is, some could
    either see the big picture of a process but are
    unable to successfully perform the corresponding
    operations in detail or could proceed one step at
    a time but remain unable to understand what the
    whole process is all about (Perspectives, 1998
    Garnett, 1998).
  • This view is similar to cases with some students
    with learning disabilities in math who could
    easily grasp concepts but fail to exhibit
    computational competence (Garnett, 1998).
  • Further, they have difficulty making a connection
    and integrating between parts and the
    corresponding wholes because of their weak memory
    skills and poor sequencing strategies
    (Perspectives, 1998).

13
Characteristics of Students with Learning
Disabilities in Math
  • 12. They get the ideas and are eager to solve,
    however, their answers are oftentimes inaccurate
    (Perspectives, 1998).

14
Characteristics of Students with Learning
Disabilities in Math (Geary, 2004)
  • 13. With respect to number concepts such as
    understanding place-value structures or
    associating a number with a quantity and its
    correct symbol and word, it appears that
    mathematical disability among primary-grades
    children is not an authentic disability. That
    is, students with and without mathematical
    disability experience relatively the same
    difficulty understanding numbers.

15
Characteristics of students with learning
disabilities in math (Geary, 2004)
  • 14. With respect to counting, primary-grades
    children, both with and without mathematical
    disability, understand the principles of
    one-to-one correspondence, stable order, and
    cardinality which are all necessary in being able
    to count competently.
  • One area in which the two groups differ is their
    understanding of order irrelevance. students with
    learning disabilities in math have difficulty
    with tasks that require counting objects in their
    non-adjacent order. For them, counting is a
    fixed, mechanical activity (p. 3).
  • Another area that students with learning
    disabilities in math have difficulty with is in
    remembering the correct number counted for a
    given set of objects.

16
Characteristics of students with learning
disabilities in math (Geary, 2004)
  • 15. With respect to arithmetic and arithmetical
    strategies, students with learning disabilities
    in math have weak memory skills. This means that
    even if they are capable of recalling a basic
    fact, they still find it difficult to master and
    recall as many basic facts such as 7 2 or 2 x 6
    as they could unlike their regular counterparts
    who could accomplish this in a systematic manner.
  • Further, they tend to forget facts rather
    quickly (p. 3). Having weak memory skills is an
    indication that students with learning
    disabilities in math have difficulty storing
    information in long-term memory.
  • Another source of memory weakness is due to the
    fact that even if students with learning
    disabilities in math could recall a fact in
    long-term memory, they have difficulty
    suppressing other information that they think is
    relevant but actually is not which only confuses
    them. For instance, a child could easily recall
    how to obtain the sum of 2 and 3. The problem
    starts when the child thinks that 4 and 6 are
    also possible answers since 4 follows
    sequentially after 2 and 3 and that the product
    of 2 and 3 is 6 (pp. 3-4).

17
Students with Learning Disabilities in Math
  • 16. Concerning arithmetical strategies, students
    with learning disabilities in math employ and get
    stuck at performing immature procedures for
    combining numbers more often than the unlabeled
    students. For instance, in finding the sum of 3
    5, students with learning disabilities in math
    tend to do a count-all (i.e., raise 5 fingers,
    raise 3 fingers, then count 1 through 8) instead
    of a count-on strategy (i.e., raise 5 fingers and
    then count on through 8) that is more efficient
    and practical.
  • In the case of more complex additions, say, the
    sum of two two-digit numbers, while students with
    learning disabilities in math could perform
    additions correctly by columns, they have
    difficulty putting them all together in the
    right order (p. 4).

18
Cognitive Competences of students with learning
disabilities in math (Parmar Cawley, 1997)
  • 1. Their level of mathematical ability is two to
    four grades lower than the unlabeled students.
  • 2. Their growth rate in mathematical ability is
    one year of grade equivalent for at least two
    years of formal schooling.
  • 3. They finish high school with a mathematical
    proficiency of a 5th or a 6th grader.

19
Cognitive Competences of students with learning
disabilities in math (Parmar Cawley, 1997
  • 4. They could only accomplish one full year of
    growth in high school for the entire four years
    of secondary schooling.
  • 5. They manifest limited competence on tests that
    target minimum skills at the high school level.
  • 6. They produce unusual error patterns.
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com