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Community Mathematics Project: Parents as Mediators of Mathematical Learning

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Abstract

Parents play a vital role in shaping the ways young children understand the world around them. This paper reports on how the Community Mathematics Project (CMP)—a mathematics tutoring program for parents of diverse young children—affected the ways parents engaged in mathematical sensemaking while using virtual manipulatives and questioning to develop mathematical thinking. Further, we describe how these parents engaged with their children in daily activities and funds of knowledge in the form of at-home activities to contextualize mathematics word problems. We share stories on how parents and young children engaged in conversations around mathematics, and we provide examples on how these parents’ lives were already mathematically rich and the CMP simply helped them to connect to mathematics more explicitly.

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Notes

  1. In this study parent extends beyond birth connections and encompasses all people who primarily care for the child (e.g., grandparents, aunts, stepparents, caregivers, and so on).

  2. Videos and pictures were generated by parents. The quality of these artifacts varies as we relied on the phones parents had when the study took place.

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Funding

Project funded by the Department of Education Title V Funds (Award # P031S180160, Northwest Vista Community College, lead institution).

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  1. University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Denisse M. Hinojosa & Emily P. Bonner

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  1. Denisse M. Hinojosa
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Correspondence to Denisse M. Hinojosa.

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Hinojosa, D.M., Bonner, E.P. Community Mathematics Project: Parents as Mediators of Mathematical Learning. Urban Rev 56, 235–258 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-023-00665-6

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