American and Chinese parents’ math talk during numeracy and routine activities: Do parental beliefs matter?

Abstract

Parents vary in their math talk during parent-child interactions, and this variation is related to children's early mathematics skills. To understand the sources of individual variability in parental math talk, the present study investigated the associations between parents’ math beliefs and math talk when engaging their children in number book reading and pretend play. Further, this study compared parents in two cultural contexts to establish commonalities and differences. Participants included 50 American (27 girls) and 44 Chinese (23 girls) families of 4-year-old children, with participating parents predominantly being mothers. We assessed parents’ child-specific math expectations and their math attitudes. Parental math talk, including types (e.g., cardinality, arithmetic) and forms (i.e., prompt vs. statement) of math talk, were analyzed. Across activities, Chinese parents consistently engaged in more cardinality statements than American parents. However, aside from these differences in cardinality statements, the results indicated considerable cultural commonalities in parents’ math expectations and attitudes, as well as in the quantity and features of their math talk across both number book reading and pretend play. In both cultures, parents’ math beliefs were associated with the frequency of their arithmetic statements but not with other features of math talk during book reading. Moreover, no significant connections were found between parents’ math beliefs and math talk during pretend play in either culture. Implications for understanding parental math involvement in various cultural and activity contexts are discussed.