Abstract
Children’s math self-concepts—their beliefs about themselves and math—are important for teachers, parents, and students, because they are linked to academic motivation, choices, and outcomes. There have been several attempts at improving math achievement based on the training of math skills. Here we took a complementary approach and conducted an intervention study to boost children’s math self-concepts. Our primary objective was to assess the feasibility of whether a novel multicomponent intervention—one that combines explicit and implicit approaches to help children form more positive beliefs linking themselves and math—can be administered in an authentic school setting. The intervention was conducted in Spain, a country in which math achievement is below the average of other OECD countries. We tested third grade students (N = 180; Mage = 8.79 years; 96 girls), using treatment and comparison groups and pre- and posttest assessments. A novelty of this study is that we used both implicit and explicit measures of children’s math self-concepts. For a subsample of students, we also obtained an assessment of year-end math achievement. Math self-concepts in the treatment and comparison groups did not significantly differ at pretest. Students in the treatment group demonstrated a significant increase in math self-concepts from pretest to posttest; students in the comparison group did not. In the treatment group, implicit math self-concepts at posttest were associated with higher year-end math achievement, assessed approximately 3 months after the completion of the intervention. Taken together, the results suggest that math self-concepts are malleable and that social–cognitive interventions can boost children’s beliefs about themselves and math. Based on the favorable results of this feasibility study, it is appropriate to formally test this novel multicomponent approach for improving math self-concepts using randomized controlled trial (RCT) design.
Highlights
Improving the quality of education during the elementary-school years is a goal of global initiatives concerned with transforming schools
The primary goal of this study was to assess the feasibility of whether a novel multicomponent intervention that combines explicit and implicit approaches to help children form more positive beliefs about themselves and math can be administered in an authentic school setting
The results are organized in sections: (i) preliminary analyses, (ii) pre–post change on math self-concepts for treatment versus comparison groups, followed by (iii) analyses evaluating long-term relations between treatment outcomes and end of year math achievement
Summary
Improving the quality of education during the elementary-school years is a goal of global initiatives concerned with transforming schools. The present study examined the malleability of students’ math self-concepts—how children think of themselves in relation to mathematics. We designed an intervention to enhance children’s math self-concepts with the long-term goal, after further study, of designing broader intervention programs to help improve mathematics outcomes in young children. A study of United States preschoolers showed that early math self-concepts predicted math achievement 5 months later, controlling for initial self-concepts/interest in math (Fisher et al, 2012). Taken together, these studies show that the links between math self-concepts and math achievement are robust, reciprocal, evident cross-sectionally and longitudinally, and across different countries and age groups
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