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Parental cultural models and resources for understanding mathematical achievement in culturally diverse school settings

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Abstract

This paper proposes that the theoretical concept of cultural models can offer useful insights into parental involvement in their child’s mathematical achievement and the resources they use to go about gaining information in culturally diverse learning settings. This examination takes place within a cultural-developmental framework and draws on the notion of cultural models to explicate parental understandings of their child’s mathematics achievement and what resources are used to make sense of this. Three parental resources are scrutinized: (a) the teacher, (b) examination test results, and (c) constructions of child development. The interviews with 22 parents revealed some ambiguity around the interpretation of these resources by the parent, which was often the result of incongruent cultural models held between the home and the school. The resources mentioned are often perceived as being unambiguous but show themselves instead to be highly interpretive because of the diversity of cultural models in existence in culturally diverse settings. Parents who are in minority or marginalized positions tend to have difficulties in interpreting cultural models held by school, thereby disempowering them to be parentally involved in the way the school would like.

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Notes

  1. Dot-to-dot are drawings which are revealed by joining numerical points together.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Psychology, University of Northampton, Boughton Green Road, Northampton, Northamptonshire, NN2 7AL, UK

    Sarah Crafter

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  1. Sarah Crafter
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Correspondence to Sarah Crafter.

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Sarah Crafter is also a member of the EMiCS group Educació Matemàtica i Context Sociocultural -Mathematics Education and Sociocultural Context-, a research granted by the Direcció General de Recerca -General Directorate of Research- of the Catalan Government (ref: SGR2009 00590). She participates in two of the research projects of the group EMiCS, EDU2010-15373 funded by the Dirección General de Investigación -General Directorate of Research- of the Spanish Government and RecerCaixa 2010-2 funded by ACUP and Fundació LaCaixa, a private foundation.

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Crafter, S. Parental cultural models and resources for understanding mathematical achievement in culturally diverse school settings. Educ Stud Math 81, 31–46 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-011-9359-5

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