Math at home adds up to achievement in school Berkowitz, Talia; Schaeffer, Marjorie W.; Maloney, Erin A. ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
10/2015, Volume:
350, Issue:
6257
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
With a randomized field experiment of 587 first-graders, we tested an educational intervention designed to promote interactions between children and parents relating to math. We predicted that ...increasing math activities at home would increase children's math achievement at school. We tested this prediction by having children engage in math story time with their parents. The intervention, short numerical story problems delivered through an iPad app, significantly increased children's math achievement across the school year compared to a reading (control) group, especially for children whose parents are habitually anxious about math. Brief, high-quality parent-child interactions about math at home help break the intergenerational cycle of low math achievement.
Although parents' fears and worries about math-termed math anxiety-are negatively associated with their children's math achievement in early elementary school, access to an educational math app that ...1st-grade children and parents use together can ameliorate this relation. Here we show that children of higher-math-anxious parents learn less math during 1st-3rd grades, but this is not the case when families are given a math app (even after app use markedly decreases). Reducing the link between parents' math anxiety and their positive attitudes about math for their children helped to explain the sustained benefit of the math app. These findings indicate that interventions involving parents and children together can have powerful lasting effects on children's academic achievement and suggest that changes in parents' expectations for their children's potential for success in math, and the value they place on this success, play a role in these sustained effects.
A solid foundation in math is important for children's long‐term academic success. Many factors influence children's math learning—including the math content students are taught in school, the ...quality of their instruction, and the math attitudes of students' teachers. Using a large and diverse sample of first‐grade students (n = 551), we conducted a large‐scale replication of a previous study (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 2010, 1860; n = 117), which found that girls in classes with highly math anxious teachers learned less math during the school year, as compared to girls whose math teachers were less anxious about math. With a larger sample, we found a negative relation between teachers' math anxiety and students' math achievement for both girls and boys, even after accounting for teachers' math ability and children's beginning of year math knowledge, replicating and extending those previous results. Our findings strengthen the support for the hypothesis that teachers' math anxiety is one factor that undermines children's math learning and could push students off‐track during their initial exposure to math in early elementary school.
Prior research showed that girls learned less math when their teachers were highly math anxious. In this large‐scale replication, we found that both boys and girls learn less math in classrooms with highly math anxious teachers, replicating and extending the previous study’s findings.
Learning to read is a critical but often challenging academic task for young children. In the current study, we explore the relation between children's reading affect--particularly anxiety--and ...reading achievement in the early years of reading acquisition. We hypothesized that reading anxiety would relate to reading achievement across the school year and that boys and girls might show differential patterns in the relation between reading anxiety and achievement due to the common stereotype that boys underperform in reading. A sample of first and second grade students completed measures of reading anxiety, positive reading affect, math achievement, and reading achievement in the fall and spring. Results show that reading anxiety and reading achievement share a bi-directional relation in which fall reading anxiety predicts spring reading achievement and vice versa. Furthermore, the pattern of relation between reading anxiety and achievement differs by gender: boys appear more susceptible to the reciprocal damaging effects of reading anxiety on reading achievement across the school year. Finally, reading achievement shares a stronger relation with reading anxiety than with positive reading affect, perhaps because of the phenomenon in which negative relative to positive experiences have a greater psychological impact.
Math anxiety negatively predicts young children's math achievement. While some researchers have suggested that math anxiety may stem from poor math ability, others have argued that math anxiety ...occurs at all levels of math ability. An important question is whether math anxiety predicts math achievement over and above foundational math skills. We sought to address this issue by examining whether math anxiety predicts future math achievement, controlling for number line estimation, a foundational math skill that predicts future math achievement. We found that 1st graders' math anxiety predicts their math achievement in 1st through 3rd grade, controlling for their number line estimation at the beginning of 1st grade. This finding suggests that math anxiety contributes to future math learning over and above an important foundational math skill. Additionally, we examined whether there are age differences in the relation of first-grade math anxiety to number line estimation at various scales in order to test the hypothesis that the negative effect of early math anxiety on math performance depends on task difficulty. In support of this hypothesis, early math anxiety more closely related to the 0-100 number line task in 1st graders but to the 0-1000 number line task in 3rd graders, suggesting that math anxiety most strongly relates to math skills that are at the cusp of children's understanding at particular grade levels. Together, these findings underscore the importance of fostering young children's positive emotions toward math in addition to providing them with a strong cognitive foundation for math learning.
Proficiency in mathematics is a major advantage in industrialised nations. Here we discuss several emotional impediments to mathematics achievement, namely mathematics anxiety and stereotype threat. ...Synthesising findings from empirical studies in the fields of cognitive, social, and educational psychology, as well as neuroscience, we discuss some of the ways that affective factors can negatively impact mathematical performance and lead to avoidance of mathematics and mathematics-related fields. We bring together the mathematics anxiety and stereotype threat literatures by suggesting that these two phenomena share a common underlying mechanism, which causes disturbance in mathematics performance. We end by suggesting a number of potential interventions aimed at reducing the negative consequences of anxiety and stereotype threat on mathematics performance - interventions fueled by an understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms by which mathematics anxiety and stereotype threat work to impact performance.
Generic statements about the abilities of children's social groups (e.g. ‘Girls/Boys are good at this game’) negatively impact children's performance – even if the statements are favorable towards ...children's own social groups. We explored the mechanism by which generic language impairs children's performance. Across three studies, our findings suggest that generic statements influence children's performance by creating an entity belief (i.e. a belief that a fixed ability determines performance). Children who were exposed to a generic statement about their social group's ability performed worse than children in control conditions. This effect hurt children's performance even when the person who made the generic statement was no longer present and a new person not privy to the statement replaced them. However, when children heard a generic statement paired with an effort explanation (i.e. ‘Girls/Boys are good at this game because they try really hard when they draw’) they performed better than children who heard the generic statement with no explanation (i.e. just ‘Girls/Boys are good at this game’) and children who heard the generic statement paired with a trait explanation (i.e. ‘Girls/Boys are good at this game because they are smart and really good at drawing’). This work uncovers when and how generic statements that refer to the ability of one's social group hinder performance, informing the development of practices to improve student motivation and learning.
Generic statements impair children's performance by creating an entity belief that a fixed ability determines performance. By coupling with generic statements with an effort explanation, the detrimental effects are mitigated. The current work elucidates how and when generic statements about the ability of one's social group hinders performance as well as identifying a way to negate the detrimental effects of such statements.
Frank presents an alternative interpretation of our data, yet reports largely similar results to those in our original Report. A critical difference centers on how to interpret and test interaction ...effects. Frank finds no mistakes in our analyses. We stand by our original conclusions of meaningful effects of the Bedtime Learning Together (BLT) math app on children's math achievement.
Math anxiety negatively predicts young children's math achievement. While some researchers have suggested that math anxiety may stem from poor math ability, others have argued that math anxiety ...occurs at all levels of math ability. An important question is whether math anxiety predicts math achievement over and above foundational math skills. We sought to address this issue by examining whether math anxiety predicts future math achievement, controlling for number line estimation, a foundational math skill that predicts future math achievement. We found that 1st graders' math anxiety predicts their math achievement in 1st through 3rd grade, controlling for their number line estimation at the beginning of 1st grade. This finding suggests that math anxiety contributes to future math learning over and above an important foundational math skill. Additionally, we examined whether there are age differences in the relation of first-grade math anxiety to number line estimation at various scales in order to test the hypothesis that the negative effect of early math anxiety on math performance depends on task difficulty. In support of this hypothesis, early math anxiety more closely related to the 0-100 number line task in 1st graders but to the 0-1000 number line task in 3rd graders, suggesting that math anxiety most strongly relates to math skills that are at the cusp of children's understanding at particular grade levels. Together, these findings underscore the importance of fostering young children's positive emotions toward math in addition to providing them with a strong cognitive foundation for math learning.
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