Category Archives: Research

Teachers’ Self-Efficacy in Dyscalculia: Development and Psychometric Validation of a New Scale

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The aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable scale for measuring the self-efficacy of primary school and mathematics teachers regarding dyscalculia. Grounded in Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory, the study followed established scale development procedures. In the initial phase, a pool of 42 items was generated to assess teachers’ self-efficacy regarding dyscalculia. The items were reviewed by a panel of seven experts in the fields of psychometrics, mathematics education, special education, and psychology to ensure content validity. 

The findings indicate that the DSES is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing teachers’ self-efficacy regarding dyscalculia.

Read the study HERE

Supplementary information files for “The nature of order processing deficits in developmental dyscalculia: the influences of familiarity and the count-list”

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Children with developmental dyscalculia often show impaired performance on number order processing tasks. Recent findings suggest these deficits are not general in nature, but instead specific to certain kinds of sequences. In particular, one proposal is that dyscalculic children struggle specifically to understand that “in order” can refer to sequences outside of the (ascending-consecutive) count-list (e.g., 1-3-5 is in order). However, previous findings in support of this view were limited by (i) only considering ascending sequences and (ii) not accounting for other factors known to influence order processing performance, such as sequence familiarity. To address this, the present study compared a control ( n = 28) and dyscalculic group ( n = 12), aged between 7-12 years, across ascending and descending sequences varying in familiarity. As expected, dyscalculic children showed impaired performance on ascending non-consecutive sequences (e.g., 1-3-5) but not on ascending consecutive sequences (e.g., 1-2-3). Notably, however, this deficit appeared to remain only for unfamiliar sequences (e.g., 2-5-8) and not familiar ones (e.g., 2-4-6), although this interaction was non-significant. Moreover, dyscalculic children displayed typical performance across both consecutive (e.g., 5-4-3) and non-consecutive (e.g., 5-3-1) descending sequences, neither of which match the traditional count-list. Accordingly, although order processing deficits in developmental dyscalculia do appear specific in nature, they are not necessarily specific to non-count-list sequences.

Read it all HERE

Teachers’ Self-Efficacy in Dyscalculia: Development and Psychometric Validation of a New Scale

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The aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable scale for measuring the self-efficacy of primary school and mathematics teachers regarding dyscalculia. Grounded in Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory, the study followed established scale development procedures. In the initial phase, a pool of 42 items was generated to assess teachers’ self-efficacy regarding dyscalculia. The items were reviewed by a panel of seven experts in the fields of psychometrics, mathematics education, special education, and psychology to ensure content validity. Based on expert evaluations, four items were removed due to overly technical phrasing that could lead to misinterpretation, reducing the pool to 38 items. Subsequently, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) conducted with 273 teachers indicated that four additional items exhibited inadequate factor loadings or problematic cross-loadings; these items were also excluded. The resulting Dyscalculia Self-Efficacy Scale (DSES) comprises 34 items organized into four factors: “Dyscalculia Symptoms”, “Providing Psychological Support to Children with Dyscalculia”, “Diagnosing Dyscalculia”, “Providing Support in the Teaching Process”. Confirmatory Factor Analysis conducted with a separate sample of 242 teachers yielded strong model fit indices, supporting the construct validity of the scale. The overall scale demonstrated high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.980, McDonald’s ω = 0.980). Correlation analyses with established instruments provided evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. The findings indicate that the DSES is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing teachers’ self-efficacy regarding dyscalculia.

See the full study HERE

Many children are suffering from an undiagnosed developmental condition which affects their ability to learn math

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A team of experts from the School of Psychology at Queen’s University Belfast, led by Dr Kinga Morsanyi, carried out research on the prevalence of specific learning disorder in mathematics (SLDM), which is also known as dyscalculia.

The researchers studied the mathematics performance of 2,421 primary school children over a number of school years. Although the researchers expect that the number of pupils with dyscalculia is similar to those with dyslexia, of the 2,421 children studied, 108 children had received an official diagnosis of dyslexia, but just one child had officially been diagnosed with dyscalculia prior to the study. Based on the results of the study, the researchers actually identified 112 children who are likely to have the condition.

Diagnosis of dyscalculia

Dr Morsanyi explains: “In society, there is sadly a widespread notion that you need a special talent to be good at maths, and that struggling with maths is normal for some people, but this is not the case and it’s not something we would accept if a pupil was unable to read.

“Our study shows that in almost all cases, children who appear to have dyscalculia are not being diagnosed. Within the sample of children with dyscalculia, 80 per cent of the children have other developmental conditions, such as dyslexia or speech and language difficulties, and as the current practice is to assign one diagnostic label to each child, this could partially explain why mathematics difficulties are so often ignored.”

Read further HERE