Measuring the Home Math Environment in the Toddler Years: A Multimethod Approach

• In Event: 1-2-3! Supporting children's numeracy skills in families and schools

Abstract

Early mathematics skills lay the foundation for subsequent academic trajectories (Duncan et al., 2007; Jordan, Kaplan, Locuniak, & Ramineni, 2007; Jordan, Kaplan, Ramineni, & Locuniak, 2009). These skills, including things like counting, recognition of quantities, and mental rotation, emerge during the toddler years when the bulk of toddlers’ interactions occur in the home environment. A growing body of research focused on the home math environment (HME) demonstrates that preschoolers’ and kindergarteners’ exposure to number and spatial concepts at home positively predicts math skills (Daucourt et al., 2021; Elliott & Bachman, 2018; Hornburg et al., 2021). But there are very few studies of HME during toddlerhood.

HME includes both talk about math concepts and engagement in math activities (Hornburg et al., 2021). And while talk about math concepts is likely to occur more frequently during activities that are explicitly math-related, conversations about number and spatial concepts can occur in everyday interactions and activities as well (Anderson et al., 2004; Pruden & Levine, 2017; Susperreguy & Davis-Kean, 2016; Thippana et al., 2020). As such, frequencies of math talk and math activities reflect distinct components of the overall HME (see Hornburg et al., 2021; Mutaf Yildiz et al., 2018; Thippana et al., 2020). For example, our own work with preschoolers reveals little evidence of correlations between the frequencies of parents’ spatial and number talk and their reported spatial and number activities, either through survey measures or time diaries (Elliott et al., 2020).

In this study, we examine different measures of HME among toddlers, including surveys of math activity frequency, time diary interviews of math diversity, and structured observations of math talk, to assess how these measures relate to one another. We compare measures of parent-child math activities, based on the frequency of specific activities or the diversity of different activities in which children engaged, and measures of how much parents talk about math during semi-structured interactions with their children. To do so, we use data from the Parents Promoting Early Learning (PPEL) study, a longitudinal study of 157 parents and their toddlers (44% boys) aimed at studying factors and experiences that bolster early math learning in toddlerhood. Children in this study were on average 2 years and 7.86 months old (SD = 2.47 months), ranging from 2 years and 4 months to 3 years 3 months of age. Multimethod assessments of HME were derived from questionnaires, time diary interviews, and semi-structured observations.

Preliminary findings in Table 1 and 2 show that the diversity and frequency of parent-child math activities, drawn from traditional surveys and time diary interviews, are moderately intercorrelated. In contrast, measures of math talk drawn from direct observations of parent-child interactions seem to reflect a separate, independent component of HME. For example, parents who used more spatial talk with their children during a puzzle activity were not significantly more likely to engage in spatial activities at home. As such, we argue that engaging in math activities and talking about math reflect two unique methods of providing toddlers with opportunities to learn math in the early HME.

Authors

• Portia Miller, University of Pittsburgh

• Leanne Elliott, University of Pittsburgh

• Tamara Podvysotska, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Linsah Coulanges, University of Pittsburgh

• Chelsea R Ptak, University of Pittsburgh

• Shirley Duong, University of Pittsburgh

• Danielle S Fox, University of Pittsburgh

• Jorge Manuel Carvalho Pereira, University of Pittsburgh

• Heather J. Bachman, University of Pittsburgh

• Melissa E Libertus, University of Pittsburgh

• Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, University of Pittsburgh