Math in a Birthday Picnic: Latine Caregivers’ Teaching and Play Behaviors in an Everyday Task

• In Event: Children’s Informal STEM Learning Within Family Interactions: Cultural Strengths of Families from Non-Dominant Communities

Abstract

Children develop math skills as they engage in everyday family interactions, whose frequency and nature are culturally grounded. While recent work has begun to explore cultural variations in parent-child math interactions, work with Latine families has rarely examined caregivers’ teaching approaches during these everyday math-related tasks. Previous comparative research in non-math tasks shows that Latine caregivers adopt a directive teaching approach resulting from adherence to cultural values, such as respect and obedience of elders. This teaching approach is often characterized as less sensitive to and restrictive of children’s independence and initiative. However, recent qualitative investigations suggest that Latine mothers combine directiveness with play as a way to enhance children’s engagement during teaching interactions. Moreover, research on teaching behaviors focuses on activities with a single goal, which is not reflective of everyday family experiences which have multiple implicit and explicit learning goals. The present study described Latine caregivers’ teaching approach during a math-related everyday task with implicit and explicit learning goals. Two research questions were asked: (a) what are Latine caregivers' teaching behaviors, and how do these vary across explicit and implicit teaching goals? (b) what role, if at all, does play have in achieving these teaching goals?

Method
Participants were 75 Latine caregivers and their preschool-aged children (Mage = 47 months; SD = 8.00; 53% girls). Forty-five percent of caregivers were born in Mexico and 23% in other Spanish-speaking countries. Caregivers had 11 years of schooling (SD = 3.13). Caregivers were asked to teach their children how to set the table using a set of materials (tablecloth, plates, cups, utensils, napkins, a pretend food). Bilingual researchers videotaped and transcribed interactions through ELAN (Max Planck, 2018) using a standardized transcription system (MacWhinney, 2000). Utterance-level coding identified: (a) verbal teaching strategy (e.g., statements, questions, directives, praise, and corrections), (b) teaching goals (explicit or task completion, and implicit, which included math and socio-cultural knowledge), and (c) presence/absence of pretend play. Reliability was established using 20% of transcripts (K = .90).

Results & Discussion
Preliminary results show that caregivers used primarily a directive teaching approach (i.e., increased use of directives and statements) for both explicit and implicit goals. Nonetheless, caregivers initiated and incorporated pretend play throughout the teaching interaction. It is noteworthy that during play bouts, caregivers maintained their directive teaching style, suggesting that being directive is not invariably less sensitive and restrictive as previously reported. Rather, Latine caregivers incorporated multiple strategies to support children’s engagement and learning during teaching interactions. Additionally, caregivers incorporated play to different extents across the teaching goals, using less pretend play for explicit goals and when scaffolding math knowledge, and more play to scaffold socio-cultural knowledge. Finally, within-group variations in teaching strategies were also found. Caregivers with more exposure to US culture used fewer direct teaching strategies across both implicit and explicit teaching goals, and incorporated more play. Results are discussed in relation to the nuanced ways in which Latine caregivers construct math teaching and learning experiences for their children.

Authors

• Paola Montufar Soria, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Verónica Mesalles, New York University

• Cidney Marie Fernández, New York University

• Gigliana Melzi, New York University