Parent Math Anxiety and Teaching Self-Efficacy Predict Their Expectations and Value Regarding Children’s Math Achievement

• In Event: Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

Parents’ expectations about their children’s academic success and how much value they place on this success have a lasting effect on children’s achievement (e.g., Hill & Tyson, 2009). This is true both more generally for academic achievement as well as for achievement in specific domains like mathematics (e.g., Aunola et al., 2003). However, it is not clear what factors contribute to the development of parents’ expectations and values (EV) about their children’s math achievement. In the current study, we explore how different factors relate to parent EV for their child’s math achievement.

Data were collected from 64 children and their parents. We specifically targeted parents of preschoolers, kindergarteners, and 1st graders because we were interested in understanding the factors that predict parent EV as children begin formal schooling. Children completed a battery of measures that included their math achievement (WJ Applied Problems). Parents also completed a math ability measure (WJ Math Fluency) and a survey measuring their academic attitudes and beliefs, including their math and reading anxiety, their self-efficacy about supporting their child’s math and reading development, and their math EV for their child.

We ran a multiple regression examining the factors that predict parent math EV about their child’s math achievement. Predictors included: children’s math achievement, grade level, parents’ own math skill, parents’ math anxiety, and parents’ self-efficacy in supporting their child’s math learning. Both parent math anxiety (b=-0.37, p=0.02) and self-efficacy for supporting children’s math learning were significant predictors (b=0.36, p<0.01) of parent EV but none of the other predictors were significant (Table 1).

We also ran a multiple regression analysis examining the domain specificity of the significant predictors by including parent math and reading efficacy and parent math and reading anxiety as predictors of parent math EV. The results of this analysis show that math self-efficacy (b=0.31, p=0.05) and math anxiety (b=-0.45, p = .01) are still significant predictors but parent reading efficacy and anxiety are not (Table 2).

At least for parents of young children, their EV regarding their child’s math achievement appears to be more related to their attitudes regarding their efficacy to teach their math and to their math anxiety, rather than being related to their child’s or their own math ability. Understanding the origins of parents’ EV about their child’s math learning in the early academic years has important implications for future interventions since previous work has shown that this factor predicts children’s achievement over time. Existing research suggests that parent self-efficacy for teaching math may be more malleable than their math anxiety, but intervention studies are needed to examine whether this is the case, and whether changing parent attitudes results in higher math achievement for children.

Authors

• Cristina Carrazza, NORC at the University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Talia Berkowitz, Wesleyan University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lisa Rosen, Texas Woman's University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dario Cvencek, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author

• Andrew N Meltzoff, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Cohen Levine, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author