Parents' representations of their children's mathematics learning in multiethnic primary schools

Abstract

There is a growing concern that governmental calls for parental involvement in children's school mathematics learning have not been underpinned by research. In this article the authors aim to offer a contribution to this debate. Links between children's home and school mathematical practices have been researched in sociocultural studies, but the origins of differences within the same cultural group are not well understood. The authors have explored the notion that parents' representations of school mathematics and associated practices at home may play a part in the development of these differences. This article reports an analysis of interviews with parents of 24 children of Pakistani and White origin enrolled in primary schools in England, including high and low achievers in school mathematics. The extent to which the parents represented their own school mathematics and their child's school mathematics as the ‘same’ or ‘different’ are examined. In addition, ways in which these representations influenced how they tried to support their children's learning of school mathematics are examined. The article concludes with reflections on the implications of the study for education policy.

Acknowledgements

The research reported here was supported by an Economic and Social Research Council grant (R000222381). We are grateful to the parents, the children, the teachers and other staff in the schools for their collaboration in the project, to Tatheer Shamsi for her role in data collection and analysis, Maria MacIntyre for her help in the transcribing of interviews, and to the Project Advisory Group (Helen Abji, Imtiaz Chaudhry, Gerard Duveen, Zafar Khan and Terry Redmayne) for their advice at various stages of the investigation.

Notes

1. All the children involved in the project were British‐born. For the purpose of distinguishing between the two ethnic groups in the report we use ‘White’ for children whose parents were born in the United Kingdom, spoke English as their first language and came from the traditional majority community and ‘Pakistani’ for the children whose parents came to this country from Pakistan and spoke Urdu as their first language.