A shared language can help us recognise that experiences that previously seemed isolated, deeply personal and individual, are not ours alone.

Part of the challenge with adult dyscalculia is that the language available to us still focuses largely on skills, skill improvement and difficulties. We have fewer established ways of describing how encounters with numbers and numeracy feel, how they become woven into everyday life, and how these experiences are carried in memory, expectation, and most importantly: in the body.

One set of images that I have found particularly useful comes from Diana Coben and Gillian Thumpston’s research on adults’ mathematics life histories1. Conducted at Goldsmiths College, University of London, their study explored how adults understood mathematics and how they experienced its role in their life.

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