Mathematics home-school partnerships in diverse contexts
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Mathematics home-school partnerships in diverse contexts Bridget Wadham 1 & Lisa Darragh 2
& Fiona
Ell 2
Received: 24 April 2020 / Revised: 2 September 2020 / Accepted: 6 October 2020 # Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, Inc. 2020
Abstract The school and the home are both influential contexts in which a child learns mathematics, and therefore schools and families should work collaboratively to achieve shared goals for children’s mathematics learning. In culturally and linguistically diverse areas, schools have richness to draw on but may face additional challenges in engaging with parents from varying backgrounds. To understand these challenges, this study undertook a culturally focussed investigation of mathematics home-school partnerships within one diverse school in a low socio-economic area of Auckland, New Zealand. Teachers responded to a questionnaire, and focus group interviews were held with diverse groups of parents. Findings indicated tensions regarding differing mathematics pedagogies used at school and by parents and different desires around formal communication about mathematics learning. The diversity of the school generated further challenges because different parent groups dealt with the tensions in different ways. Knowing more about these parental approaches may help diverse schools to design programmes and craft communication that include more of their community in mathematics teaching and learning. Keywords Home-school partnership in mathematics . Culturally responsive pedagogies .
Parental agency . Communication
Introduction The school and the home are both influential contexts in which a child learns mathematics. When schools and families start to align their practices and work
* Lisa Darragh [email protected]
1
Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
2
Faculty of Education and Social Work, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
B. Wadham et al.
collaboratively towards achieving shared student-focussed outcomes, a home-school partnership develops. These partnerships may be organized in ways that help to “improve schools, strengthen families, and help students succeed” (Epstein 2009, p. 1). However, effective mathematics partnerships are difficult to achieve, particularly so in schools where the community comprises people from varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds (de Abreu and Cline 2005). Parents may have different experiences, beliefs, and expectations regarding mathematics and mathematics education, creating further complexity in the development of effective partnerships. Mathematics poses particular challenges for engaging with parents. It is regarded by many as a difficult subject (Fisher and Neill 2006), and parents may have had troubling experiences of learning mathematics themselves (Civil et al. 2005; Jay et al. 2018; Meaney 1999; Williams et al. 2016). Such experiences may contribute to findings that parents’ involvement with their child’s mathematics learning can be negative (Patall et al. 2008; Van Voorhis 2011). In gen
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