abstract
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At the intersection of developmental and educational science, recent studies have focused on the role of parents attitudes and beliefs towards math and their homework-helping behaviors. Specifically, findings from Maloney et al. (2015) suggest that parents math-related anxiety had a negative effect on childrens gains in math achievement only when the parents frequently helped with math homework suggesting that frequent exposure to negative views towards math at home may diminish childrens math motivations, and in turn, their math achievement. To further understand this complex developmental mechanism, the current study aimed to replicate these findings with a larger, and more diverse sample of elementary school children. A sample of 2,953 kindergarten, first-, second-, and third-grade students (49.37% female) nested across 239 classrooms in a Southeastern U.S. state were assessed on their math achievement at fall and spring of the school year. Parents self-reported their math anxiety and frequency of homework help. Results revealed significant, negative main effects of parents math anxiety and homework help on childrens gains in math achievement across the school year. However, contrary to the work of Maloney et al. (2015), no significant interaction effect between these two parent-level predictors on childrens math achievement was found. These findings underscore the role of parents math anxiety as it relates to more negative child math outcomes. Accordingly, there remains a need for additional examination of parents homework help and how this process may play role in childrens change over time in math achievement.