Recap: Supporting Neurodivergent Students with Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, Dyslexia, and Dyspraxia

Greater awareness of neurodivergent types can lead to more inclusive and equitable teaching. In this recap, we provide an overview of four different neurotypes and strategies to support them.

At last week’s event, we continued our focus on supporting neurodivergent students by taking a closer look at four specific conditions that could impact student behaviors and academic work. By spreading greater awareness and understanding, we hope to interrupt potentially harmful assumptions and foster greater curiosity and empathy for our students. Doing so can help us create environments that support learning, mental health, and academic success.

The slides from that presentation are available here, and below are some key takeaways and resources. Also be sure to check out the recap and resources from last fall’s session, where we covered ADHD and autism, along with several other foundational concepts around neurodivergence.

Dyscalculia

Often diagnosed in children, dyscalculia is characterized by marked discomfort with numbers/numeric information. This isn’t just an aversion to math; individuals with dyscalculia experience often debilitating anxiety when asked to engage with numbers or number-based information, including directions, telling time, or working with money. Experts believe that 3-7% of people worldwide have dyscalculia. Watch a short video about dyscalculia.

Rarely, dyscalculia can appear later in life, but generally only after a traumatic brain injury or other brain abnormality (like a lesion). However, young people with dyscalculia may not be diagnosed properly and instead had their cognitive difference explained as “math anxiety” or being “not a math person.” 

Strategies to support students with dyscalculia include:

• Providing/allowing calculators when asking others to work with numbers (especially basic math calculations).

• Creating structures to help students plan/organize their work, including reminders, schedules, and timers.

• If numbers-based data are provided, consider sharing equivalent information in another format (e.g. narrative descriptions or data visualizations).

Learn more from the Dyscalculia.org nonprofit or from this infographic about dyscalculia.

Dysgraphia

Difficulty with the physical or cognitive processes involved in writing define the condition called dysgraphia. This condition affects anywhere from 5-20% of people worldwide–a huge range because of the difficulty diagnosing the condition. Watch a short video about dysgraphia.

Sometimes the only clear external marker of dysgraphia is extremely poor handwriting–a trait that is often written off as a product of laziness, inattention, carelessness, or distraction. The act of writing by hand involves many processes, though, including fine motor skills, spatial perception, working memory, coding/decoding symbols (letters) into meaning, language processing, conceptualization, and organization. Dysgraphia can affect any or all of those processes.

Students who have dysgraphia may struggle with any language-related skills or tasks, including attention to detail when writing, struggling to translate ideas into words (or words into ideas), difficulty thinking (or listening) and writing at the same time, or even fine motor skills like tying shoelaces. 

Supports for students with dysgraphia can include:

• Allowing the use of devices in class (especially for notetaking) and in work/exams (such as laptops/tablets/cell phones, recording devices, and speech-to-text software).

• Providing additional time on assignments and tests.

• Offering optional ways to submit work, such as video or audio recordings instead of written work.

• In fields where handwritten work can be important (e.g. mathematics, engineering), provide students with graphic organizers or other visual aids for organizing their work.

Dyslexia

The condition of dyslexia is probably the best known of these four, but with that familiarity comes a great deal of imperfect information. Many people conceptualize dyslexia as seeing words or letters in reverse (such as confusing the letters b and d). While this can be a symptom, more commonly those with dyslexia just see a jumble of letters without immediately even recognizing them, much less reading them. The first few seconds of this video demonstrate how text might appear to a dyslexic reader.

About 7% of people worldwide likely have dyslexia, though up to 20% may have some dyslexic traits. While it is sometimes diagnosed in youth, many children learn coping mechanisms on their own or go undiagnosed for years, often into adulthood. There is also a strong genetic component to dyslexia; a child who has one dyslexic parent is about 30-50% more likely to have the condition him/herself compared to children with no parental incidence of the condition.

Common symptoms of dyslexia include mixing or reversing sounds (like bisghetti instead of spaghetti or hekalopter instead of helicopter), difficulty tying shoelaces, confusing left/right directions, having clear ideas when speaking but having less clarity in writing, and difficulty listening and writing at the same time.

Supportive strategies for students with dyslexia include:

• Allowing students to use text-to-speech software, particularly for required course readings. Selecting readings that have audio versions available is also helpful.

• Offering oral/verbal exams as an alternative to written ones. 

• Providing additional time on assignments/exams to allow for the extra time required to decode language.

• Creating alternative ways to submit work, such as by audio or video.

Learn more from the International Dyslexia Association

Dyspraxia

Sometimes called developmental coordination disorder (DCD), dyspraxia affects motor skills and coordination. About 6% of school-aged children are thought to have dyspraxia. Watch a short video about dyspraxia.

Signs of dyspraxia include clumsiness, poor balance or hand-eye coordination, illegible handwriting, visual perception issues, and difficulty with speech. Secondary symptoms include fatigue, disorganization, and low self-esteem. Students with dyspraxia are likely to be especially uncomfortable when they need to engage in specific physical actions in front of others (such as participating in a theater workshop or sports activity). 

To support students with dyspraxia, you can consider:

• Breaking down projects into small/discrete steps.

• Providing clear and concise directions for assignments or tasks.

• Supporting students’ organizational skills through things like checklists, timers, or reminders.

• Avoiding cluttered spaces.

• Providing regular opportunities for physical movement (with the ability to opt out).

• Allowing students to wear headphones when not communicating directly with others (reducing sensory input can help with students’ proprioception).

Learn more from the Dyspraxia Foundation USA

Additional resources

• Neurodiversity Design System: Guidelines on how to support neurodiverse students by making smart design choices in your learning management system (LMS), like Blackboard. For example, you can see what kinds of fonts are easier for dyslexic students to read—an invaluable tool for instructors!

• “Building Neurodiversity-Inclusive Postsecondary Campuses: Recommendations for Leaders in Higher Education,” published in March 2023 in Autism in Adulthood.

• “A Reflective Analysis on Neurodiversity and Student Wellbeing,” published in 2023 in the Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice. 

• “Neurodivergence Welcome Here,” published in February 2024 in the Journal for Research & Practice in College Teaching. (Disclosure: This was written by Liz Norell!)

• Clouder, L., Karakus, M., Cinotti, A., Ferreyra, M. V., Fierros, G. A., & Rojo, P. (2020). Neurodiversity in higher education: A narrative synthesis. Higher Education, 80(4), 757–778. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00513-6

• Dwyer, P., Mineo, E., Mifsud, K., Lindholm, C., Gurba, A., & Waisman, T. C. (2023). Building neurodiversity-inclusive postsecondary campuses: Recommendations for leaders in Higher Education. Autism in Adulthood, 1(5), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2021.0042