Conceptualizing the Factor Structure of Parents’ Math Anxiety and Associations with Children’s Mathematics Skills

There is a growing literature examining the association between parents’ math anxiety and children’s mathematics skills. Previous research has considered parents’ math anxiety as a unidimensional construct that primarily focused on parents’ experiences doing mathematics themselves. However, this research did not account for parents’ experiences when doing mathematics with their children. Thus, there were two goals of the present study: 1) to identify the structure of parents’ math anxiety when considering context-dependent situations, and 2) to determine whether parent math anxiety was related to children’s early numeracy skills. We conducted a series of confirmatory factor analyses using a sample of 155 preschool children (M age = 4.20 years, SD = 0.71; 51% female). The best-fitting model of parents’ math anxiety was a bifactor model, suggesting parents’ math anxiety was best conceptualized as a multidimensional construct. However, structural equation models showed parent math anxiety was not a significant predictor of children’s numeracy performance. These findings provide a foundation for understanding parents’ math anxiety as multidimensional and raise questions about potential mechanisms that may explain prior work finding mixed relations between math anxiety and children’s numeracy performance.

Difficulties in Solving Non-Routine Problems: Preliminary Analysis and Results

Students have been taught to solve problems since primary school. However, they still have been having difficulties in solving mathematics problems, especially non-routine problems. By searching errors in mathematics skills and cognitive abilities that have been causing difficulties in solving non-routine problems, this study aims to determine the dominant difficulties that high-achieving students commonly face. A problem-solving test (PST) that comprises four non-routine problems involving algebra was distributed to 56 Form Four selected students through purposive sampling. Each problem is followed by a reflection that allows students to describe the difficulties they face while solving the problem. Hence, the qualitative and quantitative analysis of answer scripts as well as students’ reflection shows that the dominant difficulties faced by high-achieving students when solving non-routine problems are language and information management skills. Poor mastery of these two skills has resulted in students being unable to decipher the problem accordingly which then leads to failing to solve the problems. The findings of this study provide important insight for educators and also researchers in assisting students to deal with their difficulties to solve non-routine problems.

Effectiveness of the Big Math for Little Kids Program on the Early Mathematics Skills of Children with Risk Group

The aim of this study is to determine the effect of Big Math for Little Kids (BMLK) Program on the early mathematics skills of children with lower socioeconomic level. The participants of the study consist of between 60-72 months of aged children with lower socioeconomic level recruited to kindergartens of Ministry of National Education from Turkey in Diyarbakır in the 2018-2019 academic year. The sample of the study consists of 40 children with above mentioned characteristics. Of these, 20 were assigned to the experimental group and 20 to the control group. Two schools were selected for experimental and control group, and the study was conducted after selecting ten children in a class of each school. In the study pretest-posttest with control group experimental model was used. The data of the study were collected through the Tests of Early Language Development Test (TELD-3) to determine children with adequate language skills of their own age group, and Test of Early Mathematical Ability (TEMA-3) to assess early mathematical development of children. As a result, BMLK program was determined to be effective in the mathematics development of children with lower socioeconomic level. Keywords: early mathematics

Citizenship Notions in Mathematics Textbooks to Countryside Primary School in Brazil

In this paper we analyzed the Brazilian National Textbook Program that has evaluated and distributed mathematics textbooks for the countryside population in Brazil. From a Foucaultian perspective, textbooks are conceived as a powerful technology for governing population. Through a discourse analysis, statements regarding citizenship notions that circulate in these materials were interrogated. From the data analyses, we could find 182 excerpts that has showed us these citizenship notions in the countryside context. We have worked with three statements: Community and collective notions in countryside context, Awareness of individual and collective health, Environmental one setting everybody as a responsible character. As the result, we could conclude that the mathematics skills are showed as a way to manage efficiently these required practices, those that enable the individual responsibilities.

Developing a rigorous measure of the pre-school home mathematics environment

Children begin pre-school with varying levels of school readiness. Those children who enter pre-school with better foundational mathematics skills are more likely to succeed in school than those who do not. This initial variation in early mathematics suggests that experiences outside of the school setting, namely the home environment, may support learning and development. This study aims to systematically develop a comprehensive home mathematics environment questionnaire that reliably assesses the experiences of pre-school children (i.e., 3–5-year-olds) following recent recognised scale development and validation methods. Four studies were used to develop and validate the Pre-school Home Mathematics Questionnaire (PHMQ). Study 1 focused on 1) item generation through individual, in-depth interviews with parents of young children and 2) identifying previous questions from other home mathematics environment (HME) questionnaires to be incorporated into the PHMQ. Study 2 involved questionnaire refinement and was used to assess the psychometric properties of the new measure while addressing construct validity (i.e., factor structure and scale score reliability). Study 3 assessed content and criterion validity of the scale. Finally, Study 4 focused on construct validity through confirmatory factor analysis. Overall, the four studies demonstrate construct, content, and criterion validity. Hence, the newly developed PHMQ satisfies the American Psychological Association (APA) standards for psychometric adequacy.