Poster #70 - Examining Children's Early Numeracy Skills in Relation to Parent Attitudes, Expectations, and Practices

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Children’s early numeracy skills are strong predictors of later academic success (Duncan et al., 2007). Indeed, skills at school entry are associated with performance at the end of the first and second grades, suggesting that early quantitative experiences at home provide a foundation for mathematical learning in school (Jordan, Kaplan, Locuniak, & Ramineni, 2007; Lefevre, Chant, Skwarchuk, Fast, Kamawar, & Bisanz, 2009). In this investigation, we utilize Skwarchuk, Sowinski, & Lefevre’s (2014) home numeracy model to examine the association between parents’ (1) attitudes towards math, (2) academic expectations for their children, and (3) reports of direct and indirect numeracy activities in the home, and children’s performance on mathematics tasks at the beginning of kindergarten. The data reported here are drawn from a sample of 68 kindergartners and their parents during the first year of a longitudinal investigation of children’s cognitive and academic skills across the first three years of elementary school.

Parents completed a questionnaire that included Likert-scale items that measured their attitudes toward mathematics and their expectations for their children’s mathematics skills, as well as the frequency with which they engaged in a variety of direct (e.g., identifying written numbers) and indirect (e.g., measuring ingredients when cooking) mathematical practices at home. The speed and accuracy of children’s computational skills were assessed at the beginning of kindergarten using the Calculation and Math Fluency subscales of the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement as well as an addition task adapted from Siegler and Jenkins (1989).

Overall, parents reported a neutral attitude toward mathematics (M = 2.70) and rated a list of academic benchmarks as important achievements prior to first grade (M = 2.49) (See Tables 1 and 2). On average parents reported engaging in mathematical practices at home about once a week. A series of regression analyses revealed that parents’ attitudes were a strong predictor of their academic expectations (standardized regression coefficient = .52, p < .01) and their academic expectations were a moderate predictor of their direct (standardized regression coefficient = .35, p < .01) and indirect math practices (standardized regression coefficient = .27, p < .05).

At kindergarten entry, parents’ attitudes toward mathematics were significantly associated with children’s mathematics achievement, as indexed by the WJ-IV Calculation subscale and the addition task (standardized regression coefficients =.23 - .30, p < .05). In addition, parents’ indirect (but not direct) math practices were associated with children’s performance on the WJ-IV Calculation and Math Fluency subscales and children’s accuracy on the addition task (standardized regression coefficients = .28 - .39, p < .05). Parents’ academic expectations did not predict children’s performance on any measure. Efforts to code children’s strategy use are ongoing and will also be related to aspects of the home environment.

These findings (1) highlight a pattern of associations among parents’ attitudes, expectations, and practices that contribute to children’s mathematics skills at school entry and (2) suggest that additional work is needed to further examine malleable aspects of parent characteristics that are associated with children’s early numeracy skills.

Authors

• Kesha N Hudson, UNC-Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Jennifer L Coffman, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura B. Hughes, UNC-Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Brianna A Ladd, UNC-Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Peter A. Ornstein, UNC-Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author