Perceived parental influence and students' dispositions to study mathematically-demanding courses in Higher Education

Abstract

We explore the influence of family on adolescent students' mathematical habitus by investigating the association between students' perceptions of parental influence and their dispositions towards mathematics. A construct measuring ‘perceived parental influence’ was validated using Rasch methodology on data from 563 Cypriot students on ‘core’ and ‘advanced’ mathematics pre-university courses, and was then used to predict students' dispositions towards future study of mathematically-demanding courses at university. In most of the regression models, perceived parental influence was not associated significantly with students' dispositions towards mathematics, when other variables were included in the models. However, further statistical analysis showed that perceived parental influence is mediated by (i) the mathematics course students are studying and (ii) their mathematical inclination. We suggest that family influences on students' dispositions are significantly accounted for by students' prior choice of mathematics course and the family's inculcation of their mathematical inclination; these are important factors influencing university choices.

Keywords:

• parental influence
• mathematical dispositions
• choices of advanced mathematics

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the British Congress of Mathematics Education (BCME7) in Manchester, April 2010 (Kleanthous and Williams, 2010). The School of Education, University of Manchester, and the A.G. Leventis Foundation sponsored the first author's doctoral studies. The second author acknowledges the support of ESRC grant RES-062-23-1213.

Notes

1. The scale for measuring SES was adopted from the Pedagogical Institute in Cyprus (Ministry of Education). It is a common scale used for measuring SES in Cyprus because there is no equivalent of free school meals (FSM) allowance in Cyprus. The parents’ occupations were grouped into three categories low, medium and high SES, according to parents’ education and occupation. In our sample, 188 parents were categorised as low SES based on their occupation, 302 parents were categorised as medium SES, 67 parents as high SES and 6 parents as missing data. The SES of the sample is representative of the general population of Cyprus.

2. The educational system in Cyprus allows students to choose between two courses in mathematics at the lyceum, namely Advanced Mathematics or Core Mathematics. There is no streaming or setting of students, although students who aim to study mathematically demanding courses in Higher Education should attend Advanced Mathematics in order to take the national university entry exams for these courses.

3. All public upper secondary schools (lyceums) in Cyprus use the same textbook in mathematics which is distributed by the Ministry of Education free of charge to all schools.

4. The students who participated in this study were told that the aim of the study was to investigate parental influence on their choices for future HE studies, but the focus on mathematics was not emphasised.

5. It is quite common for Cypriot students who apply to English universities to take the GCSE exam, which is a pre-requisite for studying at English universities.

6. This is only the student's perception. English universities do not insist on having a GCSE in mathematics for admission.

7. These are standardised coefficients.