In their study, Wu et al. (2022) aimed to provide insight into parents’ involvement in their children’s math homework and activities during early elementary school. They measured 1) parents’ involvement in math homework and activities, 2) the influence of parents’ self-efficacy on involvement, and 3) the impacts of the first two measures on students’ motivation in math.
To investigate these factors, the researchers conducted a longitudinal study with the parent(s) of 483 students in first and second grade. Data was collected over the course of a year through two waves of 12 daily surveys. The participants were surveyed at the start of the study and once again a year later.
Parents’ involvement. Parents were involved in their children’s homework and activities approximately 80% of the time. In this process, parents had more negative affect (ex: irritated) in the homework context, as compared to the activities context. Interestingly, parents with more education were less affectively positive when helping with homework and activities because they felt greater pressure for their children to do well in math. Importantly, there was a shift in parent involvement from activities to homework in second grade.
Self-efficacy as a resource for parents’ involvement. Parents with higher self-efficacy were more involved in both the homework and activities context. In turn, children were more engaged. They were also more affectively positive and autonomy-supportive (meaning they allowed their children to take initiative and make choices). They were not very controlling because they were confident in their ability to guide their children through the challenges.
Motivation. Parents’ negative emotional affect involvement in homework indicated a decrease in children’s math liking, preferences for challenges, and achievement one year after the initial data collection. However, parents’ negative affect in activities nor positive affect in both contexts were significant enough to affect children’s motivation.
The findings of this study informs EPIC about the possible cause of students’ dislike for math. As we collect data on high school students’ failure stories, we can investigate whether their math anxiety or concept of failure is related to their parents’ early involvement in math.
Retrieve this article for more details: https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.13774.
Reference:
Wu, J., Barger, M.M., Oh, D., Pomerantz, E.M. (2022). Parents’ daily involvement in children’s math homework and activities during early elementary school. Child Development, 93(5), 1347-1364. DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13774.
