Aligning the Construction Zones of Parents and Teachers for Mathematics Reform

Abstract

Three studies investigated homeschool alignment for mathematics reform in the primary grades. In the first study, 42 parents saw videotaped vignettes depicting teaching and learning in mathematics reform classrooms and were interviewed about their beliefs regarding the utility and efficacy of what they saw. Parents endorsed reform classroom practices such as sharing solution strategies, taking children's thinking as a starting point for instruction, and providing indirect forms of teaching assistance during problem solving. Other practices, such as collaborative problem solving and discussion of mathematical concepts, were more controversial. Few parents gave justifications based on an elaborated personal learning theory; instead, their beliefs were reminiscent of disessa's (1993) construct of phenomenological primitives, which posits piecemeal and perhaps inconsistent elements of knowledge. The second study compared the scaffolding of arithmetic word problems provided to 11 children by their parents and teachers. Parents tended to provide much more direct forms of assistance than did teachers. Parental assistance was directed toward managing goals and defining problems; teachers spent more time helping children elaborate and make sense of problems. The third study examined the impact of a pilot program that provided parents with information, examples, and companion homework problems on student achievement. Children of parents who participated in the educational program performed at a higher level on independent measures of problem solving than did children whose parents did not participate.