Page 63 - Children’s mathematical development and learning needs in perspective of teachers’ use of dynamic math interviews

Impact of child and teacher factors on mathematical development
Timmerman et al., 2017) and produced inconsistent results. Out of the child factors, only math self-concept was found to be a significant predictor of arithmetic fluency in the present study, which aligns with the previous outcomes of Timmerman et al. (2017). Children’s math self-concept is generally more past-oriented and stable than children’s math self-efficacy, which — by definition — concerns the future (Möller et al., 2009). The influence of math self-concept on the development of arithmetic fluency, in particular, can therefore probably be explained by the fourth grade children having greater experience with arithmetic than with mathematical problem-solving (Dweck, 2002; Marsh et al., 2005; Weidinger et al., 2018). In the lower elementary school grades, considerable attention is paid to basic arithmetic skills and understandably less attention to mathematical problem-solving.
We did not find children’s math self-efficacy to significantly predict any of their mathematical development, which is not consistent with the findings of older research (Pajares & Kranzler, 1995; Pietsch et al., 2003; Usher & Pajares, 2008, 2009). It is possible that math self- efficacy only predicts later development and thus development beyond fourth grade when children are better able to assess and align their expectations with regard to what they think that they can accomplish in specific mathematical tasks (Pajares & Miller, 1994). In other words, elementary school children’s self-efficacy within the domain of mathematical is still malleable and can therefore be enhanced during their school careers — a possibility to be considered along with just how and when to do this in future research.
Math anxiety was also not found to be a significant predictor of any aspect of the children’s mathematical development. A possible explanation for this finding is that math anxiety has been found to generally increase during childhood (Dowker et al., 2016; Ma, 1999) and therefore probably not found to influence mathematical development at the age of fourth grade children. An alternative explanation is that children in these schools experienced encouraging environments and thus developed positive mathematics attitudes as a result (Beilock & Maloney, 2015).
The finding that children’s mathematical problem-solving was not influenced in the present study by the children’s math self-concept,
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