The opinions of the parents of students with developmental dyscalculia on dyscalculia

Mathematics makes life easier for people in daily life, such as measuring time, managing our financial resources, reading calendars, giving directions, applying recipes. However, some people have difficulty in doing and learning simple actions such as doing four operations, reading the clock, giving change. These individuals are individuals with dyscalculia. Dyscalculia is a math learning disability that negatively affects arithmetic operations and mathematical calculations. Students with dyscalculia are individuals with normal or higher intelligence, who continue their education normally, but show an unexpected low performance in mathematics, and often resort to their fingers when performing operations. Reintegration of individuals with dyscalculia into society will be possible in cooperation with teachers and parents. The general purpose of this study is to examine the difficulties experienced by students diagnosed with dyscalculia in the process of learning mathematical concepts from the perspective of their parents. In this study, case study, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. The participants of the study were selected by the criterion sampling method, one of the purposive sampling types. Accordingly, parents of 15 students with normal or higher intelligence who were diagnosed with mathematics learning disability in the Child Psychiatry Clinic of Malatya Training and Research Hospital were included in the study on a voluntary basis. In order to collect data in the research, a semi-structured interview form consisting of 18 open-ended questions prepared by the researcher and the thesis advisor was used content analysis was used to analyze the data. In the study, it was determined that the parents did not have enough information about dyscalculia.