Why and How Parents Promote Math Learning with their Young Children: A Mixed-Methods Investigation

SYNOPSIS

Objective. This study examined parental characteristics that related to children’s early math learning. Specifically, we examined how parents engage in math activities with their children in the home and how their practices were informed by parents’ experiences with and perceptions of math. Design. Using a mixed-methods design, we first quantitatively examined associations between two parental characteristics, past math experiences and current math anxiety, and various types of math activities to understand factors that predict home math engagement in a sample of 34 parents. We then conducted semi-structured interviews with a sample of 15 parents to identify additional factors that relate to parents’ engagement in math activities with their young children. Results. We found that parents’ math anxiety predicted their reports of math activity frequency in the home, controlling for demographics as well as prior measures of math enrichment. Through qualitative analyses, we demonstrated considerable variability in the way that math activities are implemented and described by parents and identify a novel theoretical construct – parents’ goals for children’s math learning – which relates to parents’ practices. Conclusions. These results suggest that survey measures may fail to capture important heterogeneity in parents’ practices and that additional predictors such as parental goals should be explored in future quantitative research.

ADDRESSES AND AFFILIATIONS

Leanne Elliott, 3939 O’Hara St, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, 412-624-7085, [email protected]. Heather J. Bachman is at the University of Pittsburgh. Daphne A. Henry is at Boston College.

ARTICLE INFORMATION

Conflict of Interest Disclosures

Each author signed a form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. No authors reported any financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the work described.

Ethical Principles

The authors affirm having followed professional ethical guidelines in preparing this work. These guidelines include obtaining informed consent from human participants, maintaining ethical treatment and respect for the rights of human or animal participants, and ensuring the privacy of participants and their data, such as ensuring that individual participants cannot be identified in reported results or from publicly available original or archival data.

Role of the Funders/sponsors

None of the funders or sponsors of the larger intervention program described in the text had any role in design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Jennifer Russell for providing guidance for the qualitative analyses and feedback on early drafts of this manuscript. The content of the manuscript is solely the responsibility of the authors. Additionally, we thank all the parents who participated in this research and our community partners, especially Cathy Cook and Jennifer Stancil, for their help with this project.

Additional information

Funding

The authors have no external funding to report for this study.