Oxford study produces pack on how to teach deaf children and others weak on maths

11 February 2011

Researchers at Oxford University have developed a new teachers’ pack to help deaf children and children who are weak on maths improve their numeracy skills. The programme is for teachers who are working with children aged between five and eight and is free to download from Oxford’s Department of Education website .

Deaf children lag behind hearing children in mathematics from an early age. Some of the key concepts that hearing children learn informally before starting school are still challenging for deaf children after one or even two years.

Professor Terezinha Nunes, from the Department of Education at Oxford University, who devised the software, explains: ‘A lot of the lessons for deaf children are centred on language rather than numeracy in their first years at school. Deaf children also miss the incidental learning that goes on in the home, such as when mum or dad count out the sweets as they are doled out. Hearing the logical reasoning behind numeracy at the same time as watching the visual cues is the key to understanding. We have designed an early intervention programme that is as valuable for hearing children who are weak on maths as it is for deaf children.

The research shows that the children need to improve understanding in three key concepts in numeracy: additive composition; the inverse relation between addition and subtraction; and multiplicative reasoning. These concepts are taught by providing activities with strong visual cues to improve their understanding. The activities are not taught as a sequence but as interwoven strands that build on each other.

With the support of the RNID, the UK charity taking action on hearing loss, and the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS), Oxford researchers have designed teaching aids which can be used in the first or second year in primary school.

The activities are designed to help children reason about quantities, not to practice calculations. They are initially teacher-led and start with the teacher introducing the concepts but later there are games for the children to play. For example, children learn about additive composition and multiplicative reasoning through playing games in which they exchange coins of different values. The aim is to understand that a number can be seen as the sum of other numbers: for example, 13 can be formed by 13 coins of 1p or by one 10p and three 1p coins. These equivalences are not obvious to young children, who often focus on the number of coins. They can also use the coins to reason multiplicatively about place value: a box with five 1p and another box with five 10p coins both have five coins but the value of the money that they hold is different.

Another activity allows the children to think about the inverse relation between addition and subtraction and how to reason about quantities without having to count the objects. The children count bricks in a row, which is then partially hidden under a cloth. If they then see 4 bricks being added and 4 taken away, they can use the inverse relation between addition and subtraction to know the number of bricks under the cloth, without counting or calculating the sums. As they progress in this reasoning, they can use the inverse relation reasoning in more difficult problems. 

The programme is based on a year-long trial period involving 28 schools during which the project children improved significantly more than the comparison group. The children were assessed twice: before they started the teaching programme and after the teachers had used the intervention programme for about six months. The children in the taught group gained on average seven percentile points more on a mathematical standardised test than one would have expected on the basis of their initial results.

Professor Nunes said: This may seem as a small gain but it is a measure of the acceleration in their learning during this time. The concepts seem so obvious to adults that we just expect the children to know them. However, about one third of hearing children actually start primary school without a good understanding of these concepts and many deaf children are in the same situation. For these children, learning mathematics is a real challenge.

Oxford University has provided onsite training for about 50 teachers on how to implement the programme since 2008. The teachers’ resource pack of teachers’ notes and pictures, complemented by board and computer games, is freely available on the departmental website.

NDCS is assisting Oxford University in promoting and disseminating the numeracy pack and is also working with the university on a literacy publication to be published this summer.

Director of Policy and Campaigns at NDCS, Brian Gale, said: ‘Deafness is not a learning disability and yet Government figures show that 43 per cent of deaf children fail to achieve the expected level at Key Stage 2 Maths, compared with just nine per cent of children with no identified special educational need. Early intervention is vital in ensuring that deaf children don’t fall behind and we urge all primary school teachers who have a deaf child in their class to use this new teachers’ pack.’

RNID’s Research Programme Manager, Dr Joanna Robinson, said: ‘This new teaching programme, which uses strong visual aids, is designed to help deaf children develop essential numeracy skills and improve their ability in mathematics. At the moment, deaf children achieve substantially fewer A to C grades at GCSE level than their hearing peers, and this tailored resource could make a significant impact by helping reduce this difference in performance.’

For more information, go to University of Oxford Press Office on 01865 280534 or email press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk

The press office can supply photographs to the media on request.

Additional contacts:
NDCS Helpline for information on other NDCS publications Tel: 0808 800 8880 or email helpline@ndcs.org.uk
RNID– Joanna Robinson: contact Joanna.robinson@rnid.org.uk