Prelims

Parental Engagement and Out-of-School Mathematics Learning

Emerald Studies in Out-of-School Learning

Series Editors: Professor Tim Jay, Loughborough University, and Dr Jo Rose, University of Bristol

Emerald Studies in Out-of-School Learning focuses on the thinking and learning that children engage with outside of school, mainly in primary age groups from 4 to 11 years. Books in the series emphasise the ways in which such out-of-school learning does and does not align with children's classroom learning, and the potential barriers to, and opportunities for, synergy between these two contexts. A key feature of the series is the problematisation of out-of-school learning in terms of its alignment (or otherwise) with classroom learning.

The series will examine some of the complexities of researching out-of-school learning, and the need for new conceptual and methodological approaches and provides a space for work that looks at both informal and formal learning outside of the classroom, and will help to scope and shape this growing discipline.

Parental Engagement and Out-of-School Mathematics Learning: Breaking Out of the Boundaries

By

Tim Jay

Loughborough University, UK

And

Jo Rose

University of Bristol, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2023

Copyright © 2023 Tim Jay and Jo Rose.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters' suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78769-706-5 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-705-8 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-707-2 (Epub)

Tim Jay is Professor of Psychology of Education in the Centre for Mathematical Cognition, Loughborough University. His research focuses on young children's thinking and learning about mathematics. Tim takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on theory and methods from psychology, education, computing and design and aims to carry out research that can improve children's experience of mathematics both in and out of school.

Jo Rose is Associate Professor in Social Psychology of Education at the University of Bristol. Her research interests lie in the areas of educational partnerships and collaborative work, particularly in the context of supporting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. She draws from the disciplines of psychology, sociology and education and particularly enjoys tangling with the myriad of ways that research methods can be combined to understand the complexity of collaboration in the context of education.

I am very pleased to write the foreword for this book, not only because Dr Jo Rose and Professor Tim Jay have been friends and colleagues for a number of years, but because this is a book that is timely, important and in particular, very much needed.

Jo, Tim and I share a research interest in parents' engagement in their children's learning; more than that, we are all agreed that this subject is not well enough researched, and frequently misunderstood. We've collaborated before on issues of ‘out-of-school learning’; having been through periods of lockdown where almost all learning was ‘out of school’, the work presented in this book is even more important than it might otherwise have been. Jo and Tim emphasise the importance of relational work – between parents and children and importantly, between school staff and families, as well as between researchers, children, families and school staff. None of us are in the business of supporting learning on our own, even though we often seem to operate as though that were the case.

While there are a good many books about engaging parents in learning, there are few that look at how this can be supported and understood in the area of mathematics; as Jo and Tim point out in this work, maths is often seen as the exception to the rule – what works in other areas (parents supporting learning in the home) is often seen as not applicable to the study of mathematics.

Moreover, Jo and Tim's work over a series of projects has shown that not only is parent engagement in learning often misunderstood (which is a focus of a great deal of my own work), but the very concept of mathematics is also often misconceived. Parents (and school staff) may well maintain that they don't do maths at home with their children, all the while they are counting stairs with young children going up to bed, collecting car number plates to keep older children entertained on long journeys and discussing the intricate matter of just how many points a beloved football team needs to gain to avoid relegation. These are, as Jo and Tim rightly point out, all instances of mathematical thinking, but are rarely considered to be such – rather, maths-at-home is seen as counting change and weighing ingredients because that's what children (and parents) have been told at school.

It's worth pointing out that not everything in this book will be comfortable reading, and I think that's one of the positive things about it. We are enmeshed in educational systems which are frankly iniquitous: children from affluent backgrounds do better in our schooling systems than do their less advantaged contemporaries. If we wish to change that situation – and I do – then we cannot continue to do what we have always done in the past. We cannot, as the clarion cry is so often heard, ‘return to normal’ after the disruption of the pandemic; ‘normal’ failed far too many of our children and young people. We need disruption to the system – and Jo and Tim outline how they have gone about such disruption, and the impacts that those changes have had. We need to reconceive how we understand not only parent engagement in learning but also mathematics itself, and research around it.

This book offers insights and suggestions which clearly arise from research grounded in the every day lives (and every day maths) of families and school staff. It suggests ways of moving forward, for parents, teachers and researchers. I particularly recommend it to those in my own context, as schools in Wales move into an era of greater autonomy under the new curriculum. I hope this book will challenge your ideas, support you to reconsider your own practice and thinking in this area, no matter how you relate to children acquiring mathematical understandings.

Janet Goodall

Professor of Education

Swansea University, Department of Education and Childhood Studies

Thank you to all those who were part of the work that fed into this book. This includes (but is probably not limited to!): Ulises Xolocotzin and Ben Simmons, for your work as researchers on the respective projects; the schools, children, parents and teachers who participated in the projects; the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation and the ESRC (IAA award) who funded the projects; teachers, parents, colleagues and funders who have discussed the projects' outcomes with us and helped to shape our thinking on what is important, interesting and exciting; Kate Carr-Fanning and Janet Goodall for your supportive feedback on a draft of the book; Emerald Publishers for your enthusiasm for our work; and colleagues, friends and family who have supported us when the writing feels difficult.