Education Commons^™

Challenges Students Identified With A Learning Disability And As High-Achieving Experience When Using Diagrams As A Visualization Tool To Solve Mathematics Word Problems, Delinda Van Garderen, Amy Scheuermann, Apryl L. Poch

Special Education and Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

This article addresses a much understudied topic and concern regarding how students of varying ability levels employ visualization as a strategy in mathematics learning. The importance of this topic can be found in its connection to students’ ability to solve mathematical word problems. Many students, particularly students with learning disabilities, often struggle to use visualization as a strategy and this impacts their mathematics performance. The purpose of this article is to present findings from a study that examined the challenges that students—those identified as learning disabled and high-achieving—displayed when using one visualization form, a diagram, to solve mathematics problems. Overall, …