Annotated Bibliography_ Week 3

Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022

Chinn, S., McDonagh, D., Elswijk, R. v., Harmsen, H., Kay, J., McPhillips, T., Power, A., & Skidmore, L. (2001). Classroom studies into cognitive style in mathematics for pupils with dyslexia in special education in the netherlands, ireland and the UK. British Journal of Special Education, 28(2), 80-85. 

This study is the third year of a study of dyslexic students in Netherlands, England and Ireland in Mathematics. The previous studies found that dyslexic students in all three countries had difficulty reading and recalling multiplication facts; and students’ preferred areas of mathematics differed by country. This study looked at two cognitive styles: “grasshopper” (intuitive and flexible) and “inchworm” (logical reasoning and fixed). They found that there is a prevalence for “inchworm” style among dyslexic students but the ratio between these two styles differed by country indicating a dependence on teaching style. It’s suggested that connecting math to reality and encouraging flexibility when problem-solving. 

Monday, Jan. 17, 2022

Malmer, G. (2000). Mathematics and dyslexia-an overlooked connection. Dyslexia (Chichester, England), 6(4), 223-230. 

The author draws on his years of personal experience to identify a connection between dyslexia and mathematical ability. This paper is important in my inquiry because it examines various causes for students’ difficulty with mathematics, how these may manifest in the classroom, and practical strategies for support and encouragement. Although the author, a retired teacher in Sweden, wrote the paper 20 years ago, many of his strategies involve theories that are being advocated today: advocating process over product, encouraging critical thinking over an axiomatic approach that relies heavily on memorization. I’m interested in doing further research into the centers in Sweden that the author mentions that have been established to support and teach compensatory strategies to students with dyslexia.

Annotated Bibliography for Inquiry II

Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022

Gernsbacher, M. A., Soicher, R. N., & Becker-Blease, K. A. (2020). Four empirically based reasons not to administer time-limited tests. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 6(2), 175-190. 

This article explored reasons for favoring non-timed tests over timed test: validity, reliability, inclusivity, and equity.  The article reinforced my previous empirical finding from conversations with teachers and students, that giving students with dyslexia more time is the most prescribed accommodation. This article is of interest to me because it challenged my previous conceptions about allowing more time as an accommodation; it suggested that because extra-time may benefit all students this accommodation for learning diverse students may be unequitable; and because of this the authors strongly advocate that tests be untimed for all students. The authors reiterated common historical misconception of corelating ability with speed and offered much research contradicting this belief in many subject areas and education levels. The authors also cite research indicating that although a commonly used and accepted accommodation, most students given this accommodation do not utilize it significantly; in essence the authors suggest that the advantage in untimed tests is the absence of the “pressure of time ticking off” and associated anxiety. 

Monday, Jan. 10, 2022

Note: I chose to include both article because the first used many references to the second, and I wanted to read the original source. The article in The Dyslexic Advantage views the Beals and Garelick (2015) article through the lens of students with dyslexia, rather than the original article's more general viewpoint.

Dyslexia Advantage Team. (2020). Don't let working memory prevent math learning. https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/dont-let-working-memory-prevent-math-learning/

This article talks about how working memory can affect a student’s math performance but not their inherent mathematical ability, and accommodations should be considered to offset this disadvantage. The paper specifically addresses the practice of asking students to explain their thought processes in math problems, which they believe may be particularly challenging to students with poor working memory. They also suggest that there is a significant benefit in streamlining a question into its basic mathematical representation for students who have dyslexia, as this puts less emphasis on working memory and tests mathematical ability. This is interesting to me because it's not something that I've considered before in potential accommodations or adaptions for students with dyslexia. I am aware of the potential disadvantages of word problems in terms of the extra required reading but had not considered their requirement of working memory, nor had I thought about asking students to explain their thinking. Personally, explaining thinking always caused anxiety for me, as it seemed something beyond my current state of thinking and felt like it was asking something quite separate from the mathematical problem itself.

Beals, K. & Garelick, B. (2015). Explaining Your Math: Unnecessary at Best, Encumbering at Worst. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/math-showing-work/414924/

This article by Katherine Beals and Barry Garelick (2015) is the cornerstone of the previous article in The Dyslexic Advantage. The authors question the equity in requiring students to explain their mathematical reasoning process, and whether their ability to provide a correct answer should not be proof enough of their understanding. The authors reason that there can many reasons, other than mathematical ability, that challenge, or prevent, a student from being able to eloquently explain their thought process. This article gave me a fresh insight into potential disadvantages our teaching and assessment methods may present to students with dyslexia and other learning differences or needs.

Final Reflections

This course pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me think more deeply and broadly about things I hadn’t really considered before; and for that I am very grateful. Looking back over my past blog posts, I find it difficult to summarize succinctly what seems like years of experiences crammed into a few short months. A few favorite moments that come to mind are my times in the garden, especially my “sit-spot”, and listening to Jo Boaler and Frank McCourt. I loved the calmness I discovered in the garden, and the creativity it allowed. Some of the experiences outside, like drawing and writing creatively, brought me much joy and helped me realize the importance of giving myself balance in the things I do. It’s now something I hope to expose my own students to one day.

A lot of what I’ve gotten from this class is the experience of joy that open-mindedness can bring, and how learning experiences can be anywhere – not just in textbooks. Frank McCourt told us that in teaching “you’ll always have resistance,” but this course has helped me see this as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. I’ve learned the importance of practicing what I hope to preach, by being open to new learning experiences, taking on challenges and embracing mistakes. The latter has always been difficult for me, and I think this course has helped me get a little more comfortable with my own limitations. Honestly, it’s still a struggle but I am beginning to accept that I don’t have to do or know everything; I just have to try. I really appreciated learning about math anxiety from the Jo Boaler talk; that it can affect our ability to think through mathematical problems, and that speed has no bearing on ability. I loved the idea that that "every time a student makes a mistake, they grow a synapse;” that making mistakes is actually good for our learning process. The idea of fixed and growth mindsets also helped me learn a lot about myself and why I react the way I do in certain situations. It also made me realize how important it is to allow my students to make their own personal connections to the subject and have their own reasons for being successful and what success may look like for each of them.

I think the course helped me appreciate what inquiry is and the value of it in my future teaching. I enjoyed all the classes and felt I took away something valuable from each of them. The only suggestion I have for possible “improvement” would be to use Canvas at least in addition to the blogging. I found it a little frustrating to have to scroll through blog posts to find what I had to blog about for an entrance or exit slip as sometimes some of the posts did not appear on the class blog or were not in order. I would often have to go into the back end of the blogger site and look through each post to find what I had to do which, given the number of courses we had to do this term each with their own sizeable amount of readings and assignments, was frustratingly time-consuming. At times, I had set aside time to do a blog post but could not access the reading which was frustrating. Also, having each of the students have author access to each other’s blogs was quite cumbersome and resulted in us having to scroll through over 60 blog sites every time we had to find our own and make a new post. I even posted some of my blogs on my peers’ sites by mistakes at times or found they had done the same. Conversely, our other courses on Canvas made finding assignment details, lesson topics, and submitting assignments very quick and straight forward. While I did enjoy the writing and reflection of the blogs, I think this could be done on Canvas without losing any of the benefit.

Reflection on Inquiry Project

 

I have really enjoyed this inquiry process so  far, and I feel that I've learned a lot. There are a few things that really struck me during the research process.  I loved the quote from Erin Kline, a teacher at Fraser Academy, whose presentation I attended: "Kids with dyslexia, see the forest and the trees." These words really affected me because it's how I see my sons. They see the world in such a beautifully different way that really is a gift; the struggles they face with the simplest of tasks creates amazing creativity and invention. However, it also perfectly describes the difficulty in seeing a clear message when being overwhelmed by so much extraneous information in the way of inefficient cognitive processing.

A huge takeaway for me was that every teacher and specialist I spoke to or heard from, reiterated the message that adaptions for dyslexia were "just good teaching" and would benefit all students. This is frustrating, because it's not always being done, but also very hopeful because it needn't be reliant on funding, time or vast amounts of training for teachers already in the field.

When my son was first diagnosed with dyslexia (about 16 years ago), I did a lot of research on what dyslexia was, its manifestations, causes, and how it could be "overcome."  Honestly, this process was not very thorough as I had four young children to care for, and I was quite distracted with worry and concern about my son's future. When I was preparing this project I realized how little (if any) research I have done about dyslexia since those initial panicked days or weeks; and how all of my time and effort has been in advocating for my son in his schooling. This surprised me, and then made me realize how much of a disconnect there is between researching and understanding dyslexia and helping students with dyslexia succeed in school.

My interview with the VSB literacy enhancement specialist was extremely valuable for me. She gave me several  names of educators who have done active work to help students with dyslexia and was able to pass on insights from several different schools. I was only able to look into these resources superficially, and so I'm excited to have more time to learn about them further. What was really interesting to find out was that although there is a strong advocacy and support system in place for literacy support, there is no equivalent in mathematics. I believe there is an great need for such a program and hope to delve deeper into what such a program could look like and how it could be implemented and executed. The specialist told me that she thought a math support program may have been attempted in one of the school districts (not VSB) but she was unclear on the details. This is definitely something I want to find out more about.

I loved the research studies that I read, and felt I only touched the surface in this area. There's so much information to be learned from the scientific research and also the practical "on the ground" strategies that have been tried and tested for decades. Although, I want to dive into the research and learn more about current teaching and scaffolding strategies, I think the area that may be most exciting is the sweet spot in between these two and, again, how to implement a program like the "Reading Recovery" program for literacy but for math into schools.

Here is a link to my Inquiry Project presentation.

Inquiry Project: Annotated Bibliography

Andreassen, R., Jensen, M. S., & Bråten, I. (2017). Investigating self-regulated study strategies among postsecondary students with and without dyslexia: A diary method study. Reading & Writing, 30(9), 1891-1916. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-017-9758-9
This paper compares study strategies (as listed in a diary) between post-secondary students with and without dyslexia. I am interested to learn which strategies were useful, the differences they made, and whether they can be applied to high school students.

Black, J. (2010, May 8). In Their Right Mind. New Zealand Listener, 18-21.
This is a popular magazine article on well-known people who have dyslexia. I think this will help provide background information, context, and a positive perspective that could later we shared with students.

Cawley, J. F., Hayes, A., & Foley, T. E. (2008). Teaching math to students with learning disabilities: Implications and solutions. Rowman & Littlefield Education.
This book approaches the teaching of mathematics from the perspective of adapting the entire pedagogy of mathematics so that it is meaningful and accessible to students with learning differences, rather than find access points and adaptations with a current curriculum. It aims to go beyond helping these students, but to use mathematics to help them develop cognitive and linguistic skills. I am particularly interested in their detailed treatment of word problems.

Chinn, S. (2020). The Trouble with Maths: A Practical Guide to Helping Learners with Numeracy Difficulties (4th ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003017714
This textbook presents various learning differences that affect mathematical learning and offers techniques to help students with dyslexia and other learning differences be successful in mathematics. This is a key book for providing context and a comprehensive treatment of the field of alternate learning and teaching strategies for students with learning differences.

Davis Dyslexia Association International. List of Dyslexic Achievers. https://www.dyslexia.com/about-dyslexia/dyslexic-achievers/all-achievers/
This is a list of famous people who have had(have) dyslexia, and it’s a great resource to give an audience insight into the potential a student with dyslexia has; and it’s an encouraging message for students who have dyslexia.

Hannell, Glynis. (2013). Dyscalculia: Action plans for successful learning in mathematics. Routledge.
I am interested in learning about dyscalculia, how it differs from dyslexia, and if any of the techniques used to help students with dyscalculia can be used for those with dyslexia.

Henderson, A. (1998). Maths for the dyslexic: A practical guide. David Fulton.
This book gives a detailed and comprehensive account of teaching strategies that can be used to help students with dyslexia in several specific areas of mathematics: number, algebra, shape, space, measurement, data.

Jane Roitsch, Silvana Watson, An Overview of Dyslexia: Definition, Characteristics, Assessment, Identification, and Intervention, Science Journal of Education. Vol. 7, No. 4, 2019, pp. 81-86. doi: 10.11648/j.sjedu.20190704.11
This is a frequently cited paper on dyslexia from a technical psychological perspective. I have chosen this article because it gives an extensive overview of dyslexia, its characteristics, assessment and identification, and in particular it addresses intervention techniques.

Leong, C. K., & Jerred, W. D. (2001). Effects of consistency and adequacy of language information on understanding elementary mathematics word problems. Annals of Dyslexia, 51(1), 277-298. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-001-0014-1
This is an interesting paper on how the way word problems are constructed, and the language used in them, can affect all students and those with dyslexia. They also investigate how students cognitively process these word problems which can provide much insight into how to support students with learning differences.

Sandman-Hurley, K. (2013, July). What is Dyslexia? [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/kelli_sandman_hurley_what_is_dyslexia
A short informational video to help the viewer appreciate dyslexia. This gives good background information and may help me relate this topic to an audience.

Soiffer, N., & Larson, J. L. (2020). Rainbow math: A case study of using colors in math for students with moderate to severe dyslexia. (pp. 401-409). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58796-3_47
The authors investigate whether differences in font, colour and spacing influence the performance of students with dyslexia. This is interesting because it covers a few strategies that could potentially aid students with dyslexia in the classroom.

Turner Ellis, S. A., Miles, T. R., & Wheeler, T. J. (1996). Speed of multiplication in dyslexics and non-dyslexics. Dyslexia (Chichester, England), 2(2), 121-139. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0909(199606)2:2<121::AID-DYS31>3.0.CO;2-V
This paper compares several aspects of how students with dyslexia perform multiplication compared with students who do not have dyslexia. This interests me because it provides insight in how dyslexia may affect mathematical ability and performance.

Keeping the doors open for everyone

I like to think of the question as being: how can we, as teachers of math and science, provide a learning environment that is welcoming and inclusive to everyone no matter who they are.  I appreciate that equality fails to address the inherent disadvantages some societal groups face, but I think, as teachers, we should want to nurture, engage, connect with, and appreciate what every one of our students may bring. As a woman who took math and physics in the 80s and 90s, I am unfortunately familiar on just how destructive sexism can be to a career and self-confidence. It is probably one of the main factors that caused me to leave academia. However, as a mother of three sons, I would be very upset to hear that, in an attempt to right past wrongs, a teacher would encourage them less than another student based on their gender. I remember seeing a flyer advertising an opportunity to learn about being a firefighter. My young son, who had his share of struggles with self-esteem and difficulties at school, was extremely excited. I called the number and was told that he could not register because of his sex. While this action may have been trying to brute force a solution to a real systemic problem, it used the same weapons that perpetrated the initial wrong doing.

 I have tussled with my thoughts on this question a lot, but I think my belief is that we should acknowledge that there are certain students who may have an instinctual reticence for the subject based on societal factors, and actively do our best to neutralize those preconceptions and increase their comfort and self-esteem with the subject. However, I do not want to push some students at the expense of others; I hope to get to know all of my students and seek to find ways to help them all realize success. I looked up my physics department from my undergraduate degree and there is now 10% of the faculty who are women compared to a single female when I studied there. I do not think that is much of an improvement, but I am not comfortable forcing a a biased solution.

In my classroom I want to provide examples of mathematicians of all genders, races and cultures. I also want to be aware of any subliminal message on race or gender any of the materials and resources I use may carry. I hope to constantly question myself about any inherent biases I may have and make sure I do what's in the best interests for each of my students. I also don't want to ever make assumptions on whether a student may or may not be interested in learning more or pursuing further in the field, but instead try to offer encouragement to all of them. I'm all too aware of how one single thoughtless comment on a teacher's bad day may change the course of a student's life.

Inquiry Project: Addressing Dyslexia in Math Education

 

I am interested in this topic because two of my sons have dyslexia and their high school experiences in mathematics have generally not been positive because of this. When one of my sons was in elementary I homeschooled him for a couple of years because I found that the school system could not accommodate for his learning differences. During that time I did some research on some tools to help students with dyslexia, but the main recommendation I found was to make sure his own self-confidence and esteem did not suffer. I learned that dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence, and in many cases students with dyslexia will be able to find their own coping strategies to help them get through, or succeed at school. The most damaging effect of this learning difference was the toll it took on the student's confidence and self-image. Many of these students who are not diagnosed or given support believe they are not as intelligent as their peers. These students also encounter invisible hurdles that our education systems unnecessarily puts into place. Just giving a student larger squared paper can make a huge difference.

One of my sons consistently 'failed' mathematics in his grade 11 and 12 years, and was even asked to drop out of his grade 12 pre-calculus class. he remained in the class and won a math prize in his second year studying math at university. When I asked him what the difference was between high school and university math he told me that "high school math was difficult for me because the teachers made learning it difficult, but math at university is difficult in a fun way because it's the subject that's difficult." One of my main motivators for becoming a math teacher is because of my sons experiences and the realization of the difference a teacher's attitude can make in a child's future.

Presentation Link: Here