Parent-Focused Interventions to Support Children’s Early Math Learning

Abstract

Even before starting formal schooling, children show substantial variations in math skills suggesting that the home learning environment plays an important role in shaping young children’s math skills. Here, I review interventions aimed at providing young children with opportunities to learn math at home to identify what types of parent-guided activities may be effective at improving young children’s math. I also review interventions that may impact the frequencies and quality of the learning opportunities that parents provide to their children even if benefits for children’s math outcomes were not found or have not been tested yet. While some studies show that parent-guided math activities can impact children’s math skills, future work should carefully consider for whom interventions are most effective as both child and parent characteristics such as children’s general cognitive skills or foundational number skills as well as parents’ attitudes toward math may impact the effectiveness of the interventions.