From math activities to math homework: How interaction context shapes parents’ involvement and children’s math learning

Parents play a critical role in children’s math development, yet their involvement in math homework is often less constructive than in other home-based math learning activities such as math games. My dissertation investigates how attributes of math learning contexts—specifically, time flexibility, choice, and performance orientation—shape the quality of parents’ math parenting practices and children’s math adjustment during early elementary school. In Study 1, parents (N = 204) reported on three common math learning contexts at home (i.e., homework, formal activities, and informal activities). Parents perceived homework as more time rigid, lacking in choice, and performance-oriented than activities. These perceptions were associated with dampened internal (vs. external) motivation and heightened pressure for involvement in children’s math learning, along with less constructive involvement in terms of affect and cognitive scaffolding. By contrast, informal activities offered more flexible, low-stakes, and choice-rich contexts, fostering more constructive involvement. Study 2 tested the causal role of choice by experimentally introducing activity-type choice into a homework-like task. Contrary to expectations, the introduction of such choice undermined parents’ motivation and increased their feelings of pressure, without improving their math parenting practices or children’s math adjustment. It is possible that context attributes such as choice may not function uniformly across contexts and can backfire when implemented without attending to other attributes—such as time constraints and performance cues. Taken together, the findings from my dissertation research offer insight into why parents’ involvement differs across homework and other math activities, but they do not point to a solution to make homework a more constructive context for parents’ involvement. Next steps may include examining how combinations of context attributes interact to shape parent–child math interactions, advancing a multidimensional framework for understanding and designing more supportive home math learning contexts.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Wu, Jiawen

Contributors dc:contributor

• Pomerantz, Eva M.
• Hyde, Daniel C.
• Gladstone, Jessica
• Rizzo, Michael T.
• Perry, Michelle

• Parent involvement
• Math learning
• Math homework
• Math activities
• Choice manipulation

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 by Jiawen Wu. All Rights Reserved.

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132738

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/132738