In the article, “Intergenerational Effects of Parents’ Math Anxiety on Children’s Math Achievement and Anxiety,” authors Maloney, Ramirez, Gunderson, Levine, and Beilock (2015) address the issue of a parent’s preexisting anxiety relating to mathematics and how it can affect student attitudes and performance of elementary aged children in the mathematics classroom. Elementary aged children who get behind academically often struggle through their entire academic career (Committee on Early Childhood Mathematics, 2009). Since parents are one of the biggest influences in a child’s academic success, this relationship needs to be investigated.
The authors in this study tested the hypothesis that students who get help on their math homework from
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The students were given a math achievement test (Applied Problems Woodcock-Johnson III subtest) and a math anxiety questionnaire (revised C-MAQ) at the beginning and end of the school year. The students were also given a reading achievement test (the Letter-Word Identification Woodcock-Johnson III subtest) at the same times of the year, as a control group, and to check to see if there was any correlation between parental math anxiety and reading achievement. The independent variables in the study were the anxiety level of the parents and the amount of time spent helping students with homework. The dependent variable in the study was the “grade-equivalent change,” or end of year score minus the beginning of the year score (Maloney, 2015, p. 1483). Parents were given a math anxiety rating scale (sMARS) in the middle of the year, and they were given a questionnaire regarding the amount of help they gave their children on their homework. The researchers also administered the sMARS math anxiety assessment and an additional content area subject test to 76 teachers from the same schools as the