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Category: Project

Description: There has been much attention to how to enhance children’s math learning via curricula implemented on the school front. Although this approach is critical, it does not address the fact that children spend a large proportion of their time outside of school, frequently with at least one of their parents. Thus, there should also be a focus on the home front to identify what can be done to support children in math. Indeed, there is much evidence that parents’ practices play a role in the development of children’s math skills. Unfortunately, relatively little is known about how to optimize parents’ practices around math. Consequently, parents are an underutilized resource in the effort to improve children’s achievement in math. This research addressed this issue by examining the efficacy of inducing parents to hold a growth mindset in which math ability is viewed as malleable. The central hypothesis is that a growth mindset about math ability leads to parenting practices that enhance children’s math learning via a motivational orientation that sustains children in the face of challenge. The research is the first to examine how cultivating growth mindsets in parents sets in motion socialization processes that lead to enduring benefits for children in math. In addition, parents’ practices around math have often been studied without consideration as to whether they facilitate children’s motivation critical in their navigation of challenge. This is a sizeable lacuna given that the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2000) and Common Core standards demand a conceptual understanding of math, which can be challenging for children. A major contribution of the research is that it identified how to promote parenting practices that boost children’s motivation, which is of much significance given the contemporary math curricula. The research also systematically investigated the novel idea that scaffolding contexts can support parents in developing constructive practices that can be generalized to their everyday interactions with children.