Building a Bridge between Measurement and Latine Families: The Case of the Home Numeracy Environment

• In Event: The Home Learning Environment: Where Are We Now?

Abstract

Introduction: The Home Numeracy Environment (HNE) is an essential factor that explains children's numeracy development. Research in this field has been developed mostly focused on monolingual English-speaking families. More recent studies have analyzed this construct for Latine families using existing HNE measures. However, the existing HNE scales have not taken into consideration cultural differences that contextualize the home environment (Kung et al., 2020), and using those measures in more diverse samples might provide biased results from a deficit perspective. Given the growth of the Latine population in the U.S. and the importance of the HNE domain to explain monolingual children’s early numeracy skills, there was an urgent need to understand how Latine families foster their children’s numeracy skills. Identifying and recognizing Latine families’ funds of knowledge related to their HNE is essential to embracing those experiences and creating a culturally contextualized measure.

Method: We used a sequential mixed methods design (see Table 1) to understand the HNE of Latine families living in the U.S. through semi-structured interviews and then develop a culturally contextualized HNE scale from the findings of the interviews (i.e., inductive approach) and previous empirical research (i.e., deductive approach). Two research questions guided the study:
What are the common and diverse views related to the HNE for Latine families with young children in the U.S.?
What is the measurement structure of a newly developed HNE scale for Latine families?

Results: In terms of Latine parents’ common views related to the HNE, the interviews findings highlight the importance of numeracy and the view that numeracy is everywhere and in everyday interactions with their children. An example of this is in family routines, household chores, and during cooking. Latine parents tend to feel confident about informally supporting their children’s numeracy skills. However, this emotion might be temporary: Most parents mentioned that they now felt confident interacting with their children because they talked about basic numeracy concepts; however, they recognized a feeling of anxiety when thinking about when their children start to learn more complex concepts.

The HNE scale for Latine families consists of 30 items. After conducting exploratory factor analysis (EFA) three factors were identified: Parents-Child Interactions, Parents’ Math Anxiety, and Math Beliefs. To further explore the HNE scale for Latine families, we analyzed item-level information using IRT to assess the possible exclusion of additional items from the scale. However, all items showed a high variation of response across the range of theta values and the scale included items with low and high difficulty parameters. Thus, we did not remove any additional items from the scale.

Conclusion: This work enriches the body of knowledge regarding the HNE, not only because of the focus on Latine families but also because of the use of inductive and deductive approaches, the inclusion of a group of experts to validate the scale, and procedures such as IRT to assess items’ performance on the scale. This study updates and increases the cultural relevance of an important measure, as it is the HNE.

Authors

• Jimena Cosso, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Presenting Author

• David James Purpura, Purdue University, West Lafayette

• Hirokazu Yoshikawa, New York University