Mathematical Skills of Students with and without Learning Disabilities: An analysis

Abstract

In classroom teaching a teacher comes across several learning problems faced by students. Popularly referred to as ‘Learning Disability’, point towards those individuals who face problems relating to reading, writing, spelling and mathematics. It is a disorder which may occur in one or more of the processes of speech, language, reading, spelling, writing or mathematics. These problems faced by individuals can also adversely affect other skills like social skills etc. Mathematical Skills, the master of all skills, is the conceptual understanding of different mathematical relations and functions. If one has knowledge to use and apply mathematical skills in one's daily life, one would enjoy every phase and action of life. But if otherwise, then one will suffer in every activity of life and possibly will result in mathematical learning disability or ‘Dsycalculia’. Amid discrepancies between actual and expected performance of the child, dishearten them to compete in the competitive world. As they do not get proper attention towards their abilities, their hidden handicap tends to increase. This leads to breakdowns which turn out to be a hurdle in the path of academic progress. As a result the students face poor academic, behavioral and social problems. If these troubling concerns faced by primary school students are not known in time, then poor scholastic performance will be promoted in higher classes. Researches have proved that mathematical learning disability is more prevalent in school children than the other learning disabilities. A small amount of research studies throw light on abilities and inabilities of learning disabled. Therefore, this study is an effort to identify mathematical skills of learning disabled students at the primary level, so that all efforts are made to assess and repair this specific learning problem.