The focus of this paper is the conceptualisation of students in special educationalneeds in mathematics (SEM students) in the research fields of mathematics andspecial education. A difference between fields regarding the perspectives takenon the SEM student is obvious in the reviewed articles. Those in the specialeducational field were individual oriented in their view of the difficulties, whilstreviewed articles from the field of mathematics education more often discusssocio-cultural settings. The content in the selected 28 articles reveals that theoverall conceptualisation of SEM student has to do with the social construct ofthe SEM student, as well as with students’ experiences, affects, andprerequisites; with the specific training methods or interventions applied; withspecial areas in the subject of mathematics; with special groups of students; andwith teachers’ knowledge about all these factors.