When beliefs matter most: Examining children's math achievement in the context of parental math anxiety. 2021

Alex M Silver, and Leanne Elliott, and Melissa E Libertus
Department of Psychology, Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. Electronic address: ams645@pitt.edu.

A growing body of research suggests that parents' beliefs about and attitudes toward math predict their young children's math skills. However, limited research has examined these factors in conjunction with one another or explored potential mechanisms underlying these associations. In a sample of 114 preschool-aged children and their parents, we examined how parents' beliefs about math and math anxiety together relate to children's math achievement and how parents' practices to support math might explain these associations. We used a range of measures of parental math input, including survey measures of the home numeracy environment as well as observations of number talk. Parents with stronger beliefs about the importance of math tended to have children with more advanced math skills, and parents with math anxiety tended to exacerbate the effects of these beliefs such that children whose math-anxious parents held strong beliefs about math's importance performed best. Furthermore, we found some evidence that parents' math practices may relate to this interaction or to children's math skills, but no single measure of math input mediated the effect of the interaction between parental math anxiety and parental math beliefs on children's math outcomes. Thus, parents' math anxiety differentially relates to children's math performance depending on parents' beliefs about math, but future research is needed to uncover the specific mechanisms through which these processes operate.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D008297 Male Males
D008433 Mathematics The deductive study of shape, quantity, and dependence. (From McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms, 6th ed) Mathematic
D010287 Parent-Child Relations The interactions between parent and child. Parent-Offspring Interaction,Parent Child Relationship,Parent-Child Relationship,Interaction, Parent-Offspring,Parent Child Relations,Parent Child Relationships,Parent Offspring Interaction,Parent-Child Relation,Parent-Child Relationships,Parent-Offspring Interactions,Relation, Parent-Child,Relationship, Parent Child,Relationship, Parent-Child
D010290 Parents Persons functioning as natural, adoptive, or substitute parents. The heading includes the concept of parenthood as well as preparation for becoming a parent. Step-Parents,Parental Age,Parenthood Status,Stepparent,Age, Parental,Ages, Parental,Parent,Parental Ages,Status, Parenthood,Step Parents,Step-Parent,Stepparents
D002675 Child, Preschool A child between the ages of 2 and 5. Children, Preschool,Preschool Child,Preschool Children
D005260 Female Females
D006801 Humans Members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D000076363 Academic Success Level of engagement in educationally purposeful activities, satisfaction, acquisition of desired knowledge, skills, and competencies, persistence and attainment of educational outcomes. Academic Achievement,Academic Achievements,Academic Successes,Achievement, Academic,Achievements, Academic,Success, Academic,Successes, Academic
D001007 Anxiety Feelings or emotions of dread, apprehension, and impending disaster but not disabling as with ANXIETY DISORDERS. Angst,Anxiousness,Hypervigilance,Nervousness,Social Anxiety,Anxieties, Social,Anxiety, Social,Social Anxieties
D001290 Attitude An enduring, learned predisposition to behave in a consistent way toward a given class of objects, or a persistent mental and/or neural state of readiness to react to a certain class of objects, not as they are but as they are conceived to be. Sentiment,Attitudes,Opinions,Opinion,Sentiments

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