LeFevre 2010

International Journal of Early Years EducationVol. 18, No. 1, March 2010, 55–70

ISSN 0966-9760 print/ISSN 1469-8463 online© 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/09669761003693926http://www.informaworld.com

Do home numeracy and literacy practices of Greek and Canadian parents predict the numeracy skills of kindergarten children?

Jo-Anne LeFevrea*, Eleoussa Polyzoib, Sheri-Lynn Skwarchukb, Lisa Fasta and Carla Sowinskia

aDepartment of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada; bFaculty of Education, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, CanadaTaylor and FrancisCIEY_A_469914.sgm(Received 2 December 2008; final version received 12 July 2009)10.1080/09669761003693926International Journal of Early Years Education0966-9760 (print)/1469-8463 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis181000000March [email protected]

Children’s experiences with early numeracy and literacy activities are a likelysource of individual differences in their preparation for academic learning inschool. What factors predict differences in children’s experiences? Wehypothesised that relations between parents’ practices and children’s numeracyskills would mediate the relations between numeracy skills and parents’ education,attitudes and expectations. Parents of Greek (N = 100) and Canadian (N = 104)five-year-old children completed a survey about parents’ home practices,academic expectations and attitudes; their children were tested on two numeracymeasures (i.e., KeyMath-Revised Numeration and next number generation).Greek parents reported numeracy and literacy activities less frequently thanCanadian parents; however, the frequency of home numeracy activities thatinvolved direct experiences with numbers or mathematical content (e.g., learningsimple sums, mental math) was related to children’s numeracy skills in bothcountries. For Greek children, home literacy experiences (i.e., storybookexposure) also predicted numeracy outcomes. The mediation model was supportedfor Greek children, but for Canadian children, the parent factors had both directand mediated relations with home practices.

Keywords: early numeracy; parent involvement; home experiences

In countries as diverse as Finland, Italy, Germany and the USA, children’s numeracyperformance in or before Kindergarten predicts their mathematics performance one tothree years later (Aunola et al. 2004; Jordan et al. 2007; Krajewski and Schneider2009; Passolunghi, Vercelloni, and Schadee 2007). Understanding the origins of vari-ability in early numeracy skill appears to be critical in understanding children’s schoolachievement: Duncan et al. (2007), in a meta-analysis of six longitudinal data sets,found that children’s early numeracy performance was the best predictor of laterschool performance for both mathematics and reading. Although children may bringsome innate skills to the task of learning about number and quantity (Butterworth2005; Ginsberg et al. 2006), presumably these skills are developed through children’sinteractions with their environments. Research on how children acquire literacysuggests that parents and other caregivers are influential in providing appropriateexperiences to children to facilitate their acquisition of specific school-related skills(Evans and Shaw 2008; Phillips, Norris, and Anderson 2008; Sénéchal and LeFevre

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

56 J.-A. LeFevre et al.

2002). Accordingly, we hypothesised that home experiences involving number, quan-tity and related skills would be correlated with children’s developing numeracy.

Cultural differences in parents’ academic expectations and practices

In a meta-analysis of quantitative studies of urban children, Jeynes (2005) found thatparents’ expectations for their children’s academic performance and the extent towhich parents read to their children (currently or in the past) were both significantlyrelated to academic outcomes (see also Georgiou 1999; Stevenson et al. 1990;Entwisle and Alexander 1990). Parent involvement and expectations can differdramatically across cultures, however. For example, East Asian parents have higheracademic expectations than North American parents (Stevenson et al. 1990; Zhou etal. 2006). Even among North American parents, those with East Asian backgroundshave different academic expectations for their children than those with Europeanbackgrounds (Huntsinger et al. 2000). Thus, parents’ expectations and involvementare likely to reflect specific attitudes and cultural norms (Phillipson and Phillipson2007). There are few published studies comparing the academic expectations andpractices of Greek parents with those of parents from other cultures (cf. Manolitsiset al. 2009). The present research, which involved Greek and Canadian parents, addsto this sparse literature and provides a novel cross-cultural comparison because thefocus is on children’s early numeracy outcomes.

Assessment of home practices

Walkerdine (1988, cited in Aubrey, Bottle, and Godfrey 2003) proposed a distinc-tion between types of numeracy activities that parents might provide, contrastingpedagogical activities (i.e., that are focused on teaching number skills) with instru-mental activities (i.e., where numeracy content is incidental). LeFevre et al. (2009)proposed a similar distinction between direct and indirect numeracy activities, basedon the view that parents might attempt to facilitate children’s numeracy skills boththrough direct teaching (e.g., practicing arithmetic facts) and/or provide numeracyexperiences indirectly through time spent on related activities (e.g., games withnumbers or counting, measurement within cooking or carpentry activities). Note thatdirect instruction could also occur in numeracy-related (or literacy-related) activities,but the goals of these activities are likely to be much broader than the acquisition ofacademic skills.

LeFevre et al. (2009) found that direct and indirect activities could be distin-guished in a factor analysis that explored the frequency with which parents reportedvarious activities. Similarly, Sénéchal and LeFevre (2002) found that parents’ reportsof direct and indirect literacy practices are independent, such that frequency of directteaching about letters was unrelated to the frequency of shared storybook reading.Thus, some parents may engage in both direct and indirect activities, others may focuson one type of activity and exclude the other, and still other parents may feel thatneither is necessary or appropriate.

Researchers have reported that the frequency with which parents reported directlyteaching their young children early literacy and numeracy skills (i.e., counting, simpleaddition, word reading) predicted counting and number naming for preschoolers(LeFevre, Clarke, and Stringer 2002) and Kindergarten children (Blevins-Knabe andMusun-Miller 1996; Pan et al. 2006; cf. Blevins-Knabe et al. 2000) or were correlated

International Journal of Early Years Education 57

with later math achievement (Huntsinger et al. 2000). LeFevre et al. (2009) found that,for Canadian children in Kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2, parents’ reports of howfrequently their children engaged in direct practice of number skills were related toarithmetic fluency, as were indirect activities such as playing number-related gamesand frequency of activities such as measuring while cooking, handling money or usingnumeracy artefacts such as calendars or watches. Furthermore, children’s knowledgeof numbers and the accuracy of their arithmetic performance were related to thefrequency of playing number-related games. Thus, both direct and indirect numeracyactivities may predict children’s numeracy skills. In the present research we assessedboth types of numeracy activities.

Present research

In the present research we tested a model of the relations among parent factors andchildren’s numeracy outcomes. We hypothesised that three parent influences (educa-tion, parents’ academic expectations in regards to numeracy preparation and parentalattitudes toward math) would be indirectly related to children’s numeracy perfor-mance through practices (e.g., shared reading and numeracy experiences provided athome). This hypothesis was based on the assumption that parents’ attitudes,knowledge and beliefs need to be operationalised as practices for them to influencechildren’s performance. In both Greece and Canada, Kindergarten is a reasonableplace to expect a relation between home experiences and children’s numeracy perfor-mance, because children have received little formal instruction up until this point.Furthermore, Kindergarten curricula are relatively modest in terms of the expectationsfor children’s numeracy acquisition, and school occurs for only a few hours per day.Thus, home activities might have an important influence on children’s developingskills at this age. Finally, by comparing two distinct cultures that are very likely to bedifferentially influenced by factors such as government directives and societal pres-sures, we sought to establish the generality of any observed relations between parents’reports of numeracy activities and children’s performance.

Parents’ home literacy and numeracy practices across countries

Children’s early literacy experiences are viewed as important by teachers and parentsin North America and have been studied extensively over the last 20 years (Evans andShaw 2008). These concerns about literacy acquisition in North America may occur,in part, because learning to read English is difficult. Seymour, Aro, and Erksine(2003) reported that, across a range of European countries, English-speaking childrenmade the slowest progress in learning to read. By contrast, for languages such asGreek in which the mapping between sounds and symbols is regular and predictable,children were generally proficient at decoding single words correctly by the end ofGrade 1 (Goswami, Porpodas, and Wheelwright 1997; Protopapas et al. 2007;Seymour, Aro, and Erksine 2003). Given this difference between learning to read inEnglish and Greek, it may be that Greek parents are less concerned about their chil-dren’s early literacy activities than are English-speaking parents. Consistent with thisview, Manolitsis et al. (2009) reported that the relation between parents’ reports of thefrequency with which they taught their Kindergarten children about letters and chil-dren’s reading in Grade 1 was opposite for Greek and Canadian parents: teaching wasassociated with higher decoding scores for Canadian children, but lower scores for


Greek children. The authors linked these findings to differences in orthographiesacross languages and suggested that Greek parents may only teach their children aboutletters if they are struggling with reading. Thus, we tentatively hypothesised thatCanadian parents might be more concerned about early literacy than Greek parents.Further, artefacts that support or enhance the acquisition of literacy (e.g., children’sbooks, educational software directed at children) may also be less available in Greecethan in Canada.

More generally, anecdotal evidence (i.e., through the second author’s experiencesin Greece with Greek family members) suggested that Greek parents might believethat academic learning is the responsibility of schools, rather than families, whereasCanadian parents may believe that academic learning is a shared responsibility.Hence, we hypothesised that Greek parents have lower expectations for their chil-dren’s academic performance before Grade 1 than Canadian parents. With respect toparents’ attitudes toward math, we hypothesised that these would be related to theirpractices for parents in both countries on the view that people are more likely toengage in activities that they enjoy (Cannon and Ginsberg 2008).

Kindergarten mathematics curricula in Greece and Canada

In general, there are few differences in curricular expectations with respect to earlynumeracy between Greece and Canada. In both countries, Kindergarten is a half-dayprogramme (i.e., about 15 hours per week) for five-year-old children. In Greece,according to the Kindergarten teachers we consulted, Kindergarten children areexpected to name and write the symbols for the numbers from 1 to 10, count orally to20, and do very simple addition and subtraction. The Canadian children in thepresent study were from two provinces, Manitoba and Ontario. The Manitoba Curric-ulum Guidelines for Kindergarten (Manitoba Education, Citizenship, and Youth2008) suggests that children should be able to recite the number sequence to 30, butdoes not specify whether they should learn to recognise the Arabic digits in Kinder-garten. In Ontario (Ontario Ministry of Education 2006), the focus in Kindergartenappears to be on numbers to 10. Thus, the curriculum guidelines for all three sites aresimilar.

Method

Participants

In total, 204 parents and Kindergarten children participated; 100 in Greece (48 boys)and 104 in Canada (53 boys). The mean age of both groups of children was five yearsand 10 months. The Greek parents were recruited from six different schools in Athens.Children were tested in April or May. The participation rate in Greece was 82% (100of 122 parents who were approached agreed to participate). The Canadian parentsparticipated in the first year of a longitudinal project. The Canadian children wererecruited from seven different schools in three cities. Of the 148 parents who gavepermission for their child to participate, 104 filled out the questionnaire for a completionrate of 70%. They were tested in May or June with 90% being tested within a six-weekperiod.

Parents were asked to indicate the highest level of education reached by bothparents. In both countries, only a few parents had not completed high school and theeducation levels of the two parents were highly related. The most frequent level of


education completed by the responding parent in both countries was an undergraduatedegree (35%); but more Canadian than Greek parents had completed a postgraduatedegree (26% vs. 4%) and more Greek than Canadian parents had only a high schooleducation (33% vs. 6%). Thus, the Canadian parents reported higher levels of educa-tion than the Greek parents.

The majority of families were unilingual. In Greece, 99% of the parents indicatedthat Greek was the language most often spoken at home (one family indicatedEnglish). Twenty-nine children spoke another language; for 21 of these children theother language was English. In Canada, 90% of the parents indicated that English wasthe main language used at home. Twenty-eight of the Canadian children spoke anotherlanguage; for 17 the language was French. Six of the children whose home languagewas not English also spoke English, and the remaining five children spoke anotherlanguage.

Materials and procedure

Parent questionnaire

Parents provided demographic information (e.g., languages spoken at home, parenteducation levels and occupations) and information on the frequency of various homepractices (e.g., shared reading together, counting out money). To assess academicexpectations, parents completed five-point scales assessing their views on theimportance of their child reaching various academic benchmarks before starting Grade1 (e.g., count to 10, read a few words). To assess attitudes, parents indicated theiragreement with statements about math and reading (e.g., ‘When I was in school I wasgood at mathematics’; ‘I find reading enjoyable’) on five-point scales. The question-naire and numeracy tests were translated from English to Greek by a professionalGreek–English translator (who is also an educator in Athens) and verified by twoother fluently bilingual speakers.

Greek parents completed the questionnaire before their children were tested andimmediately returned the questionnaire to the school principal or head teacher, whothen forwarded it to the experimenter. Canadian parents were sent the questionnaireafter the testing started in their child’s school (and after they had given permission fortheir child to participate). Parents returned the questionnaires directly to the research-ers in postage-paid, self-addressed envelopes. The majority of questionnaires werereturned within a month (i.e., before the end of the school year in June). In the Greekgroup, questionnaires were completed by mothers (89%), fathers (9%) or guardians(2%). The relationship between the respondent and the child was not collected for theCanadian children.

Numeracy measures

The Canadian children completed a large range of numeracy-related tasks as part of alongitudinal study, whereas the Greek children completed only two numeracymeasures. In Greece, testing was carried out by a single experimenter (the secondauthor). In Canada, testing was carried out by several experimenters (undergraduatesor graduate students in education or psychology). Children were asked by the experi-menters whether they would like to play some number games and only those childrenwho agreed were subsequently tested. Because the Canadian children were in the firstyear of a longitudinal project and were tested on a large set of measures (a total of


40–50 minutes of testing), we were very careful to ensure that the tasks were appro-priate and enjoyable for the children.

Next number task. Children were shown Arabic numbers and asked to say the numberthat came next. The complete set of numbers was 2, 4, 9, 13, 17, 19, 23, 49, 81, 99,222, 354, 765, 999, 6666, 8331, 99,999, 407,276.

In Greece the numbers were shown printed on cards. The children were asked tofirst name the number shown, then to state the next number. No specific time limitwas applied. We used performance on the next number component (i.e., not numbernaming) as the measure of number system knowledge because it is equivalent to thetask performed by the Canadian children. Notably, children’s ability to name thenumber shown and to generate the next number was closely related. Children’sperformance on naming and generating the next number was consistent on 96% of1046 trials; on 618 trials children both named the number shown and correctlygenerated the next number, and on 392 trials they were incorrect on both namingand generating. Thus, there was a discrepancy on only 36 trials; on 32 they namedthe number correctly but could not generate the next number, on four trials theynamed the number incorrectly but generated the next number correctly. Thus, thistask captures both number recognition and applying the rules of generatingnumbers.

In Canada, the numbers were displayed on a laptop computer. Children stated thenext number; they were not required to name the number shown. Both accuracy andlatency of responses were recorded. If the child had not responded within 25 seconds,a time-out signal appeared and the trial was counted as an error. In both countries, thetask was stopped for an individual child after three consecutive errors.

Numeration. Children in both countries completed the numeration subtest of theKeyMath-Revised (Connolly 2000). Because no norms were available for the Greekchildren, raw scores were used in the analyses. All children started on the first testitem, so raw scores represent total correct. As per test instructions, the test was endedafter three consecutive errors.

Results

Numeracy measures

Each numeracy measure (number correct) was analyzed in a 2 (country: Greece,Canada) × 2 (gender: girls, boys) analysis of variance (ANOVA). For Numeration,there was no difference in performance across country, but boys scored higher thangirls: (7.3 vs. 6.4), F(1, 199) = 5.35, MSE = 7.87, partial η2 = .026, p < .05. On thenext number task, the Canadian children scored higher than Greek children (7.4 vs.6.2), F(1, 199) = 4.28, MSE = 13.40, partial η2 = .022, and boys scored higher thangirls (7.4 vs. 6.2), F(1, 199) = 4.68, partial η2 = .023, ps < .05. There were no inter-actions between gender and country, Fs < 1. Although Canadian children could namemore next numbers than Greek children, in both countries, children recognised numbersto 20 very accurately and thus performance was consistent with curricular demands.Children’s performance on the numeracy measures was highly inter-related for boththe Greek and Canadian children, all rs > .64, ps < .001. Thus, a composite numeracyscore was created within each country by averaging z-scores for the numeration andnext number tasks.


Parent responses

Frequencies of activities across countries

Parents in both countries were asked to indicate how frequently they and their childparticipated in a range of home activities. As shown in Table 1, the 20 activities variedwidely in terms of both mean reported frequencies (t-tests) and the distributions offrequencies (χ2 tests).

Literacy. Canadian parents reported reading more frequently than Greek parents.Although most parents reported reading two to four times per week, or more, over60% of the Canadian parents reported reading daily compared with ∼ 25% of theGreek parents (Figure 1). Canadian parents also reported that they had more children’sbooks at home than Greek parents. Furthermore, parents who reported having morebooks also reported that they read to their children more frequently, both for Greek,r(95) = .31, and Canadian parents, r(102) = .31, ps < .05. Principle components anal-ysis (by country) was used to create factor scores to capture the related variancebetween frequency of reading and number of children’s books. Factor loadings for thetwo variables were .81 for the Canadian children and .87 for the Greek children. Theresulting factor scores were labelled children’s book exposure.Figure 1. Distributions of parents’ reports of the frequency of selected home practices. In all cases, these distributions differed across countries. Frequency categories were: never, one to three times per month (1–3 mo), once per week (1 wk), two to four times per week (2–4 wk), almost daily (AD) and daily (D).

Table 1. Mean reported frequencies of parent-child activities by country.

Mean SD

Activities Greece Canada Greece Canada

LiteracyWriting letters or storiesa 1.8 1.8 1.6 1.6Reading togethera,b 3.4 4.4 1.3 0.9Total children’s books a,b 3.0 5.3 1.8 2.7

Numeracy – directCounting out moneya 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.0Memorising math facts 1.4 1.0 1.6 1.3Doing math in your head 2.2 2.0 1.7 1.5Learning simple sumsa 2.4 2.6 1.6 1.2

Numeracy – IndirectUsing a calculator 0.4 0.5 0.9 0.9Measuring lengths/widthsa 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.8Making/sorting collectionsa,b 1.0 1.7 1.5 1.3Measuring while cookinga 1.6 1.5 1.6 1.1Using computer softwarea,b 1.6 2.3 1.8 1.2Playing board/card gamesa,b 2.8 2.1 1.3 1.2

Speeded responsesExpecting quick responses 2.3 1.8 1.9 1.9Timing of activities 1.1 1.4 1.5 1.5

Notes: The scale for the number of children’s books is: 0 = none; 1 = 1–20; 2 = 21–40; 3 = 41–60; 4 = 61–80; 5 = 81–100; 6 = 101–120; 7 = 121–140; 8 = 141–160; 9 = 161–200; 10 = 201–250; 11 = > 250. All ofthe other variables used the following scale: 0 = never; 1 = 1–3 times per month; 2 = once per week; 3 =2–4 times per week; 4 = almost daily; 5 = daily.a Frequency distributions are significantly different by country (p < .05).b Mean differences across countries are significant (p < .05).


Numeracy. Canadian parents reported a greater frequency of making/sorting collec-tions and of using computer software. Greek parents reported a greater frequency ofplaying board or card games with their children. Furthermore, the frequency distribu-tions across country varied for counting money, learning simple sums, measuringlengths/widths and measuring ingredients while cooking. As shown in Figure 1, Greekparents were more likely than Canadian parents to report that their children neverlearned simple sums or measured while cooking. Canadian parents also tended to bemore homogenous in their responses (i.e., they were more likely to cluster at a fewlevels of frequency), whereas Greek parents were more heterogeneous (e.g., fewerparents selected any one frequency category). In general, where the distributions

Figure 1. Distributions of parents’ reports of the frequency of selected home practices. In allcases, these distributions differed across countries. Frequency categories were: never, one tothree times per month (1–3 mo), once per week (1 wk), two to four times per week (2–4 wk),almost daily (AD) and daily (D).Note: y-axis on each graph represents the proportion of parents choosing each frequencycategory.


across countries were different (and the means were the same), these observationsheld; a higher frequency of ‘never’ participating in that activity and greater heteroge-neity among the Greek compared with the Canadian parents. Finally, almost half ofthe Greek children never used computer software, whereas about a third of theCanadian children used software two to four times per week. This may reflect thesocio-economic conditions of the families, or the availability of computers orcomputer software in Greece versus Canada.

Correlations between numeracy and parent practices

For the Greek children, numeracy performance was correlated with the frequency withwhich parents reported reading, r(98) = .33. For the Canadian children, numeracy wasnot correlated with reading. In both countries (Canada vs. Greece), numeracy perfor-mance was correlated with the frequencies of: counting money (.21 vs. .20), learningsimple sums (.35 vs. .38), doing math in your head (.40 vs. .36) and memorising mathfacts (.20 vs. 24), ps < .05. Thus, children whose parents reported direct numeracyinstruction had higher numeracy scores. For the Canadian parents, the frequency ofusing a calculator (.33) and computer software (.21) were also significantly correlatedwith numeracy. Thus, simple correlations support the view that various home numer-acy practices are related to children’s numeracy performance.

The 12 numeracy practices were included in factor analyses (i.e., principal compo-nents with varimax rotation), one for each country. For parents in both countries, threefactors emerged. Direct math activities included those in which numerical processingwas the goal of the activity: hence, doing math in your head, memorising math facts,learning simple sums and counting money. All these activities have numericalprocessing as their central focus. The direct math activities formed a first factor thataccounted for 44% and 34% of the variance among items, respectively, for Greek andCanadian parents. Indirect activities were those in which numeracy-related processingmight have occurred, but was not the focus of the activity, such as games, measuringwhile cooking, making and sorting collections. These formed a second factor thataccounted for 12 and 15% of the variance. The third factor included the two ‘speeded’activities (i.e., expecting quick responses and timing activities), accounting for 11%and 12% of the variance. Thus, analysis of the math-related factors showed identicalstructure across the two countries and supported the hypothesis that direct and indirectactivities are differentiable.

The patterns of correlations between the numeracy outcome measure and the threenumeracy factors were identical across countries: the frequency of direct numeracyactivities was correlated with numeracy scores, r(98) = .38 (Greek) and r(102) = .37(Canadian), ps < .05, whereas the frequency of indirect activities and speeded activi-ties were not significantly correlated with numeracy in either country, all rs < .07, ps> .50. In subsequent analyses, therefore, only direct activities were included as indicesof home numeracy practices.

Parents’ attitudes about mathematics and general academic expectations

Parents were asked the extent to which they agreed with the statements ‘I enjoy math-ematics’ and ‘When I was in school I was good at mathematics’ (i.e., 1, stronglydisagree; 2, disagree; 3, agree; 4, strongly agree; parents who indicated unsure on thisitem were not included in the analysis). The distribution of responses to this item was


similar across countries, with relatively few parents strongly disagreeing (Greek 10%;Canadian 3%) and about a third from each country strongly agreeing (Greek 35%;Canadian 37%). Ratings on the two questions were correlated, r(81) =.68 (Greek), andr(96) = .81 (Canadian). Thus, ratings on these two questions were averaged to createthe math attitude measure. Cronbach’s alpha for the summed scores was .81 and .89for Greek and Canadian parents.

Because the extent to which parents agreed with the statements ‘I enjoy reading’and ‘When I was in school, I was good at language arts’ were not significantly correlatedwith the frequency of math activities, with the frequency of reading together or withthe number of children’s books at home, they were not considered further.

As a measure of their academic expectations, parents were asked to indicate howimportant it was for their children to attain certain academic skills before Grade 1.Consistent with Kindergarten curricula in both countries, basic skills (print name,know some letters, count to 10) were rated as very important by 80% or more of theparents. Moreover, over half of parents in both countries rated all of the indicatedskills as either important or very important. Despite the overall similarities betweencountries, comparisons indicated that Canadian parents had higher expectations thanGreek parents (as was hypothesised) in that Canadian parents rated: counting to 10,counting to 100, knowing some alphabet letters, knowing all 26 alphabet letters, print-ing all 26 alphabet letters and reading a few words as significantly more importantthan did Greek parents.

To create a composite measure of parents’ academic expectations, we conducted aprincipal components analysis of the five importance items that showed some variabil-ity and were correlated with numeracy outcomes in at least one of the two countries(i.e., count to 100, know simple sums, print all letters, know all letters and read a fewwords). For both countries, a single factor was identified, accounting for 60 and 67%of the variance among the items for Greek and Canadian parents, respectively. Thesefactor scores were used in the multiple regression analyses described below to repre-sent the parents’ expectations about academic achievement.

Home numeracy experiences and numeracy performance

We hypothesised that relations between children’s numeracy performance andparents’ academic expectations, math attitudes and education would be mediated byparents’ home practices. As shown in Table 2, the parents of children with highnumeracy scores also had higher academic expectations, more positive views of theirown math skills and reported more numeracy practices. There were two differencesbetween cultures: numeracy scores only correlated with parent education and bookexposure for Greek, not Canadian, children.

Correlations among the predictors were broadly similar across cultures but notidentical. For Canadian children, parent education was only correlated significantlywith parents’ attitudes toward math, whereas for Greek parents, education was alsocorrelated with children’s book exposure and numeracy. Because there were somedifferences in patterns of relations, we tested separate path models for the Greek andCanadian groups. First, we hypothesised that home environment factors would berelated to numeracy outcomes, and second, we hypothesised that these variableswould mediate the relations between the parent factors and children’s numeracyperformance. We also assumed that parent education would predict expectations andattitudes, rather than the reverse. To test the predictions, for each culture we


performed a series of regressions (see Table 3). In the first regression, numeracy wasthe dependent variable and all of the other variables were entered as predictors. In thisregression, any variables that accounted for significant variance are assumed to havea direct relation with numeracy performance. The values in Table 3 are the standard-ised coefficients. The total variability accounted for by the model is shown in the finalrow of each analysis. Statistically significant coefficients indicate that a predictoraccounts for unique variance in the dependent variable.

Table 2. Correlations among the variables in the model. Those shown below the diagonal arefor Greek children (N = 100) and those shown above the diagonal are for Canadian children(N = 104).

Parent factors Home environment

Education Expectations Attitude Book exposure Math practices Numeracy

Education −.06 .42** .05 −.11 .16Expectations .03 .04 .26* .30** .31**Attitude .26** .05 .18 .28** .33**Book exposure .32** .20* .25* .19 .09Math practices .01 .19 .41** .20* .37**Numeracy .20* .26** .33** .51** .38**

Notes: *p < .05; **p < .01.

Table 3. Standardised regression coefficients and model R2 values for each regressionanalysis. Dependent variables are shown in the column headers; predictors are shown in thecolumn on the far left.

Home environment Parent factors

Predictors Numeracy Book exposure Direct practices Expectations Attitudes

GreekBook exposure .40** – .11 – –Direct practices .20* .12 – – –Expectations .12 .16 .14 – .05Math attitude .16 .12 .41** .04 –Parent education .02 .28** −.14 .02 .26*Child gender .11 .00 .19* .04 −.02Model R2 (total) .38** .18** .25** .01 .07

CanadianBook exposure −.07 – .06 – –Direct practices .24* .07 – – –Expectations .25* .23* .24** – .08Math attitudes .22* .14 .38** .09 –Parent education .10 .01 −.27** −.11 .43**Child gender .09 .03 .25** .07 −.09Model R2 (total) .26** .10 .27** .02 .19**

Notes: *p < .05; **p < .01.


For Greek children, both book exposure and math practices predicted numeracyoutcomes, as hypothesised. Furthermore, none of the other predictors accounted forunique variance in numeracy, supporting the second hypothesis that the relationsbetween parent factors and numeracy are mediated by reported practices. Thesepatterns are summarised in Figure 2.Figure 2. For Greek parents, the patterns of relations among parent attitudes, academic expectations, education, practices and numeracy performance of their children.For Canadian children, the picture was more complicated. Although math practicespredicted numeracy outcomes, exposure to children’s books did not. Furthermore,parent expectations and math attitudes were significant direct predictors of numeracyoutcomes. Thus, home experiences only partially mediated the relations between parentfactors and numeracy performance. These patterns are summarised in Figure 3.Figure 3. For Canadian parents, the patterns of relations among parent attitudes, academic expectations, education, practices and numeracy performance of their children.

Figure 2. For Greek parents, the patterns of relations among parent attitudes, academic expec-tations, education, practices and numeracy performance of their children.

Figure 3. For Canadian parents, the patterns of relations among parent attitudes, academicexpectations, education, practices and numeracy performance of their children.Note: The dotted line indicates a negative relation between the variables (see Table 3).


In summary, the proposed model of home practices as a mediator of the relationbetween children’s numeracy and parents’ attitudes, education and expectations wassupported for the Greek families and partially supported for the Canadian families.Children’s book exposure was related to numeracy outcomes for the Greek, but notCanadian children. Parents’ personal attitudes toward mathematics were correlatedwith numeracy practices in both cultures. However, parents’ academic expectationswere not related to practices for the Greek families.

Discussion

Longitudinal studies show that children’s early numeracy skills predict their acquisi-tion of mathematics in the early years of school (Aunola et al. 2004; Jordan et al. 2007;Passolunghi, Vercelloni, and Schadee 2007). Because parents have the most influenceon children’s early experiences, we hypothesised that parents’ home practices, that is,the extent to which they report home numeracy experiences, would predict children’snumeracy performance. We tested this hypothesis with parents and children in Canadaand Greece, countries that share similar educational goals for five-year-olds, but varyin language, culture and possibly, societal norms about the importance of academi-cally related home activities. We found core similarities between children’s experi-ences and their early numeracy skills across countries. Parents who reported a higherfrequency of direct numeracy practice had children with higher numeracy skills, andthese parents were more likely to report that they were good at mathematics andenjoyed mathematics themselves. There were also differences across countries, asdiscussed below.

The most striking difference across countries was that there was a relation betweenbook exposure and numeracy for Greek, but not Canadian, parents. One possibility isthat our index of book exposure was simply not a sensitive measure for the Canadianparents (but see Sénéchal et al. 1996). Greek parents might be less affected by a social-desirability bias and therefore report reading less to their children than Canadian parentsbecause home literacy activities are actually less important for learning to read in Greekcompared with English. Greek is a more regular language, with consistent mappingsbetween the symbols and the sounds. Accordingly, learning to read in Greek may beeasier for children and thus Greek parents may be less concerned about preparing chil-dren for learning to read (Manolitsis et al. 2009; Seymour, Aro, and Erksine 2003; seeLeFevre, Clarke, and Stringer 2002 and Sénéchal 2006 for similar results for parentsof French-speaking children). However, although potential differences in parents’reports of shared reading might explain the low correlations for Canadian parents, theydo not fully explain why the correlation between book exposure and numeracy is solarge for Greek parents. Further research is necessary to better understand what iscaptured by the book exposure variable among Greek families.

The other major difference across cultures was an overall lower level of concernabout children’s preparation for school among Greek parents. This finding is alsoconsistent with the hypothesis that they see home experiences as less critical to chil-dren’s school success than do Canadian parents. For Canadian parents, expectationspredicted unique variance in numeracy outcomes, suggesting that these expectationsare related to some other factors in children’s lives that are important for their numeracyacquisition (beyond parent education, parent attitudes and home numeracy practices).

Our central hypothesis was that parents’ direct numeracy practices would mediaterelations between children’s numeracy outcomes and parents’ education, attitudes and


expectations. This hypothesis was supported for the Greek parents, but only partiallysupported for the Canadian parents. Direct relations persisted between parents’expectations and attitudes toward math and their children’s numeracy performance.Thus, the model is incomplete for Canadian families. We suspect that language-related variables such as vocabulary knowledge, captured here by book exposure forGreek families, may also be important for Canadian children’s numeracy. In futureresearch, more sensitive measures of such experiences should be included.

In future work it will also be important to assess a wider range of home practicesand more numeracy-related outcomes. LeFevre et al. (2009) also found that parents’reports of numeracy activities correlated with children’s numeracy performance, butindirect numeracy activities (i.e., games and speeded activities) were related tomeasures of numeracy knowledge similar to those used in the present study whereasdirect practices were not. One possible explanation for differences across studies isthat the direct numeracy practices that were queried by LeFevre et al. involved morebasic skills (e.g., printing numbers, writing numbers) than the direct practices assessedin the current study (e.g., learning simple sums, memorizing math facts). Those basicskills were probably already mastered by many of the children in LeFevre et al. (whowere in Kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2) and thus were no longer relevant topredicting their more advanced numeracy skills. A second difference across studies isthat, in LeFevre et al. both the direct and indirect numeracy factors were related to anaspect of children’s numeracy performance that we did not assess in the current study(i.e., solution latencies to simple addition problems). Accordingly, it seems likely that,in future research, assessing both a range of home practices and a range of numeracyoutcomes will clarify the relations among these measures. Although direct practicesseemed more important in the present work (cf. LeFevre et al. 2009), interventionresearch by Siegler and his colleagues (Ramani and Siegler 2008; Siegler and Ramani2008, 2009) suggests that number games (e.g. Snakes and Ladders) are a potent sourceof learning about some important aspects of the number system, especially fordisadvantaged children (see also Whyte and Bull 2008). Thus, the present researchcontributes to an emerging consensus that number-related activities, often in game-like contexts, are likely to be an important source of early numeracy experiences foryoung children.

The methodology used in this article has limitations; in particular, parents’ self-reports may not accurately capture their actual behaviour. However, the range ofresponses obtained in the data suggest that parents’ reports about their home numer-acy activities appear to be less biased than reports about literacy. Moreover, thesocial-desirability bias that has been noted for self-reports of shared reading in NorthAmerican samples (Sénéchal et al. 1996) seemed less for the Greek parents: for manyactivities Greek parents were more likely to report ‘never’ participating than wereCanadian parents. Despite these differences across cultures in absolute frequencies ofreported practices, the relations within each culture among the parent beliefs, reportedactivities and children’s performance were quite similar.

Overall, these data support a view of children’s home experiences that crossescultural boundaries. Children who experienced more direct exposure to mathematicalcontent at home had better early numeracy skills. Parents who had positive attitudestoward mathematics were more likely to report engaging their children in homenumeracy experiences. Thus, variations in home experiences may be part of the reasonfor the large differences in early numeracy skill shown by children before the onset offormal instruction.


AcknowledgementsThe Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada provided support for thisresearch through a Standard Operating Grant to J. LeFevre, J. Bisanz, D. Kamawar, B.L.Smith-Chant and S.L. Skwarchuk. The data reported for the Canadian children are part of alongitudinal project. More information about the project is available at www.carleton.ca/cmi orfrom the first author. We greatly appreciate the cooperation and enthusiasm of the children,parents, teachers, principals, and schools who participated in this research.

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