Psychological and clinical research has a long tradition examining cognitive, sensorial and affective difficulties in mathematics, and students with mathematical learning difficulties may require extensive additional teacher resources, curricular adaptation or specific materials. From this starting point, our study group examined a research-based and practice-based agenda focused on the challenges of inclusive mathematics education. The two core ideas we considered were:

  1. 1.

    Teaching mathematics to students with special needs can be a challenging, innovative, and rewarding experience. Importantly, many of the successful strategies identified for working with students with special needs are also useful and effective for all students. We wanted to explore the nature of low-attaining pupils’ experience in the classroom, and the ways in which the teacher can support a student, or inadvertently prevent them from making progress. This included examining the development of formative assessments and effective instructional interventions.

  2. 2.

    Inclusion policies and research studies led us to wonder what kind of education we can provide to prospective and practising teachers, to help them meet the diverse needs of a classroom where there is a wide range of student attainment and abilities, including students with special needs.

Our discussions drew upon the work of the ICME Survey Team, “Assistance of students with mathematical learning difficulties—How can research support practice?” Our four sessions were organized in a way that encouraged a healthy debate and included the description of interesting practices, discussion of meaningful initial research projects and presentation of formal research results.

Our topic is a complex one, and we acknowledged that there are many differences of opinion about the causes of difficulties in mathematics, and issues around how we define and use terms such as ‘inclusion’ and ‘special needs’. We wanted to examine the barriers that prevent children from successfully learning mathematics. These may have been identified as sensory and physical difficulties, cognition & learning difficulties, or emotional and behavioural difficulties. There may also be difficulties that have arisen through disrupted or unsatisfactory educational experiences, perhaps linked with illness or trauma. Our interest was in finding ways of improving these situations, to give children the best chance of making greater progress.

Whilst our major focus was on classroom approaches, we were also interested in considering the contribution of home and family to a child’s mathematical experience, and wanted to explore ways in which this might be strengthened by positive links with school.

The interest of the organizers was to include as many practical situations as possible. Snapshots of teaching practices (videos or descriptions of real classroom episodes) to reflect on during the sessions and enhance discussion were especially welcomed.

We were pleased to have representation from a wide range of countries with varied experience of work in this field.

The Tuesday TSG session chaired by Lourdes Figueiras and Miriam Penteado, included the following contributions: Mutual learning in an inclusive mathematics classroom from Laura Korten, Germany; The challenge of constructing an inclusive school mathematics from Solange Fernandes and Lulu Healy, Brazil; The delaware longitudinal study of fraction learning: Implications for students with mathematics learning difficulties from Nancy Jordan, Ilyse Resnick, Jessica Carrique and Nicole Hansen, USA; and inclusive practices in the teaching of mathematics: early findings from research including children with downs syndrome from Barbara Anne Clarke and Rhonda Faragher, Australia.

Wednesday’s TSG session chaired by Lourdes Figueiras and Jens Holger Lorenz, had the following contributions: Working with children in public care who have difficulties in mathematics: The example of kyle, from Rose Griffiths, United Kingdom; The calcularis learning system: Enhancing individual adaptivity for an inclusive teaching environment, from Michael von Aster, Germany; Response to intervention in mathematics: Research on early prevention of mathematical learning disabilities from Russell Gersten, USA; and PGBM-COMPS math problem-solving program: promoting independent problem solving of students with LD from Yan Ping Xin, Xuan Yang, Ron Tzur, Xiaojun Ma and Joo Young Park, USA.

The Friday TSG session chaired by Karen Karp and Rose Griffiths, covered these contributions: “story-telling tasks on additive relations word problems: The case of MPHO” from Nicky Roberts, South Africa; a novel approach on enabling advanced mathematical communication in absence of sight from Mina Sedaghatjou, Farzad Kooshyar and Stephen Campbell, Canada; and challenging ableism by teaching processes rather than concepts from Rossi DSouza, India.

Useful themed sessions for Oral Communications were held throughout the week. On Tuesday, one group looked at individualized programmes, with contributions from Australia, China and Switzerland. A parallel session contrasted direct instruction with an inquiry approach, led by colleagues from the USA, Germany and France. Later in the day, colleagues from Canada, the USA and Germany began discussions on the teaching of proportional thinking, multiplication, place value and fractions. Friday’s parallel sessions had contributions from Italy, Germany, the UK, the USA and Russia, covering a wide range of topics, including work with children with Down Syndrome, those with ADHD, and examining the ways in which provision for children with special needs is organized. The final session of Oral Communications on Friday, led from Brazil, Mexico, the Netherlands and the UK, concentrated on work with children with hearing or visual impairments.

We finished the week with a TSG session on Saturday, with the following contributions: Behavioural difficulties could come from learning difficulties: Why and how to intervene in math class by Lucie DeBlois, Canada; Collaboration between special and common education for inclusive mathematical education in Brazil by Vera Lucia Capellini and Messias Fialho, Brazil; and embodied multimodal mathematics & A reconceptualization of sensory IMPAIRMENTS by Susan Gerofsky, Canada.