The roles of achievement-related behaviours and parental beliefs in children´s mathematical performance

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the developmental dynamics between children's mathematical peiformance, the task10cused versus task-avoidant behaviors they show in the classroom, and their parents' beliefs concerning their offsprings' school competence. To investigate this, the mathematical peiformance of111 six-to-seven-year-old children was tested, and their task-focused versus task-avoidant behaviors were rated by their teachers four times during their first school year. Parents filled in questionnaires measuring their skill-specific and general beliefs about their children's school competencies at the beginning and at the end of the school year. The results showed that parents' beliefs in their children's general school competence increased their children's task10cused behaviors at school, which jurther predicted the child's high level of math perjormance. Parents' beliefs in their children's competence in mathematics, in turn, contributed directly to the children's high mathematical perjormance. Moreover, children's high perjomzance increased parents' subsequent beliefs in their children's mathematical competence, whereas children's taskfocused behaviors predicted parents' beliefs in their children's overall school performance.