Do you wonder about the wisdom of sending math homework home? Have you ever had a sneaky suspicion that parents may actually not be helping their kids learn math?
Well, now there’s evidence that supports your caution.
Research: Do Parents Help, or Hinder Their Kids’ Math Learning?
If you have any interest in helping kids with their math learning, I urge you to watch the video, then go and read this article:
- Psychological Science: Intergenerational Effects of Parents’ Math Anxiety on Children’s Math Achievement and Anxiety
Briefly, the findings of this year-long research using children in grades 1 and 2 and their parents were:
- Parents who reported math anxiety themselves, and who helped their children with math homework resulted in children who:
- were more anxious about math themselves
- learned less math over the year
- Reading scores were not affected
- Parents who did not help with math homework had no significant effect
This is a hugely important set of findings. I believe all K-6 math teachers should address the issues here, for the sake of their students’ learning.
Suggestions for Every K-6 Math Teacher:
- Don’t set math homework that is likely to cause stress or anxiety in parents who themselves are not confident in math
- Talk to parents about the messages they send (often unwittingly) to their children about math and math learning
- Make suggestions to parents about low-stress ways to help their kids with math
- Point out everyday activities that parents could use as springboards for incidental math conversations:
- Shopping
- Cooking
- Budgeting
- Deciding what to buy
- Keeping track of sports scores, race times, etc.
- Playing board games and dice games
- Urge parents to let their children know that they believe in their children’s future success in math and to talk positively about how useful math is to all adults
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So true! We also know that a mother saying to her female child that she wasn’t good at mathematics Will result in an immediate decline in the female child’s results in maths.
Absolutely. I feel very strongly about this topic: attitude towards the subject and towards one’s own ability to do math make a massive difference to a child’s results. Thanks again for commenting, Bob.