Although increasing parental engagement is often identified as a key strategy for increasing pupil attainment, increasing parental engagement with Mathematics often poses additional hurdles.

Nevertheless, the EEF (2021)  reports that effective parental support in mathematics can lead to a three-month learning gain over the academic year, so it’s certainly a strategy deserving further exploration.

In this blog we’ll investigate a fun, family-friendly approach towards increasing parental engagement in Mathematics. In addition, we will explore the key messages from a recent NRICH-led school-based project² which reported significantly increased parental engagement in Mathematics, but let’s begin by exploring the different forms that parental engagement might take and reflect on some of the particular challenges schools aiming to increase parental engagement with mathematics are facing.

What do we mean by ‘parental engagement’?

When schools decide to focus their energies on increasing parental engagement, it’s a useful first step to clarify the meaning of ‘parental engagement.’

Researchers have reported that its meaning can vary enormously, making it essential for schools to clearly define their understanding of the term so that they can accurately assess the impact of their efforts. For example, some families interpret parental engagement as ensuring that their younger members have a suitable study space at home, possibly in a quiet area of the home where they can study undisturbed.

Other families invest in support materials and, perhaps, tutoring. Of course, many families monitor home-school diaries and often work through the set tasks together with their children. Hence, establishing what type of parental engagement your school is seeking to improve is a crucial step.

At NRICH, we recently collaborated with several schools seeking to increase active parental involvement in homework, through the playing of mathematical games together, in an initiative called Solving Together. When we were in the planning stages of the intervention, we explored ways to overcome some of the barriers to increasing parental engagement.

Overcoming barriers towards parental engagement with Mathematics

Surveys³ have revealed several key reasons for parents to be reluctant to engage with Mathematics. Crucially, many parents hold deep-seated, negative attitudes towards Mathematics. Others lack knowledge about current classroom approaches and understandably do not want to cause confusion. Some lack the time to support, and others lack confidence in their own mathematical skills.

At NRICH, we’ve discovered that some children feel very strongly that they should complete their Maths homework alone, rather than working with others (which we suspect may be due to influence of our national high-stakes primary SATS assessment regime). Each probable reason behind a lack of parental engagement needs careful consideration if any intervention is going to succeed.

For Solving Together⁴, we addressed concerns about subject knowledge by focusing on activities which reinforced known facts rather than asking families to teach new material at home. We chose a selection of highly engaging, curriculum-linked interactive Maths games, which we felt families would enjoy playing together.

Measuring impact

Any new initiative requires time and effort, so it’s important we consider ways to measure its impact at the outset. When working with young children, there’s some innovative approaches we can take to gather the data we need in a child-friendly way. I love using drawings and the children’s drawings we collected during Solving Together provide fascinating insights into the diverse ways that families support their younger members to complete their homework.

When using drawings to investigate parental engagement with Maths homework, our team asked the children to draw themselves completing a typical Maths homework activity, both before and after the six-week long intervention of playing games for homework. The children’s sketches were an incredibly rich source of data, often revealing where the children did their homework, the resources available in their homes as well as whether they worked alone or with others.

For example, in Figure 2 we see Mo’s ‘before’ drawing indicating that he usually worked alone in his bedroom when completing his homework. In contrast, his ‘after’ drawing reveals Mo working collaboratively with others on his homework tasks.

The drawings revealed a significant increase in the number of parents sitting with their children to complete their Maths homework following the intervention. We also asked some of the participating children to talk to us about their drawings and share their feelings about playing Maths games with their families. “They made it really fun, even though it was homework,” noted one child. Another indicated the parental engagement during the project; “they don’t usually help with homework, but they did with this one.”

Several students reported how much more they enjoyed playing maths with their families rather than completing their usual homework routine, “They did it with me and it was much better than just doing boring written work.” Others noted how their parents supported their learning by working together, “[They] helped me when I was stuck, helped me work out ways to win, we always worked together.”

We also asked to speak to some of the participating parents about their responses to the game playing initiative, “Yes, we played a couple of them together. At first, he did beat me, he was just so much quicker, but I managed to pick it up. Proud of myself!” So not only did the games help the children, but it also seemed that they were helping some of the parents experience positive outcomes too. Parental feedback also revealed how widely some of the games were shared, “And he even played one with his little sister who’s only 7. I think he had to help her quite a lot, but she managed quite well… and later he started doing them with his grandad.” Feedback from teachers was also positive, staff noticed better engagement and pair-work and improved reading with some students.

Solving Together revealed the power of game playing to reinforce classroom learning, increase engagement and bring together families to work mathematically. Our innovative use of drawings also enabled our team to understand the impact on the children’s learning in a very child-friendly way. Not every project needs a questionnaire to disseminate, retrieve and analyse. I’m looking forward to using drawings in future projects, and perhaps make more use of mind maps too as another visual source. Watch this space.

Listen to Dr Ems Lord Pearson’s The Right Angle podcast episode on algebra and how the NRICH outreach project continues to facilitate rich mathematical understanding, here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Dr Ems Lord

Dr Ems Lord is the Director of NRICH, the University of Cambridge’s multi-award-winning mathematics outreach program, which provides support to millions, including teachers, families, and pupils in the UK. She has served as President of The Mathematical Association and lecture at home and abroad on all aspects of mathematics learning, teaching, and curriculum issues, as well as speaks passionately and fluently about the history of mathematics, its rich and diverse influences from diverse cultures, and the need for the gender imbalance of achievement to be levelled up.

¹ https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/parental-engagement 

² https://nrich.maths.org/solvingtogether 

³ V. Hoover-Dempsey, Angela C. Battiato, Joan M. T. Walker, Richard P. Reed, Jennifer M. DeJong & Kathleen P. Jones (2001) Parental Involvement in Homework, Educational Psychologist, 36:3, 195-209, DOI: 10.1207/S15326985EP3603_5

⁴ Solving Together (maths.org)