Parental Math Talk During Storybook Reading

CONTRIBUTING LAB MEMBERS:

Julia Wang, Elida V. Laski, Marina Vasilyeva, and Emily Golding

PRESENTED AT:

2023 SRCD Biennial Meeting (PDF)
San Jose, CA

Project description

One of the main goals of this current study is to identify ways that facilitate high-quality math-related parental input in storybook reading context. The frequency and quality of parent-child engagement in informal math activities at home is robustly related to children’s math knowledge (LeFevre et al., 2009; 2010; Levine et al., 2012; Ramani et al., 2015; Susperreguy et al., 2020; Vandermaas-Peeler et al., 2018). Among different kinds of informal math activities in the home environment, storybook reading offers a meaningful context that provides children with a familiar structure in which to explore mathematical ideas that they might encounter in their everyday experiences.

With respect to the feature of storybooks,  Anderson et al. (2005) found that illustrations in storybooks serve an important function since a considerable amount of parental math talk stemmed from discussion around them. However, less is clear about whether illustrations are enough in facilitating parents’ engagement in math talk with their young children. Therefore, the main objective of the current study was to use an experimental design to examine how embedding math concepts in the illustrations alone vs. embedding math language explicitly in the text of a storybook as well as in the illustrations affect parents’ and children’s math talk.