Parental Involvement In Middle School Mathematics Education

There is emerging research that has been exploring how parents with math anxiety engage with their children, and the resulting impact on student math anxiety and performance in middle and high school grades. In response to the paradigm shift of increased parental involvement with home-based math support and home-schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of this transference had become a concern to educators. This research looked at the effectiveness of a school outreach program to help mitigate the anxiety level of parents, help parents define their roles at home, and promote more effective parental involvement with the goal of better mathematical outcomes for students. Invitations were sent to 192 sixth-grade parents in a suburban Connecticut middle school to participate in a Family Math Night event with the stated purpose of addressing student success in middle school mathematics. Parents and their children completed pre- and post-surveys over a five-week period to monitor parents’ math anxiety levels in their role providing math support, students’ math anxiety levels, and students’ perceived frequency of parental support. Despite the relatively small parent sample size, there was a statistically significant reduction in parental anxiety levels in providing help and identifying their role in home-based math support at the end of the five-week investigation. Student results were inconclusive but may have benefitted from a longer observation period.