Out-of-school family time around math may help children succeed even when their parents dread the subject, according to a new study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Researchers tracked the math achievement of 587 elementary students in 40 Chicago-area classrooms. As 1st graders, the children and their families were randomly assigned tablets loaded with either a math app or a similar app with reading questions.
The children of parents who showed high stress about math learned less math from 1st to 3rd grades than the children of parents who used the app but had no math anxiety. But among children whose families used the math app, those with math-anxious parents showed the same math progress as students whose parents were comfortable with math.
