Mathematics Learning Disabilities

Abstract

U.S. education suffers from shortcomings that put even children possessing adequate intellectual abilities at risk for low mathematics achievement. Consequently, identifying and understanding children whose academic failure is influenced by a genuine learning disability requires a complex “developmental” research agenda. This perspective suggests the use of sensitive research methods—clinical interviews, ethnographies—to examine the development of children's construction of knowledge in the context of schooling. Researchers should consider such factors as the adequacy of classroom instruction, the availability in children of informal knowledge, the role of motivation, the effects of specific interventions, the role and operation of different cognitive processes in constructing mathematical understanding, children's difficulties across different areas of mathematics, and the development of children's thinking throughout the school years.