SBP: Harnessing Latinx Parents' Math Support to Increase Adolescents' Math Motivation and Achievement

Tulagan, Nestor B, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program and SBE's Science of Broadening Participation program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Sandra D. Simpkins at the University of California, Irvine, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist examining how Latinx families and organized after-school activities (ASAs) can build partnerships to foster students’ math motivation and achievement. Youths’ math achievement and motivation in middle school is a critical gateway to STEM aspirations and pursuits in high school and college. However, many Latinx and underrepresented minority youth turn away from STEM pursuits because they perceive math to be too challenging or unimportant to their lives. Adolescents need to have positive experiences in educational contexts that boost their interests, values, and ongoing mastery. Family environments and ASAs are informal educational settings that extend what youths are learning in school, which is particularly important for Latinx youth attending lower-quality schools. As ASAs increasingly put forth initiatives to increase parent involvement in Latinx youths’ education, successful partnerships between families and ASAs hinges on leveraging Latinx families’ cultural funds of knowledge and parents’ culturally-grounded support in math and STEM more broadly. These funds of knowledge can provide vital insights to how ASAs can make math and STEM relevant to youths’ lives and may help parents further enhance their math support at home. This project seeks to understand how Latinx parents’ support their adolescents in math and uncover the ways in which ASAs can better leverage Latinx parents’ cultural funds of knowledge to maximally increase youths’ competence and motivation in math. By studying how ASAs can harness parents’ math support to increase youths’ math motivation and achievement, this project hopes to bolster family-ASA partnerships to effect positive educational success among Latinx youths. This project seeks to understand Latinx parents’ cultural funds of knowledge in math; identify opportunities for ASAs to enhance their math support; develop a reliable, valid measure of Latinx parents’ math support that captures a more complete and culturally-grounded set of parental behaviors; and examine the links between parents’ math supports and youths’ math motivation and performance. To accomplish these research aims, data will be collected from both parents and youth participants of a math ASA through mixed methods approaches, including surveys and in-depth qualitative interviews. Study findings will guide efforts by researchers and ASA leaders to develop practical, cost-effective resources aimed at enhancing parents’ math support. The integration of basic and applied approaches will extend substantive knowledge on family influences within Latinx communities and provide vital, enriching information that illuminates the effective ways in which parents and ASAs may reciprocally inform one another to improve youths’ math motivation and achievement. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.