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Numeracy learning of students with mild intellectual disabilities in Singapore
Author
Cheong, Janice Mun Yi
Supervisor
Chia, Noel
Abstract
Numeracy skills are essential skills for seamless daily living in our numerate world. It is a set of skills which we often take for granted as we go about our daily lives. However, students with mild intellectual disability often struggle in day to day chores which require basic numeracy. Difficulties with early numeracy can interfere with acquisition of mathematics skills as these students progress through their learning journey in the special education (SPED) schools. Therefore, it is of great importance to not only SPED school teachers but also caregivers to provide necessary and appropriate intervention for students with mild intellectual disability in the area of numeracy and/or mathematics so that they will be able to transit from life in the SPED schools to the world outside, especially workplace in the future. It is the interest of the author of this paper to understand the numeracy learning patterns of individuals with mild intellectual disability as this would equip SPED school teachers and caregivers with better teaching methods and intervention strategies. This study examines the factors, i.e., Intelligence Quotient (IQ), Mental Age (MA) and Chronological Age (CA), in relation to the basic numeracy acquisition. The other area of investigation is the inter-item correlations of the various components of numeracy based on the subtests of Basic Numeracy Diagnostic Test (BNDT) and how they affect numeracy learning in these students. The results suggested that there was an adequate correlation between MA and basic numeracy, and also strong positive correlations between and amongst some of the components of the basic numeracy. A numeracy learning pattern for the participating students with mild intellectual disability was derived from the results of this inter-item correlational study. The correlation pattern helps us to understand how numeracy learning is based on the learning through clusters of numeracy components rather than learning of the various numeracy components in isolation. Further studies are required to ascertain the nature of the learning difficulties and challenges that children with ID continue to encounter in their numeracy and/or mathematics learning.
Date Issued
2014
Call Number
LC4019 Che
Date Submitted
2014