Relations Between Math Self-Concept, Problem-Solving Strategies, and Math Achievement During Elementary School

• In Event: Understanding Students' Math Self-Concept: Its Relation With Achievement, Development, and Educational Implications

Abstract

Young students’ math self-concept, measured via their self-competence and interest in math during elementary school, predicts their later academic and professional engagement in math-intensive disciplines (Musu-Gillette et al., 2015). Prior work suggests that a concurrent association between math self-concept and math achievement emerges as early as primary school (Cvencek, Kapur, & Meltzoff, 2015), alongside a small gender difference in math self-concept (Lindberg et al., 2013). This early gender difference, with boys reporting greater math self-concept than girls, persists into the secondary school years (Nagy et al., 2010) and may exacerbate gender differences in math achievement (Mejía-Rodríguez et al., 2020). However, less is known about the mechanisms that underlie the association between math self-concept and math achievement during the first years of formal schooling or about the implications of early gender differences in math self-concept for achievement.

In the present study, we consider one potential gender-linked mediator of this association, namely bold problem-solving. According to Lubienski and colleagues (2021), individuals engage in bold problem-solving when they approach novel math problems in innovative ways that they have not been explicitly taught. The authors found that such bold approaches were advantageous for math performance by adolescence, were associated with greater confidence at that age, and were more often displayed by adolescent boys than girls (Lubienski et al., 2021). The current research explores whether bold problem-solving may mediate the relation between math self-concept and math achievement during elementary school, offering insight into the mechanisms that underpin this relation early in development.

We examined children’s math self-concept (i.e., math competence beliefs, math interest), bold problem-solving strategies, and math achievement in a sample of 270 students in kindergarten through grade 6. We found positive relations between students’ math competence beliefs, math interest, and bold problem-solving strategies (rs > .27) that exhibited developmental stability across elementary school. Specifically, students with greater math competence beliefs reported greater math interest and greater tendencies to engage in bold problem-solving. Moreover, math competence beliefs and children’s problem-solving strategies, but not math interest, were significantly associated with children’s math achievement across this developmental period (rs > .20). Follow-up analyses suggested that the relation between math competence beliefs and math achievement was fully mediated by children’s problem-solving strategies (see Figure 1). That is, children who perceived themselves as more competent in math were more likely to engage in bold problem-solving when faced with novel math problems, and as a result, exhibited greater math achievement. Analyses further indicated that gender differences in problem-solving strategies (with boys engaging in more bold problem-solving) related to gender differences in children’s competence beliefs, even when controlling for other gender-linked math outcomes (e.g., math anxiety). These results suggest that students’ math self-concept, and particularly the competence facet of math self-concept, relate to their math achievement via its influence on their problem-solving strategies. Furthermore, early gender differences in these important problem-solving strategies may be shaped by gender differences in students’ emerging math self-concept.

Authors

• Jillian Lauer, New York University

• Andrei Cimpian