Understanding the Home Math Environment and Its Role in Predicting Parent Report of Children's Math Skills.

Sara A Hart,David J Purpura,Colleen M Ganley,Bert De Smedt

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0168227

Sara A Hart, David J Purpura + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168227

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Abstract

There is a growing literature concerning the role of the home math environment in children’s math development. In this study, we examined the relation between these constructs by specifically addressing three goals. The first goal was to identify the measurement structure of the home math environment through a series of confirmatory factor analyses. The second goal was to examine the role of the home math environment in predicting parent report of children’s math skills. The third goal was to test a series of potential alternative explanations for the relation between the home math environment and parent report of children’s skills, specifically the direct and indirect role of household income, parent math anxiety, and parent math ability as measured by their approximate number system performance. A final sample of 339 parents of children aged 3 through 8 drawn from Mechanical Turk answered a questionnaire online. The best fitting model of the home math environment was a bifactor model with a general factor representing the general home math environment, and three specific factors representing the direct numeracy environment, the indirect numeracy environment, and the spatial environment. When examining the association of the home math environment factors to parent report of child skills, the general home math environment factor and the spatial environment were the only significant predictors. Parents who reported doing more general math activities in the home reported having children with higher math skills, whereas parents who reported doing more spatial activities reported having children with lower math skills.

Highlights

The environment that parents provide at home can support children’s learning and development [1,2,3]
Despite ample evidence supporting the importance of the home literacy environment” (HLE), far less research has examined the relation of the “home math environment” (HME; note, this is often called the more narrow term “home numeracy environment” in the literature, but HME is used in this study as this construct is approached from a broader perspective)
The criterionbased fit indices (i.e. comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), and SRMR) suggested that none of the models provided an excellent fit to the data

Summary

Introduction

The environment that parents provide at home can support children’s learning and development [1,2,3]. The Home Math Environment activities children engage in with their parents [6,7,8,9,10]. Despite ample evidence supporting the importance of the HLE, far less research has examined the relation of the “home math environment” (HME; note, this is often called the more narrow term “home numeracy environment” in the literature, but HME is used in this study as this construct is approached from a broader perspective). Drawing parallels to the HLE, the HME consists of activities which parents and their children engage in which are intended to support mathematical development either through direct (e.g., counting, number naming) or indirect (e.g., cooking, playing store) activities [11]. Parents have reported enjoying literacy activities more than math activities [12], suggesting that the home math environment might be a place in need of more attention

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