Exploring educational engagement for parents with math anxiety

Little is known about how math anxiety in parents may relate to engagement in their children's education (i.e., parent involvement, parent educational expectations) or children's math outcomes (i.e., child math achievement and child math anxiety). The current exploratory study examined these relations between parents and their fifth grade children. The results indicate that parents with any reported math anxiety engaged in statistically less home–school conferencing, home-based involvement, and held lower educational expectations. Parent educational expectations mediated the relation between parent math anxiety and both child math anxiety and child achievement. These results suggest that parent math anxiety can unintentionally influence how parents engage in behaviors that matter to schools. Furthermore, educational expectations may be a more important intervention target than parent math anxiety to support parents in their educational engagement. Our findings have implications for researchers and school-based practitioners interested in better understanding how to support all parents with math anxiety.