Early math skills are crucial for students’ later academic success, yet significant gaps related to family income are evident even before formal schooling begins. Therefore, engaging parents in supporting their children’s learning is vital from the start of preschool. In a 12-week randomized controlled trial , Mayer and colleagues examined whether digital apps and analog math materials could improve parental math engagement and math skills among 758 low-income preschoolers aged 3 to 5 years.
The MPACT intervention, conducted between 2017 and 2018, included four treatments in Spanish and English. Parents received an “Mkit,” containing a math activity booklet, activities, a game board and pieces, a number grid, and a goal tracker. The kit also included instructions and tips for parents, focusing on five key skills: number recognition, counting, comparing size and quantity, addition and subtraction, and patterns. Text messages were used to encourage parental goal-setting, engagement, and follow-through. Students from 30 publicly subsidized preschools in Chicago were randomized into either the control group, a group receiving a digital tablet with math apps to be used with or without parents, a group receiving the analog Mkit, a group receiving the Mkit plus messaging to address parents’ biases, and a group receiving the Mkit plus text messaging to promote parents’ growth mindsets.
The study found that while analog math materials alone and with growth mindset messages did not significantly increase math skills, the analog materials coupled with bias-changing messaging and the digital tablets did show statistically significant increases in math skills after six months of intervention (ES = +0.20, p = 0.10). In addition, parents in these two treatment groups reported spending significantly more time engaged in math activities with their children.
These results suggest that addressing parents’ biases related to math learning is an important step in improving engagement. Disadvantaged parents face numerous challenges impacting cognition and emotional state, leading to present bias, which can be a barrier to engaging in math learning with their children.
Source: Mayer, S. E., Kalil, A., Delgado, W., Liu, H., Rury, D., & Shah, R. (2023). Boosting parent-child math engagement and preschool children’s math skills: Evidence from an RCT with low-income families. Economics of Education Review, 95, 102436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102436