1.  What is dyscalculia?

Many students have difficulty learning mathematics for a variety of reasons. Not all of these students have dyscalculia. However, there are some basic areas of mathematical activity in everyday life that may indicate a dyscalculic tendency if persistently difficult and frustrating for a person. Such symptoms manifest as: mathematics anxiety and dyscalculia.

In very simple terms, analogous to dyslexia - which is dysfunction in the reception, comprehension, or production of linguistic information, dyscalculia can be defined as the dysfunction in the reception, comprehension, or production of quantitative and spatial information.

Dyscalculia is a collection of symptoms of learning disability involving the most basic aspect of arithmetical skills. On the surface, these relate to basic concepts such as: telling the time, calculating prices and handling change, and measuring and estimating things such as temperature and speed.

Dyscalculia is an individual's difficulty in conceptualizing numbers, number relationships, outcomes of numerical operations and estimation - what to expect as an outcome of an operation. Dyscalculia manifests in a person as having difficulty:

• Mastering arithmetic facts by the traditional methods of teaching, particularly the methods involving counting.
  
  
• Dealing with exchange of money-handling a bank account, giving and receiving change, and tipping.
  
  
• Learning abstract concepts of time and direction / schedules, telling and keeping track of time, and the sequence of past and future events.
  
  
• Acquiring spatial orientation/space organisation / direction, easily disoriented (including left/right orientation), trouble reading maps, and grappling with mechanical processes.
  
  
• Learning musical concepts, following directions in sports that demand sequencing or rules, and keeping track of scores and players during games such as cards and board games.
  
  
• Following sequential directions - sequencing (including reading numbers out of sequence, substitutions, reversals, omissions and doing operations backwards), organizing detailed information, remembering specific facts and formulas for completing their mathematical calculations.
  
  

Dyscalculia can be quantitative, which is a difficulty in counting and calculating; or qualitative, which is a difficulty in the conceptualizing of mathematics processes and spatial sense; or mixed, which is the inability to integrate quantity and space.

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