Uncovering the Impact of Dyscalculia: How Math Difficulties Can Affect Students Across the Curriculum

Students who struggle with maths can face hurdles in their learning that go beyond the maths classroom. This became painfully clear to me during a recent session with a teenage student. She entered the room, visibly upset, and exclaimed, “School is so unfair.” This wasn't a stereotypical teenage tantrum. She was absolutely right.

She shared that her computing teacher had given her discipline points after she had struggled to perform a quick mental calculation in class. The teacher's response is inexcusable and discriminatory, particularly for a student diagnosed with dyscalculia. This experience not only highlighted the need for awareness of dyscalculia among school staff across the curriculum, but also made me think more about the far-reaching effects of maths difficulties in various subjects.

When thinking about the use of maths in other subjects, it's easy to jump to science, where a large proportion of the syllabus requires students to remember and solve algebraic equations. Or we might think about binary numbers and Boolean logic from the computing syllabus. But maths appears in so many other places that might not immediately spring to mind.

In Music, you might be surprised how much math gets involved:

• Rhythm and Time Signatures: Understanding beats, note values, and how they fit into different time signatures requires basic arithmetic.

• Scales and Intervals: Maths comes into play when you're calculating intervals and constructing scales. Each note has a specific position and relationship to others.

• Composition and Form: Structuring compositions often involves patterns and symmetry, which are rooted in mathematical concepts.

It's been fascinating talking to Art teachers, because I've really never thought about the range of difficulties that can crop up:

• Students can struggle with the ratios involved in paint mixing.

• When creating a piece of work, understanding proportions and ratios is essential to get the dimensions right.

• Enlarging a small drawing or photo to a larger canvas often involves using a grid system, which requires basic arithmetic.

• Artists often use geometric shapes and principles when creating their work.

• Understanding concepts like symmetry, proportions, and perspective helps in sketching and drawing.

History is another area which can have unexpected difficulties for dyscalculic students:

• To understand history we need to have an understanding of a giant number-line - including negative numbers when we look at dates, such as in the study of Ancient Greece, which go back before the common era.

• It can be hard for students to understand where events sit in relation to each other and the time differences between events.

There are many more skills that come up in numerous subjects:

• Statistics: Analysing data in social sciences often involves interpreting statistics, such as population growth, economic trends, and gross domestic product, which are sometimes presented in graphs or charts.

• Big numbers: When students experience place value difficulties they can find it hard to read and write very big (or very small) numbers - the sorts of numbers that might be involved when looking at case studies in Geography.

• Memorising numbers: From remembering dates in history, to remembering in which act and scene Macbeth kills Banquo, to remembering how many people died in a natural disaster case study, to the crime statistics for Victorian Britain - doing well in GCSEs often involves the ability to remember (as well as interpret) numbers.

• Reading scales: Many subjects ask students to read from measurement scales - in science experiments, geography fieldtrips and food technology. This has probably been the most commonly reported difficulty in my discussions with teachers and students.

• Rounding and estimating: A lack of core number sense makes these skills difficult, and yet they are often required in subjects where they are working with large numbers and statistics.

  
  

The struggles caused by dyscalculia can have a ripple effect throughout a student's educational experience. When students encounter unfair treatment or lack understanding, their academic performance and emotional health can decline. In the case of my student, gaining discipline points added to her stress and has made her reluctant to engage in future computing lessons.

This situation emphasizes the crucial need for teachers in all subjects to recognise dyscalculia and similar learning difficulties. Almost every discipline uses some level of numeracy—be it in science, technology, or foreign languages. For students with math challenges, simply facing numbers can trigger anxiety, leading to disengagement from their learning.

This is also a reminder to those people who assess for dyscalculia/maths learning difficulties, that we need to really dig and find out where the student is having difficulties across their school life, so that our recommendations are as relevant and as practical as possible.

I would really love to hear from you about your experiences of maths difficulties and their impact across the broader school curriculum.

[In this post, I have used the term dyscalculia - but the same difficulties may be experienced by students with a range of maths difficulties]