Access Through Compensation: Emancipatory View of a Mathematics Learning Disability

Abstract

In this article, we provide a novel view of mathematics learning disability (MLD) by studying a student with an MLD (Dylan) who had compensated so effectively that she was able to major in statistics. We push back on the dominant deficit model used in studies of MLD, and consider issues of access and compensation from a Vygotskian theoretical frame. Through 8 videotaped interview sessions, we identified that Dylan’s primary difficulties were with mathematical notation and number sense, which resulted in issues accessing standard mathematical forms. Analysis revealed 8 compensatory strategies that Dylan used to address these issues of access. We frame our approach as emancipatory research. Dylan was involved in all phases of the study’s design, implementation, analysis, and dissemination, and is the second author. This work acknowledges that individuals with disabilities have research agendas of their own and have critical insight to share about the lived experience of their disability.

Notes

1 Dylan’s speed in solving single digit addition and multiplication problems is considered slower than expected, given that Mazzocco, Devlin, and McKenney (2008) found that typically achieving eighth graders took on average 1.72 seconds to solve addition and multiplication fact problems and Kling and Bay-Williams (2014) consider automaticity for first graders to be less than 3 seconds per problem.

2 During some sessions, Katie asked Dylan to use particular pedagogical tools (e.g., base-10 blocks, fraction manipulatives) and reflect upon their potential utility. Because these instances involved the introduction of additional tools not typically used by Dylan, we have excluded these episodes from analysis in favor of focusing specifically on Dylan’s existing ways of compensating and the difficulties that she reported.

3 For numbers above 20, Dylan also decomposed numbers into sets of tens.

4 Several researchers have taken up a sociocultural approach to consider the match or mismatch of cultural tools and mathematical tasks. For example, Miura (2001) identified that Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages are more aligned with the base-10 number system than English and offer affordances for naming and manipulating quantities.