Parental Involvement in Mathematics: A Focus on Parents’ Voices

Marta Civil Emily Bernier Beatriz Quintos civil@math.arizona.edu etb@email.arizona.edu bquintos@email.arizona.edu

The University of ArizonaTucson, AZ

Annual Meeting of AERA, April 2003Chicago, IL

MAPPS1

MMath and PParent PPartnerships in the SSouthwest Focus is on parental involvement in mathematics. Sites:

Tucson,AZ Chandler, AZ San José, CA Las Vegas, NM

Goal is to develop leadership teams (parents and teachers/administrators) that will conduct mathematics education outreach effort within the district.

Three Components: Leadership Development Sessions Mathematics Awareness Workshops Math for Parents courses

1. Project MAPPS (Math and Parent Partnerships in the Southwest) is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant – ESI-99-01275

Our three components (LD; MAWS, MFP) allow us, among other things to,

1. Familiarize parents with current math ed. recommendations in a direct, hands-on way.

2. Engaging in dialogue with the parents and teachers to address potential conflicts as mathematics instruction changes.

3. Providing an arena in which researchers, teachers and parents come together.

Theoretical FrameworkTheoretical Framework

A socio-cultural perspective Funds of Knowledge: sees families and their culture as a resource

Dialogic LearningA dialogue is egalitarian when it takes different contributions into consideration according to the validity of their reasoning, instead of according to the positions of power held by those who make the contributions. (Flecha, 2000, p.2)

Parental Involvement (issues of power and social class)[For the middle-class mothers] Educational problems, when they did arise, were due to deficits in schooling, rather than located in either themselves or their child…. In contrast many of the working-class women had learnt from their own experience of schooling that educational difficulties were due to failings in the individual, rather than the system (Reay, 1998, p. 64)

Focus of this paper,

In the context of MAPPS,

Classroom Observations with mothers

Parents as

Learners

Parents as

Parents

Parents as

Teachers

Teacher Interviews

Classroom Observations

Small group of mothers and 1 or 2 researchers

Observation at : Elementary, Middle school, 2 HS

Debriefing after the observation based on mothers’ interests. Some of our questions were,

what was important to you in this class? Was the class what you expected? Why / why not?...

These mothers also observed (by themselves) their children’s classroom.

Data: Transcripts of our conversations, and field notes.

In the context of MAPPS,

Classroom Observations with mothers

Parents as

Learners

Parents as

Parents

Parents as

Teachers

Teacher Interviews

Parents as learnersParents as learners

Parents as Learners

Mothers’ voices:Opportunity for all of us to learn about

mathematics instruction

Mothers particularly enjoyed when they learned something new about mathematics

Parents as Learners

It impacted family dynamics, For example, some children now make sure

their mothers do their homework.Mothers like learning from their children

Opportunity to view children’s learning through an experiential lens

Parents as Learners

Teachers’ voices:Parents as role models for their children

Parents as providing a different point of view

Parents to learn from, and not just with.

Parents as TeachersParents as Teachers

Parents as Teachers

Mothers’ voices:Explore one another’s views and

understandings about mathematics education and our beliefsThe “teaching of the basics”Perceptions on how mathematics should be

taught Mothers’ valued conceptual understanding, use of

manipulatives and an inquiry-based pedagogy.

Parents as teachers

Teachers’ voices:Teachers shared a common ground

Appreciated to have parents “walk in their shoes”

Shared about the intricacies of teaching mathematics

Questions What are the implications of having parents

as teachers?

Parents as ParentsParents as Parents

Parents as Parents

Mothers’ voices:Recurrent concepts: mutual respect, caring

for one another, and family Lora: And you can tell that she cares for them

very much, for how she talked about them; she said, “they are very nice children, I really love them.” You can tell that she is used to them and they are used to her. Because I noticed that they even joke with her, they make fun of her, and it doesn’t bother her, she also laughs along with them.

The concept of, “educación” and “education”

It is important to see that a teacher really likes to teach, that he feels it. I liked it all, especially that he has the pictures of his students and his former students. That's where you notice that he does his work from his heart and that he likes it a lot, he cares about his students, even about the babies of his students, he is a very good teacher, very attentive, enjoyable and especially that he helps these young people a lot, he doesn't want anyone to be less, he wants everybody to be someone [to make something out him/herself.

I liked it a lot because to be honest, I had never seen a teacher that was so focused on his students. It was like his family, that's how he sees them, like his family, how we say, cheering them up.

Parents as Parents

Teacher’s views:

Parental involvement,

Parents as a deficit or resource ???

In this district, parental involvement is at a very minimal if any, level. That's one of the reasons I joined. I feel that the student achievement in our district, which is abysmal, probably could be improved if we could get parents involved in their mathematics education

(Tucson, high school, 18 years teaching experience)

I've never had the chance to work with parents like this before. It’s always been kind of the parent on the other end of the phone line and the parent at the other end of the table, you know just somebody on the other side, not necessarily somebody who you really felt like you worked with.

(Chandler, 8th grade, 7 years teaching experience)

(In MAPSS we have) 4 or 5 people getting together to try and teach two different areas or activities and I think that’s a really good thing. Also because it teaches teamwork. There are teachers and parents, and grandparents all involved in the process, so you get a bunch of different views and ideas from it.

(Las Vegas, 5th grade, 7 years teaching experience )

MOTHERS’ VOICES The good things about MAPPS is that it

[opens] our awareness in math, you know the workshops, it just opens up the doors that we thought that were closed specially for me….I think that it is important that I learned that our kids aren’t really being taught what they are supposed to be taught and that's one big thing and that parents have a lot of power that we don't know that we have it…

In Closing: What does it mean to be a

leader ?

TEACHERS’ VOICES I think a lot of parents view teachers as

role models and leaders for their children. In MAPPS it is totally different because we’re all equal. We all come in with the same fears and the same confidence, whatever. We’re all kind of evened out.

[Teacher, Las Vegas]

THANKS!