Many European educational systems are still facing the issue of a large number of mathematically illiterate students (Schleicher, 2019). Policy makers, researchers, and educators are working hard on improving mathematics education and its outcomes, being that students’ educational and career paths often depend on their success in mathematics (Douglas & Attewell, 2017) and that mathematics is essential part of scientific and technological progress (Hanushek, 2013). In that endeavor some lines of research, as the current study, focus on a part of mathematics education that takes place at students’ homes and looks into the quantity or quality parental involvement in learning and the home learning environments (Dimosthenous et al., 2022). This study aims to investigate how different parental approaches to supporting their children in learning mathematics impact elementary students’ mathematics identity and performance.                  
              Looking into parental involvement in mathematics education with a lens of parental motivational practices, authors distinguish between process-oriented and performance-oriented practices (Pomeranz et al., 2005; Gottfried et al., 2009; Moorman and Pomeranz, 2010). Parents who use process-oriented practices tend to put emphasis on value and utility of mathematics, developing their children curiosity, persistence, autonomy, and interest in mathematics. Those relying on performance-oriented practices insist on high achievement, often control their children’s schoolwork by external rewards and interfere with the learning process (Gottfried et al., 2009; Moorman and Pomeranz, 2010).               
              Drawing from currently the most influential theories of academic motivation, authors consider the set of strategies included in process-oriented practices to be more beneficial for a child’s educational outcomes than the ones included in performance-oriented practices (Pomeranz et al., 2005; Gottfried et al., 2009; Moorman and Pomeranz, 2010; Eccles & Wigfield, 2020). Empirical evidence show that process-oriented practices are linked with higher performance (Levpuscek & Zupancic, 2009), but also with the contributing factors such as intrinsic motivation (Gottfried et al., 1994; Gottfried et al., 2009), while performance-oriented strategies show connection with math anxiety (Macmull & Ashkenazi, 2019), lower achievement and a lower probability of opting for a STEM major in college (Levpuscek & Zupancic, 2009).
              One important contributing factor to mathematics achievement, and at the same time - an outcome of mathematics education is students’ mathematics identity. Studying mathematics low performance from the perspective of mathematics identity enables researchers to consider a lack of sense of belonging within the mathematics classroom as a cause, instead of focusing on the lack of ability (Darragh, 2013). Mathematics identity refers to a person’s self-understanding in the domain of mathematics that is to a great extent influenced by the perception of how significant others see that person in the context of doing mathematics (Martin, 2009). The way parents approach learning mathematics reflects directly and indirectly on their children mathematics identity, but also a student’s relationship with mathematics might define the parental approach and the nature of their involvement (Kafoussi et al., 2020; Cunningham, 2021; Ingram & Meaney, 2022).

              The goal of the current study is to understand the home learning diversities and their value in creating different pathways in mathematics education. Being that chosen parental strategies impacts mathematics achievement, by affecting its supporting elements, one possibly being mathematics identity, identification of beneficial strategies is an important input for policy measures and intervention programs. Thus, the study was guided by following research questions. What patterns of motivational practices utilized by Serbian parents when doing mathematics activities with their children can be distinguished? How are different patterns of motivational practices related to students’ mathematics performance? How are different patterns of parental motivational practices related to students’ mathematics identity?

The current study is a part of an international project focused on development of mathemtics motivaiton in primary education. A total of 50 elementary schools from Serbia took part in the project. A sample for this particular study consists of 1580 elementary school children enrolled in grades 3 and 4 (50% girls, average age 9.8) and their parents (84,3% employed; 45.8% finished undergraduate studies or higher levels of education). Both parents’ and students’ measures were collected in Spring 2022. Parents’ measures consisted of four scales from Parental motivational practices instrument. The instument is based on the Expectancy-value theory (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020) and consists of 13 items. The scales are: Interest and value (e.g., “I use examples to show my child that learning math matters for everyday life.”, α=.70), Structure (e.g., “I help my child to organize work when learning math.”, α=.80), Support (e.g., “I help my child with strategies how to learn math.”, α=.70), and Cost (e.g. “I tell my child to make time for learning math.”, α=.71). Items were followed by a 4-point Likert scale assessing the frequency of practice occurrence (1- never, 4-often). CFA showed a good fit of the data (χ2(59)=334.448; CFI=0.937; RMSEA= 0.055 (0.049–0.061); SRMR=0.043). Students’ measures consisted of Mathematics test and Mathematics Identity Scale. Math achievement was measured by a test covering major curricular topics comprised of released TIMSS items (Approval IEA-22-022). A joint scale of math competence was established across grades due to overlapping items in the grade-specific tests created for grades 3 and 4 respectively. The Mathematics Identity scale represents a combination of perceived personal mathematics identity items and perceived recognized mathematics identity items, where students perceive that significant others (i.e., friends, family, math teacher) see them as math persons (e.g., “My family thinks of me as a math person”, χ2(7)= 25.968; CFI= 0.989; RMSEA= 0.043 (0.026–0.062); SRMR= 0.017; α=.75). We clustered parents based on their scores on the four parent motivational practices scales. To distinguish and describe groups of parents with distinct motivational practices we utilized hierarchical cluster analysis based on Ward’s method and squared Euclidean distance. ANOVA with Scheffe post and Paired sample t-test were used to define clusters. Further, we used ANOVA with Scheffe post hoc tests to investigate how different clusters of parents are related to their students mathematics identity and performance score.

Based on the dendrogram, three groups of parents were distinguished. The largest group named High-achievers gathered 52.4% of parents. Main feature of this group is structuring their child’s schoolwork and emphasizing that learning mathematics takes sacrifice. This group promote the intrinsic aspect of learning mathematics and support their children in learning, however Paired-samples t-tests showed that these practices were used less often than the first two (p=.00). The second group, named Math-enthusiasts, gathered 15.5% of parents. They emphasized the intrinsic value of mathematics to the same extent as the High-achievers (p>.05), while they dramatically rarely describe mathematics as something that takes sacrifice - significantly less often than the other two groups (p=.00). Also, they structured their children’s learning and interfere with it less often than High-achievers (p=.00). The third group consisted of 32.1% of parents. These parents had a strickingly low average on the Structure dimension, while all other values were lower than for the other two groups (p=.00) (except for Cost in the group of Math-enthusiasts) therefore we named them Laissez-faire. ANOVA results show differences among the children of the three groups in performance (F(2, 1378) = 3.04, p<.05). Scheffe post hoc test showed that children of Math enthusiasts had higher math score than children of High achievers (p<.05). There were no differences in the overall score of mathematics identity (F(2, 1433) = 2.37, p=.09), however, children of the three groups of parents differ in how they perceive their teachers see them in the domain of mathematics (F(2, 1378) = 3.04, p<.05). Children of High-achievers felt recognized as math persons by their teachers more than the other two groups of students (p<.05). These results shed light on the intricate relationship among teachers’ and parents’ practices and its tangled influence on students’ educational pathways.

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