SYNOPSIS

Objective. This study examined parental characteristics that related to children’s early math learning. Specifically, we examined how parents engage in math activities with their children in the home and how their practices were informed by parents’ experiences with and perceptions of math. Design. Using a mixed-methods design, we first quantitatively examined associations between two parental characteristics, past math experiences and current math anxiety, and various types of math activities to understand factors that predict home math engagement in a sample of 34 parents. We then conducted semi-structured interviews with a sample of 15 parents to identify additional factors that relate to parents’ engagement in math activities with their young children. Results. We found that parents’ math anxiety predicted their reports of math activity frequency in the home, controlling for demographics as well as prior measures of math enrichment. Through qualitative analyses, we demonstrated considerable variability in the way that math activities are implemented and described by parents and identify a novel theoretical construct – parents’ goals for children’s math learning – which relates to parents’ practices. Conclusions. These results suggest that survey measures may fail to capture important heterogeneity in parents’ practices and that additional predictors such as parental goals should be explored in future quantitative research.

概要

目标。这项研究检查了与儿童早期数学学习有关的父母特征。具体而言，我们研究了父母如何与子女在家中进行数学活动，以及父母的数学经验和看法如何为他们的行为提供了信息。设计。使用混合方法设计，我们首先定量检查了两个父母特征，过去的数学经验和当前的数学焦虑以及各种类型的数学活动之间的关联，以了解在34位父母的样本中预测家庭数学参与程度的因素。然后，我们对15名父母进行了抽样的半结构化访谈，以确定与父母与幼儿进行数学活动有关的其他因素。结果。我们发现，父母的数学焦虑可以预测他们在家中数学活动频率的报告，从而控制人口统计学以及对数学丰富度的先前度量。通过定性分析，我们证明了家长实施和描述数学活动的方式存在很大的差异，并确定了一种新颖的理论构架-父母对儿童数学学习的目标-与父母的实践有关。结论。这些结果表明，调查措施可能无法捕捉父母行为中的重要异质性，并且在未来的定量研究中应探索其他预测因素，例如父母目标。