Elementary School Children's Math Utility Conceptions: Associations with Parents' Conceptions, Math Achievement, and Home Math Engagement
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Date
2018-01-01
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Department
Psychology
Program
Psychology
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Access limited to the UMBC community. Item may possibly be obtained via Interlibrary Loan thorugh a local library, pending author/copyright holder's permission.
This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
Abstract
This dissertations was made up of three studies, with the overall goal of examining first through fourth grade children's math utility conceptions—knowledge and beliefs about the usefulness of math—and how those conceptions relate to their parents' conceptions and children's math achievement. All three studies used the Math Utility Conceptions conceptual model, an expansion of multiple theoretical models, to investigate children's math utility conceptions. The first paper examined children's math utility conceptions and grade-level differences in math utility conceptions and home math engagement. Most children viewed math as heavily focused on low-level math operations and as learned and used primarily in school. Older children had more awareness of math in daily activities, but had a more school-based view than younger children. The second paper primarily investigated the associations between parents' and children's math utility conceptions and children's home math engagement. Parents' math utility conceptions positively predicted children's math utility conceptions; this relation was moderated by the frequency with which children engaged in math activities at home and how often children see their parents using math. Results suggest that children develop their knowledge and beliefs about math utility from their parents as well as through engagement in math-related activities. The third paper explored the relation between children's math utility conceptions and their math achievement. Overall math utility conceptions predicted math reasoning skills. Children's productive disposition significantly predicted their math achievement. The associations between math applicability, math utility, and math achievement were different for older and younger children. Results suggest that the relation between children's math utility conceptions is complex, but the extent to which elementary-age children view math as useful and worthwhile is associated with children's math achievement. Overall, these results may guide math curriculum development for elementary-aged children to more intentionally use real-world applications to teach math concepts and, in doing so, improve children's understanding of the importance of math in their daily lives. By increasing young children's knowledge of applications of math outside the school context and beliefs about the usefulness of math, parents and educators could help to increase children's math proficiency.