Dyscalculia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Dyscalculia - Essay Example Some researchers declared that it is a biological trouble related to brain, some believe that emotional problems are contributing to this disorder; some psychologists declared it, a result of overall low intelligence of children and some say mathematical anxiety is causing this problem. Hence there are a lot of views regarding dyscalculia. A lot of researches have been made to identify the reason causing dyscalculia, yet it is not clear what actually is making it difficult for the children to understand mathematics. Whatsoever is causing dyscalculia; the methods to resolve this problem must be defined and implemented in schools for such children. A person needs to identify whether the problem exists or not before solving it. The first step in helping such children is to examine if the child is having dyscalculia or is it just because of lack of attention and interest. Three methods are defined to diagnose dyscalculia. However one out of those three techniques is considered effective. Two of them evaluate the tendency of a child of solving mathematical problems. These techniques diagnose dyscalculia by considering the errors made by the child and the time taken by the child to solve basic mathematical sums. While solving mathematical problems, a child may be influenced by the environment and other changes. The techniques to diagnose dyscalculia must not be a normal mathematics test as a child may be weak mentally i.e. he may have low aptitude level. The child may be distracted due to some other activity and errors may occur due to some misunderstanding and less power to learn and fathom questions easily. Therefore, the most effective technique is considered to be 'The dyscalculia Screener', which is developed by Butterworth, 2003. This screener is designed to diagnose dyscalculia among the children between the ages of 6 to 14. There are certain mathematical skills that human beings adopt automatically from the nature. For example, a person may easily identify that a set of data contains a numeric value, 6 is less than 7 and counting (2 comes after 1). Dyscalculia is basically designed to carry out if the child is lacking inherent numerical knowledge. This software program is designed with three different groups. The first group is named as dot enumeration, second is called as number comparison and third is arithmetic achievement. The screener shows the weaknesses of a child in the natural human mathematics skills. If a child is performing at a low level in dot enumeration and number comparison and has medium performance in arithmetic then he has dyscalculia. In contrast, if he's perf orming at a high level in dot enumeration and number comparison but performing badly in arithmetic test, he's just bad at arithmetic know-how. Despite of the importance of this screener, it is not considered to be the most successful idea. The price offered to schools is higher than the budget of schools which rely on funds. On the other hand, some schools do not take note of its usefulness and hence despite of having enough finance they do not purchase this helpful and efficient tool. People having dyscalculia are also affected socially because we need