Associations Between Children's Numeracy Competencies, Mothers' and Fathers' Mathematical Beliefs, and Numeracy Activities at Home

Abstract

Children's numeracy competencies are not only relevant for their academic achievement, but also later in life. The development of early numeracy competencies is influenced by children's learning environment. Here, the home numeracy environment (HNE) and parent's own beliefs about mathematics play an important role for children's numeracy competencies. However, only a few studies explicitly tested these associations separately for mothers and fathers. In our study, we assessed mothers' and fathers' mathematical gender stereotypes, self-efficacy and their beliefs on the importance of mathematical activities at home, and tested their associations with parents' numeracy activities and children's numeracy competencies in a sample of N = 160 children (n = 80 girls) with an average age of M = 59.15 months (SD = 4.05). Both, fathers and mothers regarded boys as being more competent in mathematics than girls. Fathers when compared to mothers reported a greater mathematical self-efficacy. Further, only mothers' self-efficacy was associated with the frequency of numeracy activities with the study child. In contrast, only fathers' beliefs on the importance of mathematics was associated with their numeracy activities which, in turn, predicted children's numeracy competencies. However, the non-invariant constructs and varying results lead to the question whether a revision of existing scales assessing parental beliefs and home numeracy activities is needed to investigate differences of mothers and fathers and their potential associations with children's numeracy outcomes.

Keywords: gender stereotypes; home numeracy environment; importance of mathematical activities at home; numeracy competencies; parental beliefs; self-efficacy.

FIGURE 1

Modified theoretical Model of the associations between parents’ beliefs, their numeracy activities and children’s numeracy competencies. NumC, children’s numeracy competencies; NA, numeracy activities at home; GS, gender stereotypes; SE, self-efficacy; IOMA, importance of mathematical activities at home. Sex, children’s sex; Age, children’s age in month. marko-s, Marko-S; nsf, number sequences forward; nsb, number sequences backward; nk, number knowledge; knr, knowledge of number representation; calc. calculation task. Item description of items 1–19 (see Supplementary Material).

FIGURE 2

Path analysis of the associations between mothers’ and fathers’ beliefs toward mathematics, their numeracy activities at home, and numeracy competencies of the children. NumC, children‘s numeracy competencies; NA, numeracy activities at home; GS, gender stereotypes; SE, self-efficacy; IOMA, importance of mathematical activities at home. Sex, children’s sex; Age, children’s age in month. Black lines indicate significant associations, and dotted gray lines indicate non-significant associations. ^**p < 0.01, n.s., non-significant. Path coefficients for mothers/fathers.