Elizabeth M. Hughes’s research while affiliated with Pennsylvania State University and other places

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are included in the general education classroom more often than ever before. Despite mathematical strengths and early success, these students experience poor outcomes (academic and employment) compared to their typically developing peers. The language of mathematics increases in complexity, use, and expectations as students age. To facilitate the development of mathematical proficiency for students with ASD, teachers can incorporate instructional strategies to support language processing and use in mathematics. This manuscript provides practical advice for teachers who want to support math language for students with ASD in the general education environment including (a) the importance of these supports, (b) specific recommendations, (c) visual and descriptive examples, and (d) additional resources.

Mathematical flexibility is thought to be a critical component of mathematical proficiency, and the term mathematical flexibility has been used by teachers, researchers, and policy makers for over 2 decades. While there seems to be consensus on the importance of mathematical flexibility as a construct, the way it is defined and described is inconsistent. Without a clear and consistent definition of mathematical flexibility it is impossible to develop accurate measures of the construct or to improve instructional strategies to promote its use. Therefore, the purpose of this manuscript was to examine the way mathematical flexibility has been defined, taught, and measured in the literature. We conducted a systematic literature review to identify manuscripts that defined, taught, or measured mathematical flexibility. Using a combination of descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis, articles were coded for themes around definitions, instruction, and measurement. Finally, we looked at connectivity between authorship to examine relationships between citations of how mathematical flexibility was defined.