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Parental Involvement and Children’s Math Skills During Transition to Grade 1

Fri, March 24, 8:30 to 10:00am, Salt Palace Convention Center, Floor: 3, Meeting Room 355 A

Abstract

Development of children’s mathematical skills starts early and remains relatively stable across school years (Aunola et al., 2004; Duncan et al., 2007). Although researchers generally recognize parental math-related involvement as an important contributor to the development of children’s math outcomes (Eason et al., 2022; Purpura & Lonigan, 2013), some evidence suggest mixed results on the efficacy of parental math-related involvement, emphasize the reciprocity between parental involvement and children’s math outcomes, and suggest taking children’s developmental stage into account. Consequently, the present study investigated the reciprocal cross-lagged associations between parental involvement in children’s math learning across transition from kindergarten to Grade 1. We asked (1) to what extent parental involvement (parental beliefs, expectations and teaching of mathematics) would predict children’s interest and skills in mathematics, and (2) to what extent children’s interest and skills in mathematics would predict their parental involvement (expectations and frequency of teaching mathematics).

Lithuanian children (n = 245; 51% girls; Mage = 6.79 years, range 6.08–7.33) were followed across three time points: the end of kindergarten (T1), the beginning of Grade 1 (T2), and the end of Grade 1 (T3). At each time point, children solved math tasks—number sequences in kindergarten (Lerkkanen et al., 2006) and addition–subtraction tasks in Grade 1 (Aunola & Räsänen, 2007)—and answered questions about their interest in mathematics (Aunola et al., 2006). On each occasion, parents (n = 245; 92.2% mothers) have answered questionnaires on their expectations for their children’s math learning (Aunola et al., 2002) and the frequency with which they have taught mathematics (Silinskas et al., 2020). In addition, parental beliefs concerning benchmarks that a child needs to achieve in math before entering Grade 1 were assessed in kindergarten (Napoli et al., 2021).

Concerning the first research question, the results showed that parental expectations (but not the frequency of teaching) positively predicted children’s math skills during the transition from kindergarten to Grade 1 (T1–T2). Moreover, parental math teaching (not expectations for math) positively predicted children’s interest in math over the transition. In addition, parental belief about benchmarks that need to be achieved before Grade 1 (T1) positively correlated with kindergarten skills and the frequency of parental teaching. As for the prediction across Grade 1 (T2–T3), only parental expectations positively predicted children’s skills in mathematics.

Concerning the second research question, the results showed that children’s math skills positively predicted their parents’ expectations for math and negatively predicted the frequency of teaching of mathematics. The same was true for both time periods—the transition from kindergarten to Grade 1 (T1–T2) and across Grade 1 (T2–T3).

Taken together, findings emphasize the importance of parental math involvement at home across the transition to Grade 1, as parental beliefs, expectations, and teaching activities in kindergarten were positively related to concurrent and subsequent child motivation and skills. Finding also point to the importance of children’s math skills, as parents seems to adjust their math-related involvement based on children’s math skills across the transition and later in Grade 1.

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