There is simply no way to avoid discussing the transformation in mathematics education, when we talk about working with students with learning disabilities, such as dyscalculia.

 

The reason being that children with these disorders desperately require the assistance their parents provide at home.

 

Yet, simultaneously, as a country, we are in a place right now, where the way parents were taught, does not match the way students are now being taught.

 

Many parents are understandably frustrated while trying to help their children. Most adults today remember the algorithms they learned in the past (you know, when you added 48+9, you learned to write the seven under the nine and carry a 1 over the 4).

 

Their children, on the other hand, might use any number of strategies for the same problem. They might say 48+9 is similar to 48+10-1, for example, or 50+9-2. On the other hand, they might say it’s like having 40+8+9. Or perhaps they draw pictures of circles, which don’t make sense to you. The last strategy the child today might use is the regrouping that you learned as a child!