Parental Roles in Students' Learning of Mathematics: An Exploratory Study

AbstractApproximately 60% of the primary guardians of 220 middle school students returned a completed Parental Involvement Questionnaire (PIQ), which was designed to assess five types of in-home parental support: Motivator, Resource Provider, Monitor, Mathematics Content Advisor, and Mathematics Learning Counselor. Students with the most supportive parents demonstrated higher mathematics achievement and more positive attitudes towards mathematics than students with the least supportive parents. Moreover, students whose parents did not return the PIQ demonstrated lower mathematics achievement and less positive attitudes towards mathematics than students whose parents returned the PIQ. The Motivator, Resource Provider, and Monitor measures of parental support were found to be better predictors of mathematics achievement than the Mathematics Content Advisor and Mathematics Learning Counselor measures.