Parents in Shining ARMOR: Observing Parent-Child Math Activities Using the “Activities Related to Math: Observation Record (ARMOR)”

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

There is a growing body of research highlighting the relationship between the home math environment and early math knowledge and skills among preschoolers (see Zippert & Rittle-Johnson, 2020 for a review), but few studies document the role that parents play in supporting toddlers’ math development (but see Levine, Suriyakham, Rowe, Huttenlocher, & Gunderson, 2010). Children begin to develop an understanding of math concepts well before entering preschool (Xu, Spelke, & Goddard, 2005), and understanding the home math environment for these young children can help to identify areas where parents could benefit from additional guidance to help them support their children’s math development. But there is a distinct lack of observational tools suitable to describe the home math environment for children prior to preschool entry. Most studies rely on parent self-report to document home math activities or record basic numeracy talk in naturalistic settings. Direct observation and documentation have not been widely done of the wide range of math interactions that parents and toddlers can have.

To address this measurement gap, the authors developed an observation tool to be used with parents and their children as young as two years old to describe their math interactions. The tool—the ARMOR (Activities Related to Math: Observation Record)—is a time-sampling observation measure designed to capture whether the parent talks to their child about six early math domains in each of three 3-minute cycles, for a total of nine minutes. The six domains of early math captured are: Numbers, Patterns, Measuring, Shapes, Spatial Awareness, and Operations & Relations. Psychometric analyses suggested three parent-child interaction scales from the measure: interactions related to math overall, interactions related to numbers, and interactions related to non-numbers math activities. We then conducted item-response-theory (IRT) analysis to identify an appropriate model (1-parameter partial credit) and generate IRT scores for use in analysis.

To test this measure, we used it, in conjunction with a parent survey and a broad parent-child interaction tool—Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes (PICCOLO) (Roggman, Cook, Innocenti, Norman, & Christiansen, 2013) in a randomized controlled trial of a parent-child math activity intervention designed to increase parents’ awareness and use of math activities across domains with their two or three year old (N=358 dyads). We found a significant positive effect of the intervention on the measure of overall math activities and on the non-numbers math activities scale, but not on the numbers scale. This means that, when given an opportunity to play with their child during an unstructured observation session, treatment parents spontaneously engaged their children in more math-related activities and in more non-numbers math activities than control parents did. This suggests that the program was successful in showing parents of young children that math is about more than just numbers and counting. Similar results were found using the parent survey. Implications for further development and use of the measure will be discussed.

Authors

• Shannon Keuter, American Institutes for Research - California
  Presenting Author

• Heather Quick, American Institutes for Research - California
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deborah Holtzman, AIR
  Non-Presenting Author