Parent Predictors of the Home Math Environment and Associations With Toddlers’ Math Skills

• In Event: Broadening Our Understanding of Early Math Support at Home and at School

Abstract

Home math engagement predicts math performance in childhood [17]. Previous work has investigated parental predictors of home math broadly, yet it remains understudied whether similar factors predict toddlers’ home environment, and if home math experiences predict toddlers’ math skills. We asked how parents’ math beliefs, attitudes, and experiences predict their home math engagement and toddlers’ number and spatial skills. This work is rooted in sociocultural theory (e.g., [18, 19]), investigating how social interactions influence children’s math skills and experiences, and Expectancy-Value framework [20], examining how parents’ beliefs, attitudes, and experiences shape their math engagement behaviors.
Toddlers aged 2-3 years (M=2.66yrs, SD=0.22yrs) from economically diverse families participated with one parent (N=189). Families were mailed materials and children completed number and spatial assessments during a video call with researchers (Figure 1). Number tasks involved asking toddlers to count out loud, with scores as the highest number to which they correctly counted. We also asked toddlers to create sets of different sizes (“Can you give the puppet three?”; [21]). Scores were the highest number at which toddlers successfully created the set twice. Finally, we presented two images of identical objects in different quantities and asked toddlers to point to one (“Which has four?”; [22]), with scores as the percentage correct. Scores from the three numeracy tasks were standardized and averaged to create a composite. We assessed spatial skills by presenting toddlers with images of a tiger and cups and asking them to point to the tiger in a specific spatial relationship to the cups (e.g., “Where is Tiger between the cups?”; [23]). Scores were the percentage correct. Additionally, parents reported home learning activities (number and spatial activity frequency). We measured parents’ math beliefs via importance of benchmarks (i.e., importance for children to achieve math benchmarks such as “Counting to 10” prior to kindergarten; [24]) and math growth mindset (how much they agree that “Almost any child can excel in math if they try hard enough”). Parents’ math attitudes (assessing math anxiety via agreement with statements such as “Mathematics makes me uncomfortable and nervous”; [25]) and experiences with math (previously completed math coursework) were also measured.
We tested whether parents’ math beliefs (importance of benchmarks and math growth mindset), attitudes (math anxiety), and experiences (previous coursework) predicted children’s math skills via home learning activities. All parent factors predicted home number activities (Table 6). Parents who placed more importance on reaching math benchmarks, with greater math growth mindset, with more math anxiety, and who had taken more math classes engaged in more frequent number activities. Furthermore, parents’ number activities predicted toddlers’ number skills. Parents’ math beliefs, attitudes, and experiences all had positive indirect effects on toddlers’ number skills, that operated through parent factors’ associations with number activities (Table 7). However, no parent factors predicted spatial activity frequency, and spatial activities did not predict toddlers’ spatial skills. Altogether, results suggest that even at very young ages, parent factors shape the home environment and toddlers’ numeracy skills, but we were unable to detect associations for spatial skills.

Authors

• Alex M. Silver, University of Pittsburgh

• Portia Miller, University of Pittsburgh

• Heather J. Bachman, University of Pittsburgh

• Melissa Libertus, University of Pittsburgh

• Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, University of Pittsburgh