Student voice: An investigation of the perspectives and recommendations of students experiencing mild and moderate intellectual disabilities concerning their mathematics teaching and learning.

Frances Barr

doi:10.25918/thesis.561

This thesis aims to identify the perspectives and recommendations of students experiencing a mild to moderate intellectual disability (ID) concerning their mathematics education, in order to locate the ‘voice’ of this particular population of learners within the wider educational dialogues that shape their learning experience. This is accomplished by documenting their perspectives and recommendations regarding mathematics learning, examining how teaching may be adapted based on these insights, and suggesting ways to enact their recommendations at the classroom level. A key assumption of the thesis is that every student, regardless of their identified scholastic intelligence, has valuable knowledge regarding how they learn and how this information can be used to improve their mathematics education. This study provides an important contribution to special education because, although multiple stakeholders have been invited to make suggestions about the education of students experiencing ID, the voices of these students themselves remain largely absent from this dialogue. It is therefore the intent of this thesis to examine and highlight how these voices can contribute to the teaching and learning they experience in positive and effective ways. This thesis used a relativist, social constructivist methodology to investigate how these students experience their mathematics education. According to this approach, students interact with mathematics in their classroom environment through social interactions that construct meaning from their learning experiences. Thus, a focus on these interactions formed the fundamental data collection approach of the thesis. Data were collected through interviews with students experiencing ID using a phenomenological framework, allowing an investigation of their voices while minimising preconceived assumptions about what might be discovered. The findings indicate that students can clearly articulate their perspectives on the teaching and learning environment and provide insightful recommendations regarding how to improve their mathematics education. Themes emerging from the findings focused on capacity awareness, inclusion, empowerment, and ideas associated with Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). After exploring the strengths, limitations, and emotional aspects of their experiences, students articulated recommendations relating to teacher actions and behaviour, pedagogy, classroom environment, and inclusion. From these findings, a cyclic questioning framework is proposed to support teachers in engaging with students experiencing ID in a meaningful and time-efficient way, ensuring their voices are effectively heard and acted upon. Overall, this research contributes to the generation of new mathematics education knowledge by hearing directly from students experiencing ID about their mathematics learning. The nine participants were high school and upper primary students, and through their narratives, our understanding of teaching mathematics is advanced by adding their voices to the broader dialogue on improving learning outcomes and promoting educational equity.

Student voice: An investigation of the perspectives and recommendations of students experiencing mild and moderate intellectual disabilities concerning their mathematics teaching and learning.

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Student voice: An investigation of the perspectives and recommendations of students experiencing mild and moderate intellectual disabilities concerning their mathematics teaching and learning.

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