� BOOK REVIEWS

Mathematics for Dyslexics: A Teaching Handbook, by S.J. Chinn and T.R. Ashcroft. 1998. London:Whurr. ISBN: 1 86156 0435.

It is difficult, and possibly slightly redundant, to review a book that has been regarded as a classicin its current and previous form, and that must be found on many hundreds of resource listsand practitioner’s shelves. It is even more difficult when Dr Chinn is a good, if too infrequently

seen, friend, and much respected by myself for his humour, humanity and deserved position as ahighly regarded figure in education and dyslexia.

Mathematics for Dyslexics delivers highly structured and pragmatic ideas for developing numberoperations and skills that will be of considerable value to specialist teachers working with learningdifficulties, class teachers in primary schooling, subject teachers in senior schooling, and moreeducationally knowledgeable parents. I enjoyed, for example, the support for number facts throughpractical demonstration, and the use of strategies containing a rapport with the students’ understandingof concepts, and the many practical ideas for supporting the learning and use of multiplication tables.

I am not sure that the structures and detailed programmes always allow a flexibility that mightbe desirable to more individual styles of learning that are clearly at the heart of the authors’ philosophy.Is ARROW necessarily a more effective means to reinforce learning of necessary facts and processesthan methods much as NLP and visualization, look-cover-write-check and mnemonics for all students?I would like extension into further possibilities for individual learning styles. Are working memorydemands, phonology and dyslexics’ confrontation with a further language-based symbol system keyissues that may particularly effect many dyslexics and other children with learning difficulties innumeracy? Should calculators be introduced earlier in students’ programmes to circumnavigate theirawkwardness in computation, reduce reinforcement for incorrect methods and results, allow checksof answers, and allow easier access to the further mathematics curriculum?

The book served to remind me of old friends. The extensive use of Cuisenaire and Dienes materialsseems an effective concrete support for concepts and solutions. Piaget’s five proposals would pointto the separate nature, but considerable inter-relations, between numeracy, the further mathematicscurriculum and the development of logical thinking. This hero from my youth in psychology mightsuggest a careful consideration of the logical precursors to number and mathematics in terms of skillswithin one-to-one relations, conservation, classification and sequencing. Dienes’ work interestinglycombined numeracy, mathematics, levels of logical thinking and individual strategies throughexperimentation based within set and group theory. This seems, somewhat sadly, to have been acul-de-sac in pursuing the innovations of Bartleff, Piaget and Bruner. The relationships between thestrands of numeracy, mathematics and logical thinking offer intriguing hypotheses in consideringdifficulties and strengths within dyslexics and students with other learning obstacles. Dienes and Jeeves(1970) and Copeland (1974) may make interesting reading for those who seek inspiration from ourresearch and educational history.

I have no hesitation in recommending Mathematics for Dyslexics as a fund of ideas for teachingnumeracy. This seems highly pertinent and relevant to the National Numeracy Strategy. The bookand strategy leave me with some doubts as to the reduced importance we may be giving to the relatedthemes of the full mathematics curriculum, logical thinking development and children’s encounterwith our purest philosophy. I look forward to pursuing these issues, with suitable refreshment!, withthe authors and others over the coming years.

I wonder if Mathematics for Dyslexics should be re-titled Numeracy for All?

References

Copeland, R.W. (1974) Diagnostic Learning Activities in Mathematics for Children. Macmillan: NewYork.

Dienes, Z.P. and Jeeves, MA. (1970) The Effects of Structural Relations on Transfer. HutchinsonEducational: London.

Peter BrooksEducational Psychologist

DOI: 10.1002/dys.192

DYSLEXIA 7: 178–179 (2001)Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.