Home numeracy environments and young children’s mathematics growth trajectories: A 3-year longitudinal study

Abstract

Early mathematics skills play an important role in children’s later academic success (Aunola, Leskinen, Lerkkanen, & Nurmi, 2004): early mathematics skill was even a stronger predictor of later academic outcomes than reading skill (Duncan et al., 2007). Individual discrepancies in mathematics skills are evident at an early age prior to exposure to formal education, and children with poor mathematics skills often continue to fall behind their more competent peers (Jordan, Kaplan, Locuniak, & Ramineni, 2007). Identifying factors that may influence children’s acquisition of early mathematics skills can better our understanding of effective approaches to facilitating young children’s development of these skills. Research on parent involvement has shown that parents often provide learning experience to stimulate children’s acquisition of school-related skills even before entry into formal schooling (Arnold, Zeljo, Doctoroff, & Ortiz, 2008). In particular, parents’ engagement in numeracy activities has been found to predict children’s mathematics ability (Huang, Zhang, Liu, Yang, & Song, 2017; LeFevre, Polyzoi, Skwarchuk, Fast, & Sowinski, 2010; Manolitsis, Georgiou, & Tziraki, 2013). In this longitudinal study, we examine the extent to which parents’ engagement in a variety of numeracy activities is associated with children’s mathematics trajectories from preschool to elementary school. We hypothesize that parents’ engagement in number skills, number books, number games, and number applications activities with their children all predict children’s growth trajectories of mathematics skills. A total of 196 young Chinese children and their parents were recruited from Guangdong, China and participated in this study. They were followed from their second preschool years to their first primary school years. Parents completed a measure of home numeracy environments (Huang et al., 2017), which assessed their frequencies in participating in four types of home numeracy activities (number skills, number books, number games, number application) with their children, in the first assessment wave. Children completed the Test of Children’s Math Achievement (Xie, 2014) in eave wave of assessment. Growth curve modeling was used to examine the relation of home numeracy environments to children’s mathematics growth trajectories. The results showed that parents’ involvement in number application activities with their children during the preschool years significantly predicted their children’s rate of growth in formal mathematics skills from preschool to first grade. This predictive relation proved robust to the inclusion of a number of child- and family-level variables. The finding highlights the importance of home numeracy environments for young Chinese children’s development of mathematics skills. The study extends previous research with a multi-wave longitudinal design and the modeling of both skill level and growth trajectories of mathematics.