Poster #44 - Children’s Numeracy Engagement During Interactions With Parents: Does it Matter for Their Later Math Adjustment?

• In Event: Poster Session 01

Abstract

Parent-child interaction is an important context for children’s socialization, leading to research on the link between parents’ practices and children’s responses during these interactions (e.g., Moorman & Pomerantz, 2008; Ravindran et al., 2022). In the context of math learning, research has examined numeracy parenting and children’s numeracy engagement (e.g., Vandermaas-Peeler et al., 2012; Mendelsohn et al., 2022). Much of this work is motivated by the assumption that numeracy parenting contributes to children’s math learning by promoting children’s numeracy engagement in the context of parent-child interactions. There has been little examination, however, of the predictive effects of children’s numeracy engagement in the context of parent-child interactions on children’s later math adjustment (e.g., motivation and achievement).

From a sociocultural perspective (Vygotsky, 1978), children’s learning is facilitated by parents’ scaffolding efforts in their interactions with children. Children’s engagement in the context of this scaffolding may help them gradually gain competence in solving challenging problems (e.g., Mattanah et al., 2005), thereby enhancing their math achievement. It may also be that children’s numeracy engagement and the ensuing competence makes them feel more comfortable in the numeracy context, which may heighten their math confidence and dampen their math anxiety making them more willing to take on challenging math. In the current study, we evaluated the implications of the frequency and level of children’s numeracy engagement while interacting with their parents for children’s math anxiety, preference for math challenge, and math achievement over time.

Parents (N = 529; 80% mothers; 33% with less than a college degree; 65% white, 20% Black) and their young elementary school children (Mage = 7.49 years; 49% girls) were video recorded for 12 min during a challenging numeracy activity involving adding coins. The frequency and level of children’s engagement of numeracy strategies were coded at each 1-min interval (see Table 1); composite scores were taken for each type of engagement across the 12 min. At this time and a year later, children reported their math anxiety (e.g., “How do you feel when you have to solve 27+15?”; αs > .85), their preference for math challenge was measured by taking the proportion of hard (vs. easy) problems on which they chose to work, and their math achievement was assessed with the Woodcock-Johnson III Applied Problems subtest.

Multiple linear regression models with children’s grade and parents’ education as covariates indicated that children’s engagement of advanced numeracy strategies predicted children’s dampened math anxiety, as well as increased preference for challenge and achievement, over and above the frequency of their engagement and prior math adjustment (see Table 2), ps < .05. The frequency of children’s numeracy engagement predicted increased math achievement, p < .05), but not the other dimensions of their math adjustment, over time. Analyses adjusting for parenting coded during the interaction (e.g., parents’ prompts and autonomy support) indicated that parenting did not account for the effects of the level of children’s engagement. The findings suggest children’s advanced numeracy engagement may be a critical first step toward children’s enhanced math motivation and achievement over time.

Authors

• Jiawen Wu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Dajung Oh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Daniel C. Hyde, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Eva Pomerantz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign