By understanding why children struggle with maths, teachers are better equipped to provide effective support and nurture confidence in low-achievers. Numeracy and Learning Difficulties includes how to tackle common learning difficulties by following different teaching practices and principles, identifying gaps in students' knowledge and developing curricula that bridges these gaps, improves numerical literacy using problem-solving strategies and skills, and a handy checklist of benchmarks in achievement.

There are many approaches to researching the difficulties in learning that students experience in the key areas of literacy and numeracy. This book seeks to advance understanding of these difficulties and the interventions that have been used to improve outcomes. The book addresses the sometimes complementary and sometimes contradictory results, and generates new approaches to understanding and serving students with difficulties in literacy and numeracy. The book represents a departure from conventional wisdom as most scholars and graduate students draw upon ideas from only one of the three domains focal in the book and usually from one single or dominant theoretical frame. Typically, readers will affiliate with reading education, mathematics education, or learning disabilities and belong to one of the corresponding professional associations such as IRA, NCTM, or CLD. This book’s scope will open a scholarly forum for engaging readers with a familiarity with one of these domains while providing insight into the others on offer in the book.

This comprehensive volume provides teachers, researchers and education professionals with cutting edge knowledge developed in the last decades by the educational, behavioural and neurosciences, integrating cognitive, developmental and socioeconomic approaches to deal with the problems children face in learning mathematics. The neurocognitive mechanisms and the cognitive processes underlying acquisition of arithmetic abilities and their significance for education have been the subject of intense research in the last few decades, but the most part of this research has been conducted in non-applied settings and there’s still a deep discrepancy between the level of scientific knowledge and its implementation into actual educational settings. Now it’s time to bring the results from the laboratory to the classroom. Apart from bringing the theoretical discussions to educational settings, the volume presents a wide range of methods for early detection of children with risks in mathematics learning and strategies to develop effective interventions based on innovative cognitive test instruments. It also provides insights to translate research knowledge into public policies in order to address socioeconomic issues. And it does so from an international perspective, dedicating a whole section to the cultural diversity of mathematics learning difficulties in different parts of the world. All of this makes the International Handbook of Mathematical Learning Difficulties an essential tool for those involved in the daily struggle to prepare the future generations to succeed in the global knowledge society.

Drawing on research from the fields of developmental and cognitive psychology, Peter Westwood presents a case for high-quality 'first teaching' to prevent students failing in the initial acquisition of numeracy skills.

The fifth volume in the Mathematical Cognition and Learning series focuses on informal learning environments and other parental influences on numerical cognitive development and formal instructional interventions for improving mathematics learning and performance. The chapters cover the use of numerical play and games for improving foundational number knowledge as well as school math performance, the link between early math abilities and the approximate number system, and how families can help improve the early development of math skills. The book goes on to examine learning trajectories in early mathematics, the role of mathematical language in acquiring numeracy skills, evidence-based assessments of early math skills, approaches for intensifying early mathematics interventions, the use of analogies in mathematics instruction, schema-based diagrams for teaching ratios and proportions, the role of cognitive processes in treating mathematical learning difficulties, and addresses issues associated with intervention fadeout. Identifies the relative influence of school and family on math learning Discusses the efficacy of numerical play for improvement in math Features learning trajectories in math Examines the role of math language in numeracy skills Includes assessments of math skills Explores the role of cognition in treating math-based learning difficulties

Effective Teaching Strategies for Dyscalculia and Learning Difficulties in Mathematics provides an essential bridge between scientific research and practical interventions with children. It unpacks what we know about the possible cognitive causation of mathematical difficulties in order to improve teaching and therefore learning. Each chapter considers a specific domain of children’s numerical development: counting and the understanding of numbers, understanding of the base-10 system, arithmetic, word problem solving, and understanding rational numbers. The accessible guidance includes a literature review on each topic, surveying how each process develops in children, the difficulties encountered at that level by some pupils, and the intervention studies that have been published. It guides the reader step-by-step through practical guidelines of how to assess these processes and how to build an intervention to help children master them. Illustrated throughout with examples of materials used in the effective interventions described, this essential guide offers deep understanding and effective strategies for developmental and educational psychologists, special educational needs and/or disabilities coordinators, and teachers working with children experiencing mathematical difficulties.

Reading and Learning Difficulties: Approaches to Teaching and Assessment is a comprehensive guide to teaching reading more effectively to a wide range of children. The book presents a variety of research-supported approaches to teaching that have been designed to make learning to read easier and more successful for all children. By examining the way readers process text and identifying the knowledge and skills needed to become a proficient reader, Peter Westwood explains why learning problems can sometimes occur and what can be done to prevent or overcome these difficulties.