Parents’ epistemological beliefs to children's early numeracy abilities: Pathways through parents’ home practices and children's numeracy interest

Abstract

Many existing home numeracy models focus only on the roles of home activities in children's numeracy abilities. Parents’ beliefs, teaching strategies, and children's numeracy interest are seldom considered. As such, this study investigated the relations between parents’ epistemological beliefs about mathematics, how often children engaged with numeracy activities at home, parents’ use of indirect teaching strategies, children's early interest and ability in numeracy. Three hundred twenty-seven Hong Kong kindergarteners and their parents participated in the study. After controlling for the children's gender, age, non-verbal intelligence and language abilities, results showed that parents’ dynamic beliefs about the nature of mathematics were associated with their use of indirect teaching strategies. The frequency of home numeracy activities and parents’ use of indirect teaching strategies were linked with children's numeracy abilities through numeracy interest. Our findings demonstrate the importance of helping parents to appreciate the dynamic nature of mathematics, and of coaching parents how to guide children's numeracy learning.