Math education dealing with mathematical learning disabilities: a literature review.

International audienceIn recent times, research interest in mathematical learning disabilities (MLD) hasincreased around the globe, but their definition and diagnosis does not enjoy a clearscientific consensus (Lewis & Fisher, 2016). Research regarding MLD is carried outin different fields, with various theoretical backgrounds and aims (Lewis & Fisher,2016): cognitive sciences, neuroscience, psychology, mathematics education. Weconducted a systematic literature review of the last 10 years of PME and CERMEproceedings. We followed the main lines of the methodology used by Joklitschke, Rott,and Schindler (2018) for our study which is structured in 3 main steps: theidentification of keywords about MLD, the selection of the founded articles followingthese keywords and a synthesis of the main features of these papers. Our researchquestion is: How has the field of mathematics education dealt with MLD these last 10years? According to our literature review, the keywords that identify MLD in matheducation are: disab*, dyscalcul*, disord*, difficult*, inclus*. We used them to searcharticles for our review by focusing on titles, abstracts and keywords in proceedings ofPME and CERME (2009-2018). We obtained 348 articles. After reading the articles,we retained 13 pertinent papers for our review about MLD. Our review shows thatthere is no consensus about the definition of MLD in mathematics education. In fact,the 13 articles can be subdivided into three classes according to the specificities of theparticipants of the experiments evoked in the articles: with diagnosis of MLD (oftenreferred as dyscalculia, 4 articles), with learning disabilities with or withoutcomorbidity (8 articles), with specific difficulties in learning mathematics but withoutdiagnosis of MLD (6 articles). To conclude, it would be interesting to have a betterunderstanding of research questions, definitions, theoretical frameworks and methodsin research about MLD in math educatio