Nathalie Lewi-Dumont, Mélissa Arneton, Minna Puustinen How secondary mathematics teachers adapt their practices to students with visual impairment in an inclusive school setting Nathalie Lewi-Dumont, Mélissa Arneton, Minna Puustinen

Introduction France: 11th February 2005 on "equal rights and opportunities, participation and citizenship of people with disabilities” Previously, blind “good” students were included in high schools, rarely before. More students with VI in regular high schools Help seeking and help giving in math for students with special educational needs (SEN)

Students with visual impairment and math Space representation (Hatwell,1966, 1986, 2003) Access to text and images (Tables, charts, figures, lack of textbooks in the appropriate print characters or in Braille)  An overall problem of slowness INS HEA: National Higher Education Institute for Training and Research on Special Needs Education. .

Schooling of secondary students with VI in France (Lewi-Dumont 2011, 2016) Compulsory junior high school (6th to 9th grade) and high school (10th to 12th grade) - Individual inclusion in a regular school (Support Service + IT and /or TA) Regular school with a special resource room (TVI, support service,TA)  - Special class within a special school or a regular school .

Research questions Math: a subject in which regular students most frequently ask for help (Puustinen & al., 2009)  Do secondary math teachers consider that their students with VI have difficulties in that subject? How do they adapt to their SEN?

Methodology Anonymous online questionnaire (36 items) : teachers’ and students’ profiles 41 analysed questionnaires (+ optional comments)

Description of the 41 math teachers 20 women, 21 men Mean age : 42 years old (+/- 9,7) 17 in junior high et 24 in high school Mean experience:16 years (+/- 9,9) Teaching VI : 18 novices (first year) : 23 experienced (among them 16 more than 2 years) 10 had  ”some” training about SEN

Teacher-reported profiles of the students with VI School setting: Full inclusion: 35, Partial inclusion: 6 (students included in math classes) Math achievement: 10% lowest-achieving: 7: 10% highest-achieving: 4; Average level: 28 Visual impairment: Low vision (print): 27 Blindness (Braille): 12

Results No statistical results But many comments (from 40 out of 41 teachers).  qualitative study 3 themes show differences: Teaching experience (general and with VI students) School level (Junior high or high school) - Learning media (print or Braille)

Teaching and visual impairment experience Experience  noticeable observation capabilities of their students Longer, more detailed comments Direct observation of the student (rely less on TA) More self confidence - Knowledge of the student’s possibilities

The students’ school level More comments from high school teachers than from junior high Longer, more precise, more focused on math issues More comments on class preparation and teaching in class

Student’s reading /writing media: print or Braille? At all grade levels, the main difference among the teachers’ comments More comments from teachers of students working in Braille Comments are more precise and more focused on math didactics

Discussion Math teachers seem to adapt to the needs of their students with VI Interested about these students Limitation of questionnaires:  Need for further research, with interviews and observations in the classroom

Bibliographical references Dorison, C. & Lewi-Dumont, N. (Eds.). (2010). Teacher education for inclusion country report, France. http://www.european- agency.org/agency-projects/teacher-education-for-inclusion/country-info Hatwell, Y. (1985). Piagetian reasoning and the blind. New York: AFB. (Originally published in 1966.) Hatwell, Y., Streri, A., & Gentaz, E. (Eds.). (2003).Touching for knowing: Cognitive psychology of haptic manual perception. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishers.

Bibliographical references Lewi-Dumont, N. (2005). Professionalism: Keynote speech. ICEVI European Conference: “Education-aiming for excellence”, 14-18 August 2005, Chemnitz, Germany, Conference report, 165-172. Lewi-Dumont, N. (2009). Blind teen-age students' expectations. Proceedings of the 7th European Conference of the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment (ICEVI), 5-10/07/2009, Dublin.  http://www.icevi-europe.org/dublin2009/#school

Bibliographical references Lewi-Dumont, N. (Dir.). (2016). Enseigner à des élèves aveugles ou malvoyants. Lille: Canopé. Magna, F. (2011). L'enseignement des mathématiques aux élèves déficients visuels. Repères – IREM, n° 84, 5-18. Puustinen, M., Volckaert-Legrier, O., Coquin, D., & Bernicot, J. (2009). An analysis of students’ spontaneous computer-mediated help seeking: A step toward the design of ecologically valid supporting tools. Computers & Education, 53, 1040-1047.

Thank you for your attention And for your questions! nathalielewi@gmail.com