Parents’ Role in Children’s Numeracy Development: A Focus on Numeracy Gesturing and Talk

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

It is clear parents play a role in children’s learning, but the role is still not fully understood in the numeracy context (e.g., Mutaf-Yildiz et al., 2020). This symposium brings together cutting-edge research focused on identifying how to best support children’s numeracy learning before and just after children enter elementary school, which may be important phases of development in setting the foundation for children’s later math learning. The four presentations report on research using observational methods embedded in a variety of designs (e.g., longitudinal and experimental) to identify effective numeracy parenting practices, with attention to optimizing contexts.

The first two presentations focus on parents’ numeracy gesturing. One examines the predictive significance of such gesturing among parents and children for children’s later number word production. The other presentation provides evidence for an intervention with families to increase parents’ and children’s numeracy gesturing. The second two presentations focus on parents’ numeracy talk. One examines how attributes of parents and children, such as their math anxiety, vary with the quantity of parents’ math talk. The other evaluates the effect of the level and structure of parents’ numeracy talk, as well as the qualitative nature (e.g., autonomy support) of the parent-child interaction on children’s subsequent numeracy engagement over the course of the interaction.

Together the four presentations suggest both parents’ numeracy gesturing and talk are important in setting the foundation for children’s numeracy learning. Going beyond prior research the presentations identify particularly effective dimensions of such parenting along with optimizing contexts.

Sub Unit

• Education, Schooling

Chair

• Jiawen Wu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Individual Presentations

• The Role of Spontaneous Iconic Number Gestures in Children’s Home Environment - Presenting Author: Madeleine Oswald, University of Chicago; Susan Cohen Levine, University of Chicago

• Helping Hands: An Intervention to Increase Families’ Gesture use During Informal Math Tasks - Presenting Author: Raychel Barkin, University of Maryland - College Park; Gillian Grose, University of Maryland - College Park; Neela Krishnasamy, University of Maryland, College Park; Geetha B. Ramani, University of Maryland - College Park

• “How Many Did You Get?”: The Role of Parent-Child Factors in Math Talk During Play - Presenting Author: Mary DePascale, Boston College; Geetha B. Ramani, University of Maryland - College Park

• Numeracy Parenting Practices and Children’s Numeracy Engagement: Which Practices Matter? - Presenting Author: Jiawen Wu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; 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