Situation
Since 2014, the Ministry of Children and Education has launched several projects to support the development of tests for assessing whether pupils have dyscalculia. In 2020, the Ministry, in collaboration with Epinion and DPU, initiated a further development, trial and validation of a previously developed test battery (including a digital test) to identify signs of dyscalculia, targeted at Grade 4 pupils. In addition, test-related and pedagogical guidance materials were developed and made available to the schools in the project. The project focused on assessing Grade 4 pupils, and, based on a trial involving 400 schools, Epinion and DPU examined the measurement properties of the overall dyscalculia test, including the individual parts of the test battery consisting of an observation guide, a digital test, an interview-based test and an educational psychology service assessment.
Complication
Dyscalculia is particularly difficult to observe, as there are many signs and different manifestations, including difficulties with basic quantity understanding, linking number symbols to quantities, and difficulties with the four operations and number lines. As a rule, pupils with dyscalculia will perform poorly in mathematics tests, but far from all pupils with dyscalculia have general difficulties with mathematics. There is also considerable overlap between pupils with dyscalculia and other personal, social, linguistic or cognitive challenges, in particular dyslexia, all of which can contribute to weak performance in school mathematics tests. Reliable identification of signs of dyscalculia requires several assessment methods, including self-scored tests, observation-based techniques and dialogue-based techniques. The educational interventions that pupils with dyscalculia benefit from most can differ significantly from general mathematics interventions. For this reason, mathematics teachers have long expressed a strong desire for access to tests that can be used to identify reliable signs of dyscalculia.
Recommendation
There is a strong demand among schools (especially mathematics teachers and maths coordinators) for accessible and easy-to-use tools to identify dyscalculia. The project carried out shows that nine out of ten teachers unreservedly say that they would use the tools in their practice, if they are made available. However, they also point out that a simplification and modification of the battery will be necessary. On that basis, Epinion and DPU recommend, among other things, that: the observation guide should function as guidance material (for example as a supplement to the interview-based test) in the dialogue between teachers and coordinators, rather than as a standalone part of the testing process; the digital test can be used directly in its current form as a screening tool for the whole class, especially for pupils in Grade 1 to 4; the interview-based test should be further developed as a tool so that it can be used several times for each pupil over the course of the school year and across several year groups; the Educational Psychology Service should only play an advisory role, possibly in relation to validating assessments carried out by the school; all interested primary and lower secondary schools, especially those with pupils in Grade 1 to 4, should be offered free and flexible access to use the test tools and educational interventions once they have been modified as described.
