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Citation:

Kotsopoulos, D., Zambrzycka, J., & Makosz, S. (2015). Mommies, mathematics, and mathematically

mindful mothering. In M. Bockarova, M. Danesi, D. Martinovic, and R. Núñez (Eds.), Mind in

mathematics: Essays on mathematical cognition and mathematical method (pp. 58-67). Munich: Lincom

Europa. ISBN 978 3 86288 535 0

Available at:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=16475993263&searchurl=an%3DBOCKAROVA

%2C+MARIANA%2C+DANESI%2C+MARCEL

Mommies, Mathematics, and Mathematically Mindful Mothering

Donna Kotsopoulos1, Joanna Zambrzycka

2, Samantha Makosz

1

Wilfrid Laurier University1, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

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The importance of early childhood experiences to the future wellbeing of young children

have been well established in the literature (Duncan et al., 2007). Young children who have

exposure to high quality early childhood environments – do better socially, emotionally, and

academically (Romano, Babchishin, Pagani, & Kohen, 2010). Studies investigating child

development often focuses on mothers or have a predominant sample of mothers – quite simply

because mothers are often the primary caregiver and thus usually the participating parent in

many studies. Maternal level of education is often of significant interest – both as a contributor

to children’s achievement and as a proxy for socioeconomic status (Catts, Fey, Zhang, &

Tomblin, 2001). Also of interest are the kinds of things mothers do with their young children.

Our aim in this paper is to summarize some of the research that points to the central role

that mothers have, often as the primary caregivers, to young children’s mathematical learning

and development. Young children, as used in this context, refers to for the most part children

approximately age six and younger. To clarify, the term “mathematical learning” represents the

learning of counting, number knowledge, patterning, matching, spatial knowledge, and simple

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addition and subtraction; in short, relatively simple, yet foundational concepts in mathematics.

This learning is not explicit instruction by the mother but rather learning through the home

environment largely emerging spontaneously through play and daily routines, and with artifacts

that may or may not be initially viewed as mathematical (Kotsopoulos & Lee, 2013, 2014).

The forthcoming studies point to the important potential of mathematically mindful

mothering as a mechanism for optimizing the mathematical environment and mathematical

learning potential of a young child. We define mathematically mindful as the conscious

awareness and engagement of mathematical opportunities present in the environment or made

possible through the environment and the conscious attention to mathematical biases.

Our focus on mothering is not intended to suggest that some results are not relatable to

other caregivers but rather to synthesize some important studies that involve mothers or

primarily mothers. Additionally, the focus on mothers is also appropriate given that

approximately 60% of young children are cared for at home and often by mothers (Barnett,

Carolan, Fitzgerald, & Squires, 2012; Coople, 2004). Even those children in other child care

settings are still primarily cared for by mothers in mixed-parent homes while at home (Treas &

Tai, 2012).

Many of the studies we discuss include mixed samples of mothers and fathers –although

mothers form the vast majority of the participants. While these mixed-parent, mother dominant

studies do not statistically analyze mothers-only, some extrapolations are reasonable given that

the majority of participants are mothers. In these cases, we report the sample sizes to allow

readers to make their own judgements as to the relative weight that may be attributed from the

findings to mothers rather than other caregivers in the study. Our synthesis focuses on what

mothers do mathematically in their homes, the implications of these activities on young

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children’s future mathematical potential, and potential beliefs or biases some mothers may hold

that are noteworthy.

Mathematics at Home

Mathematics is emphasized far less in homes compared to literacy prior to formal

schooling (Cannon & Ginsburg, 2008). In studies with predominantly mother participants,

parents report reading more text-based books rather than number books with their young children

(Blevins-Knabe, Austin, Musun, Eddy, & Jones, 2000; LeFevre et al., 2009). Cannon and

Ginsburg (2008) found in their study of 37 mothers that literacy was prioritized over numeracy at

home and literacy was also seen as a higher priority than numeracy during preschool. These

results are consistent with Blevins-Knabe and colleagues (2000) who reported that parents

(mothers = 16, fathers = 2) rated mathematics activities at home as having low priority.

Despite the prioritization of literacy activities, mothers do engage with mathematics in

their homes with their young children, albeit differently (Blevins-Knabe & Musun-Miller, 1996;

LeFevre et al., 2009). Differential engagement with mathematical activities could be related to

prior negative experience or simply a lack of understanding on how to make ordinary routines

and play mathematical (Blevins-Knabe et al., 2000). The ability to take up spontaneous

opportunities to mathematize play can be very important for a young child’s learning (van Oers,

2010). For instance, Fluck, Linnell, and Holgate (2005) found that mothers did not detect

opportunities to engage in counting when playing with their child. Moreover, mothers often

misjudged their child’s ability to count in ways that overestimated the child’s ability (Fluck et

al., 2005).

Alternatively, higher incidences of mathematical play at home by children with their

mothers may be related to higher socioeconomic status or maternal education (Anders et al.,

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2012). For example, Dearing and colleagues (2012) found that mothers with higher levels of

socioeconomic status had higher quality of “home learning investments (enrichment, learning

materials, and family companionship)” (p. 464), and this was found to be related to a child’s

subsequent arithmetic performance. Anders and colleagues (2012) found that young children’s

initial arithmetic ability was related to maternal education.

Perhaps one of the most comprehensive studies of the sorts of mathematical activities

parents (mothers = 122, fathers = 24) engage in at home and the subsequent effect of the

activities on a young child’s mathematical ability has been conducted by LeFevre, Skwarchuk,

Smith-Chant, Fast, Kamawar, and Bisanz (2009). Examples of activities engaged in at home

include: counting objects, sorting activities, reading number storybooks, playing card games,

playing board games, and so forth. Our own forthcoming study of 33 mother–child dyads found

that the most popular mathematics activities that mothers reported engaging in with their two

years old child were singing or listening to nursery rhymes or songs with counting and numbers,

and mothers reported similar overall levels of engagement for girls and boys (Makosz,

Kotsopoulos, & Zambrzycka, Forthcoming).

The mathematical activities mothers engage in with their young children have important

consequences. LeFevre and colleagues (2009) found that children’s arithmetic performance in

grades one and two was positively predicted by the frequency of numerical home activities; boys

outperformed girls in mathematical knowledge and the speed in which they responded to

addition questions. Play with games was found to be a unique predictor of arithmetic

performance. Other research with again a predominantly mother participant base has found that

parent’s quality of block play predicts their child’s numeracy competency (Lee, Kotsopoulos, &

Zambrzycka, 2012).

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Ability and Gender

Blevins-Knabe and Munsun-Miller (1996) found contrasting gender differences during

mathematical play which favoured girls: mothers seemed to encourage more counting, singing of

number songs and matching with daughters rather than sons. In a follow-up study with 47

mothers and 14 fathers, these researchers found that “the higher the level of mathematical

activities that parents reported for their child, the higher the child’s percentile score on a

standardized test of early mathematics ability” (p. 43). In both studies, the “most frequent

number activities with their children included saying numbers and encouraging their children to

count” (p. 43).

Maternal ability is of significant interest when it comes to understanding young

children’s spatial ability. Spatial ability has been found to be an important predictor in

mathematical achievement and subsequent participation in STEM-based disciplines and careers

(Doyle, Voyer, & Cherney, 2012; Lubinski, 2010; Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009). Dearing

and colleagues (2012) explored the types of activities (mathematical and spatial) mothers

engaged in at home with their daughters and whether the children’s arithmetic and spatial skills

could be predicted by engagement in these activities or by their mother’s spatial skills. Mothers

with higher levels of spatial skills, as measured by a relatively simple picture-type mental

rotation task, predicted their daughter’s arithmetic performance and spatial ability (Dearing et al.,

2012).

However, Dearing and colleagues (2012) found that the types of spatial activities engaged

in at home did not seem to influence either arithmetic or spatial skills, whereas the types of

mathematics activities did influence performance on the arithmetic task. These results differ

from results of a longitudinal study of mother-child dyads that show that some spatial tasks, such

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as puzzle play, predicted children’s mental rotation and mental transformation skills at preschool

(Cannon, Levine, & Huttenlocher 2007).

Levine, Ratliff, Huttenlocher, and Cannon (2012) also found promising results that

showed that puzzle play was related to subsequent mental rotation and mental transformation

performance. In this particular study, 47 of the 53 parents were mothers, and in all but one

instance, the mother was the parent observed to be engaging in the puzzle play with child. Also

notable from this study was that frequency of play with puzzles did not differ for boys or girls

but the quality of the play (a composite of puzzle difficulty, parent engagement, and parent

spatial language) did differ – higher for boys. However, girls’ performance was related to the

quality of play and the boys’ performance was not. While fewer parents tended to engage in

puzzle play versus reading with younger children (30 months of age) those parents that did

engage in puzzle play did so longer on average than reading.

Differences in spatial ability, particularly in mental rotations, has been found by about

age 4 years and 6 months between young boys and young girls (Levine, Huttenlocher, Taylor, &

Langrock, 1999). Boys outperformed girls and the differences were not attributed to general

intellectual ability (Levine et al., 1999). These results are also supported in other studies (Casey

et al., 2008; Linn & Peterson, 1985). Given that gendered mathematical play is also commonly

reported across numerous studies (Blevins-Knabe & Musun-Miller, 1996; Levine et al., 2012),

these results raise important questions about the environmental differences that girls and boys

experience in early childhood, and the shifts possible from mathematically mindful mothering.

Mother’s Spatial and Mathematical Talk

In addition to the amount and the quality of the mathematical play in the home, the

amount of mathematical and spatial talk young children hear is also important (Klibanoff,

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Levine, Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, & Hedges, 2006). Mathematical talk related to counting has

been found to be related to children’s conceptual understanding of the concept of cardinality or

the knowledge of “how many” (Gunderson & Levine, 2011). Mathematical talk, like

mathematical play, is not neutral, however. Chang, Sandhofer, and Brown (2011) found in their

naturalistic study of mothers with their young children (mean age 22 months), that mothers

tended to use more mathematical talk with boys than with girls.

Spatial talk during block play and block play in of itself has also been widely studied.

Boys and girls tend to differ slightly on the ways in which they play with blocks but this play

does not produce gendered differences in spatial ability (Caldera et al., 1999). According to

Casey et al., (2008) potential gains in spatial ability by young children from block play can be

leveraged with focused joint engagement with adults through tasks such as storytelling. Ferrara

and colleagues (2011) also found that boys and girls did not differ in the amount of time they

played with blocks but that more focused play by parents (mothers = 74, fathers = 2) with the

child produced more spatial talk.

In a study examining the type of spatial talk in a home, higher levels of spatial talk by the

parents (mothers = 50, fathers = 2) during early childhood resulted in better performance by

children on spatial tasks at older ages (Pruden, Levine, & Huttenlocher, 2011). Similar results

were found when looking at mathematics talk between mothers and their young children during

everyday home routines: children’s performance on mathematical tasks one year later was

related to the amount of mathematical talk they were exposed to at home (Susperreguy & Davis-

Kean, 2015).

Mothers’ Mathematical Beliefs

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It is not surprising that a mother’s belief or perspective can have an exacting outcome or

influence on a child. Cannon and Ginsburg (2008) found that mothers felt less able to support

their children in mathematics than literacy – both affect and perceived ability contributing to this

belief. Therefore, a mother’s perceived mathematical ability or belief is not altogether irrelevant.

A recent study by Tomasetto, Romana Alparone, and Cadinu (2011) explored “stereotype

threat” – the extent to which young children in kindergarten to grade two were influenced by

maternal stereotypes related to mathematics. These researchers found that mothers contributed to

young girls’ susceptibility to gender stereotypes even before the young girls were aware of the

stereotypes. An important related finding from this study is that father’s stereotypes did not have

the same effect as the mothers on the girls.

Research shows that mothers beliefs about their young adolescent children’s ability to

succeed in mathematics and their future participation in mathematics careers has been found to

be significantly related their child’s self-efficacy in mathematics in early adulthood and their

ultimate career choices (Bleeker & Jacobs, 2004). These results are consistent with early studies

showing the same gender stereotypes of mothers – particularly related to their daughters ability

to engage in mathematics (Jacobs & Eccles, 1992). Bouffard and Hill (2005) found different

results: mothers showed gendered perceptions of their child’s math ability despite similar math

scores, but these perceptions did not predict the child’s perceptions several years later or their

mathematical ability.

Mothers perceptions of who “can” do mathematics can have fairly powerful and exacting

outcomes on children – and particularly their daughters. These studies point to gendered

stereotypes prior to formal schooling. Given the power of such stereotypes to disengage girls, in

particular, the results from these studies are seriously concerning given that girls tend to be

9

underrepresented in STEM-disciplines and careers (Gillen & Tanenbaum, 2014; Hango, 2013a,

2013b). Moreover, adolescent girls who have demonstrated ability in mathematics, for example,

still tend to not choose STEM-based disciplines during their post-secondary education (Hango,

2013a).

Conclusions

Very recent research has shown that while young children make mathematical gains over

their first year of schooling, the most compelling factor in their outcomes one year later is their

starting point upon entering schooling (Aunio, Heiskari, Van Luit, & Vuorio, 2015). Given that

mathematical achievement in schooling is related to early childhood experiences, and that

mothers are primary care givers during early childhood, a focus on supporting the development

of mathematically mindful mothering is needed.

Our brief review of studies related to mothers, or with predominantly mother participants,

show that a mother’s spatial ability seems to matter, as does her level of education. Moreover,

the types of activities, the quality of those activities, and the ways in which a mother talks to her

children all seem to matter as well. A mother’s mathematics self-efficacy and any gendered

stereotypes add an additional layer of complexity. These factors, taken together, point to a

child’s mother as perhaps one of the single most important determinants to a child’s future

success and participation in mathematics. Across many of these factors, including spatial ability

which has been shown to be highly malleable (Newcombe & Frick, 2010; Uttal et al., 2013),

intentionality through mathematically mindful mothering may be a powerful approach to

enhancing young children’s mathematical potential.

While investment in early childhood is shown to be a particularly good investment in a

child and for society (Alexander & Ignjatovic, 2012; Heckman & Masterov, 2004), targeted

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investment in early childhood to support the development of a mathematical mindful mother is

likely wise. It is important to note, that while moderate increases have been observed over the

last decade in particular in terms of women’s participation in STEM-based disciplines and

careers, overall the levels of participation are still lower than men across most fields (Conference

Board of Canada, 2014; Gillen & Tanenbaum, 2014; Hango, 2013b). Given the lower levels of

engagement by women in STEM-based disciplines and fields, an investment in supporting the

development of mathematically mindful mothering is also necessary.

We conclude our brief review by emphasizing a limitation of our argument presented

early on – namely, our review focuses on mothers because they tend to be the primary

participants in most studies. More studies are needed that focus on caregivers other than mothers.

Very little, for example, is known about the influence of fathers on early mathematical learning.

It may be that any primary caregiver ought to be mathematically mindful and results may not

differ across different caregivers. However, to generalize to other caregivers is difficult given

some of the gender specific variables considered across many of these studies.

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