Family and individual variables associated with young Filipino children's numeracy interest and competence

Abstract

Children's early numeracy outcomes set the foundation for mathematics learning in their future school years. This study examined how different family and individual variables were associated with the numeracy interest and competence of disadvantaged young children in the Philippines. The numeracy and literacy skills of 673 children living in low-middle income communities were tested. Their parents were also asked to complete a questionnaire on demographics, their home numeracy practices, attitudes about numeracy learning, and children's numeracy interest. Structural equation modelling analyses showed that children's numeracy interest was linked with their parents' practices and attitudes. Children's numeracy competence, on the other hand, was related to their gender, age, socioeconomic status, and literacy abilities. These findings suggest that family and individual variables might play different roles in disadvantaged children's early numeracy development. Moreover, parents can be encouraged to make effective use of home numeracy experiences to promote their children's numeracy competence. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? In developed countries, home environment is occasionally found to link with early numeracy development. Some individual variables are also found to play significant roles in early numeracy development. What does this study add? Among young Filipino children from disadvantaged backgrounds, home environment is related to numeracy interest. Family socioeconomic status plays a significant role in early numeracy competence. Early literacy and numeracy skills are interrelated with each other.

Probing the Relationship Between Home Numeracy and Children's Mathematical Skills: A Systematic Review

“…Overall, only four studies (Zhou et al, 2006 ; Missall et al, 2015 ; Cheung et al, 2018 ; Leyva et al, 2019 ) did not observe any relationship between home numeracy (both questionnaire and observations) and mathematical skills (both comprehensive and specific mathematical measures). In addition, one study showed that the relationship between formal home numeracy and composite mathematical score was negative (Ciping et al, 2015 ).…”

“…Two studies with participants from middle- to high-SES families showed that formal numeracy activities were positively associated with children's ( M age = 6 years) composite mathematical score (i.e., Utrecht Early Numeracy Test-Revised) above and beyond children's cognitive skills, linguistic skills, and their home literacy environment (Kleemans et al, 2012 ; Segers et al, 2015 ). However, one study with participants from low- to middle-SES families reported that children's ( M age = 4.3 years) composite mathematical scores were not associated with formal home numeracy activities, but positively related with SES (Cheung et al, 2018 ). Next to these cross-sectional designs, several studies used a longitudinal approach.…”

“…With respect to age, at first sight, in the five studies mentioned earlier, children were, on average, either slightly younger or older compared with the children in other studies (∼5.5 years on average) that did observe a positive relation. In Cheung et al (2018), Missall et al (2015), and Zhou et al (2006), children's mean age was 4.3, 4.5, and 4 years, respectively. The children in Leyva et al (2019) were 6.6 years on average, which is older than most of the other studies.…”

“…Other commonalities between the studies in which a negative or no relation was found between home numeracy and children's mathematical skills are the socio-economic status of the family and the country where the research was conducted. The SES of the samples in those studies was low (Cheung et al, 2018;Leyva et al, 2019) or at least very diverse, with approximately half of the families having a low-SES background (Zhou et al, 2006;Ciping et al, 2015;Missall et al, 2015). Moreover, three (Zhou et al, 2006;Ciping et al, 2015;Cheung et al, 2018) of these five studies were conducted in Asian countries, i.e., Philippines and China, and one study included a sample living in the USA and having diverse ethnic backgrounds, 28% of which were Chinese (Leyva et al, 2019).…”

Intergenerational transmission of literacy skills among Filipino families

“…Results presented in the current study represent data from Time 5 of a larger longitudinal study (Cheung, Yang, Dulay, & McBride, 2017;Dulay et al, 2018aDulay et al, , 2019. This included a 12-week intervention program for numeracy, dialogic reading, and early literacy skills, with an untrained control group, between Time 1 and Time 2.…”