Teaching children with Down syndrome in inclusive primary mathematics classrooms

At the turn of this century, expectations for learning mathematics by students with Down syndrome were low. Research and practice continued to indicate considerable difficulty with number and calculation (Bird and Buckley, 2001). Unfortunately, most authors extrapolated difficulty with number to difficulty with mathematics in general, even though research evidence from other areas of mathematics was almost non-existent. We now know that mathematics beyond calculation is within the grasp of learners with Down syndrome (Faragher and Clarke, 2014). In this article, based on findings from a research study that was undertaken in the ACT and Victoria, we describe how learning mathematics in inclusive primary classrooms can be achieved. Teaching teams (classroom teachers and learning support staff) worked with researchers to explore effective inclusive mathematics teaching and here we give researcher and practitioner perspectives on how this might be accomplished through explicitly adjusting the curriculum for a Year 6 class. [Author abstract]