Parents' Beliefs about Children's Math Development and Children's Participation in Math Activities

By S. Sonnenschein, C. Galindo, Shari R. Metzger, Joy A. Thompson, H. Huang, Heather L. J. Lewis. 2012

105 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study explored associations between parents’ beliefs about children’s development and children’s reported math activities at home. Seventy-three parents were interviewed about the frequency of their children’s participation in a broad array of math activities, the importance of children doing math activities at home, how children learn math, parents’ role in their children’s math learning, and parents’ own math skills. Although the sample consisted of African Americans, Chinese, Latino, and Caucasian parents in the United States, the majority were Chinese or Caucasian. Several important findings emerged from this study. Parents’ beliefs about math development and their role in fostering it were significantly related to children’s math activities. There was important variability and relatively limited participation of children in math activities at home. There were age-related differences in children’s engagement in math activities. Chinese and Caucasian parents showed somewhat similar beliefs about how children developed math. Although further research is needed to confirm the findings with a larger sample and to include measures of children’s math competencies, these findings are an important step for developing home-based interventions to facilitate children’s math skills.

Subfields: Education, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e137b6e1f948260840c08224a50723a3f4ce372b

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Citations in the corpus

Math talk during informal learning activities in Head Start families (2015, background): “Numerical activities could also involve the practical use or application of numbers, such as measuring ingredients while cooking or using the remote control (Sonnenschein et al., 2012; Vandermaas-Peeler, Boomgarden, et al., 2012; Vandermaas-Peeler, Ferretti, et al., 2012).”
Decreasing the SES math achievement gap: Initial math proficiency and home learning environments (2015, background): “Taken together, these findings show that there is a need to increase parents’ awareness of the importance of math and ways to foster their children’s math skills (Sonnenschein et al., 2012).”