Why parents can’t always get what they (think they) want

Tim Jay, Jo Rose, Ben SimmonsGraduate School of Education,

University of Bristol

Background

• Previous project – “Children’s economic activity and mathematics learning”– Investigated children’s (8, 11, 14 years old) out-of-

school economic activity through combination of activities

– Explored the mathematical thinking in these activities – in focus groups and then, in subsequent studies, in classroom activity

Moving forward

• Children engage in a great variety of economic activity, providing a valuable resource for mathematical thinking

• The extent to which this resource is understood as such by children varies

• We agree, to some extent, with Hughes et al. – that schools may struggle to incorporate the diversity of out-of-school learning in classroom activity

Related work

• What do we know about parents and their children’s maths learning?– Home maths talk appears to be important in

various ways – e.g. Bloom & Wynn, 1992; Chang, Sandhofer & Brown, 2011; Melhuish et al. 2008

– But much of this kind of research is with preschool children and early number concepts

Related work

• Existing literature often focuses on parents’ abilities to help with classroom tasks– Evidence on homework is mixed (Patall, Cooper &

Robinson, 2008)– Cultural capital (e.g. Chiu & Xihua, 2008) and

engagement with extra-curricular activities (Fan & Williams, 2009) are predictors of maths self-efficacy and achievement

Engagement with maths

• Concerns about adult numeracy in UK; e.g. Houtkoop & Jones, 1999, reporting on OECD survey (and more recent publication of latest OECD survey)

• Skills for Life survey (BIS, 2012) found that approximately half of adults aged 16-65 had numeracy abilities below the average 11 year-old

• Few recent large-scale assessments of attitudes, but picture is generally negative (e.g. Williams, 2008)

Engagement with schools

• Schools often good at engaging parents in school life, but more difficult to engage parents in pupil learning (Harris & Goodall, 2008)

• Evidence for a lack of confidence, resulting from misunderstandings of what children do, and differences with parents’ experiences (e.g. Peters et al., 2008)

• ‘Hard-to-reach’ parents v. ‘hard-to-reach’ schools (Crozier & Davies, 2007)

Our project

• Parent-centred, not school- or curriculum-centred

• ‘Empowering parents to support their children’s maths learning’

2 overall aims:• Support parents in exploring the mathematics

that is involved in their everyday lives• Support parents in exploring ways to share

this mathematical thinking with their children

Focus groups

• We don’t want to start telling parents what they should be doing without a clear idea of how these parents currently think & feel about maths and about their children’s maths learning

• Part of the (challenging) recruitment process – building familiarity & trust

• Exploring diversity – to what extent are concerns, resources & practices similar or different across our population?

Focus groups

• 20 Bristol primary schools (out of approx 100)• Wide variety of settings (markers including

achievement, % EAL, % FSM, geographical location, size)

• Some schools look similar according to the stats, but are very different

Recruitment• Initial survey• Letters to all parents via children• Posters where parents drop-off/pick-up• Translations where relevant• Researcher visits to playground, parent evenings, other

school events• Support from teachers, admin staff, parent governors• 1 or 2 focus groups in each school depending on size –

target 6-10 parents per group. Interviews with parents in playground to supplement low attendance

Content

• Feelings about children’s maths learning• Attitudes to maths• Engagement with children’s school maths

learning• Experience of ‘out-of-school’ maths with

children

Main findings• Parents think maths is important– Greater opportunity & options following school– “Maths is life” – maths is part of so many activities that it

is important for quality of life• Large range of levels of confidence & perceived ability– Avoidance of maths– Returning to maths for a particular career (e.g. nursing)– Enrolment in maths programmes in order to be able to

support children• Maths at home– Very similar to what we saw in previous project – money,

cooking, time

Main findingsEngagement with school maths• “I know the answer, it’s very simple… I can’t see

this explanation of how you’ve got to work it out… how on earth does that work?”

• New “tricks” for “cheating”• “embarrassed”, “confused”, “frustrated”, “left

behind”, “lost control over what he’s really learning”

• Differences in home countries – emphasis on solution (e.g. Somalia) v. method

Main findings“It’s very hard when you’re faced with a child that’s

literally just going, ‘I do not understand what you are talking about’ and it is the only subject that we come to blows over and she will get up, ‘I cannot do this!’ and walk out and I’m like, ‘well I can’t teach you!’”

“It does put me off because I sit down, I think, ‘Oh I just can’t wait to get this over and done with… I’m sorry, I’ve got lines and numbers, they’re everywhere, where’s my answer?’ That’s what puts me off”

Main findings

• What do parents think would help?– More information from school– Timetable for each day’s lessons– Descriptions of what maths is being taught and

how– Teaching techniques that can be used at home

• Problems?– Parents think they want to be teachers?

Moving forward• Some general questions about parental

engagement, e.g. what kind of parental engagement do schools want?

• Evidence to suggest that a school-centred approach has some serious shortcomings – e.g. language of curriculum discourages parents; fear of doing the wrong thing

• To what extent can we separate ‘maths’ from ‘school-maths’?

• Are there other factors that differentiate pre-school from primary activity?

Questions?

tim.jay@bristol.ac.uk

https://www.facebook.com/everydaymathsbristol

@Everyday_Maths

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