Literature on Special Educational Needs in Mathematics : A bibliography with some comments

This documentation presents the findings of a survey of about 5,000 documents on low achievement in mathematics that have been published in one form or another during a long time, actually since 1886 and up to the new millennium. All these terms are defined as related to one and the same notion, namely low achievement in mathematics. For such low achievement some authors have used the term disability. Neurologists often prefer words beginning with the prefix "a" or "dys", such as "acalculia" or "dyscalculia", thus referring to simple arithmetic only. For ordinary educational purposes the author prefers less defect orientated expressions, as special educational needs in mathematics. Is the low achievement observed together with physical impairment of the individual, wrong learning strategies, unwise teaching, social circumstances etc.? Mathematics learning has been subjected to many conflicting impulses, not always favourable. The survey indicates a bias in the investigations. As to mathematical topics, simple arithmetic operations seem to have been most attractive to research. From a didactical view, the major part of the studies concerns extremely primitive learning conditions. Neurologists have often preferred to study simple neural deviations and sensori-motor processes connected with arithmetic. Future studies ought to go in for factor interplay between logical stuctures of mathematics, productive thinking of the student and social network of the environment, that is the factor-interplay model