Specificity of the Relation Between Parental Beliefs, Home Activities, and Children's Math Skills

• In Event: 2-076 - Supporting Children’s Early Mathematics Learning: Understanding the Role of the Home Environment

Integrative Statement

A key aspect of early math learning is the mastery of symbolic number skills providing a foundation for learning formal mathematics. Children begin acquiring basic components of symbolic number knowledge – number identification and numerical magnitude understanding –prior to formal schooling, supported by exposure to numbers and math-relevant activities at home. The present study investigated the growth of children’s symbolic number skills as a function of parental beliefs and activities during preschool.

Previous studies showed that math-related home practices varied in the extent to which they were decontextualized versus embedded in daily activities (LeFevre et al., 2009). Accordingly, the present study distinguished between formal math activities (where learning occurs as an abstract decontextualized exercise, e.g., practicing number writing) and informal math activities (where math is embedded in the context of daily tasks, e.g., measuring ingredients when cooking). This study tested the hypothesis that formal activities may be particularly effective for teaching “formal” math skills (e.g., number identification); whereas informal activities, which often involve linking numbers to quantities, support conceptual understanding of numerical magnitude.

Participants: 98 children (52% girls) recruited from preschools in Moscow, Russia, and their parents. Child testing was conducted at two time points: end of preschool and end of kindergarten.

Parental questionnaires included two sections. One section assessed the frequency of parent-child activities during preschool: 6 formal-activity items and 6 informal-activity items. For each item, parents indicated how frequently they engaged children in the activity described on a scale from 1 (very rarely) to 6 (more than once a day). The other section concerned parental beliefs: 6 items assessed parents’ views on the importance of school preparation (e.g., “The child who is ready for school should be able to solve simple math problems”); 6 items assessed math value (e.g., “Math is important in everyday life”); and 6 items assessed parents’ math self-efficacy (e.g., “It was easy for me to get good grades in math”). For each item, parents indicated how strongly they agreed with the stated belief on the scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree).

Child assessments. Number Identification task included 30 single-digit and double-digit written numerals; the child had to read each number aloud. Numerical Magnitude task included 18 number pairs (the child had to identify the bigger number in each pair) and 18 number triads (the child had to identify which of the two answer choices was closest to the target number).

Results (see Figures). Structural equation modeling revealed that (1) formal activities predicted number identification skills, but not numerical magnitude understanding, whereas informal activities predicted understanding of numerical magnitude but not number identification; (2) formal activities were predicted by the belief about the importance of school preparation and math value; whereas, frequency of informal activities was predicted by math self-efficacy and math value.

The results highlight the specificity of the effects of parental input, revealing unique links between parental beliefs/ activities and child outcomes. These findings could guide intervention work targeting parental beliefs and activities relevant to specific math skills.

Authors

• Marina Vasilyeva, Boston College
  Presenting Author

• Elida V. Laski, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Aleksander Veraksa, Faculty of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Darya Bukhalenkova, Moscow State University
  Non-Presenting Author