Family Math Nights: A Tool for Fostering Home, School, and University Connections

Numeracy has increasingly become a topic of importance and concern in our contemporary society. Student success in numeracy is influenced by the positive attitudes and values they hold about mathematics. This outreach project sought to foster the development of such attitudes and values through the design, implementation, and evaluation of a Family Math Night. A school division numeracy specialist, school staff, local university professors, and teacher candidates worked collaboratively on the project to hold a Family Math Night at one school in an urban community in southwestern Manitoba, Canada. Just over 20 families of grades 4-6 students attended the event, enjoying a meal together, and learning a variety of mathematics games from a professional mathematics educator, speaker, and author. Data was collected at the end of the event through the use of qualitative parent/family surveys (N=24) that included open-ended questions (available in three languages). Observations were also recorded by members of the collaborative research team at a meeting following the event. Two months after the Family Math Night, qualitative surveys were again distributed to both the parents/families who had attended the event and the teachers of the grades 4-6 students in attendance. Survey responses were received from ten parents/families and five teachers. Thematic and iterative analysis of data from the study suggested that the Family Math Night was successful in terms of: engaging parents and students in numeracy games in a non-threatening, fun atmosphere; promoting numeracy development at home; fostering positive relationships between school, university, and community; and providing teacher candidates with authentic opportunities to plan for and engage with curriculum and community. These findings have implications for practice, suggesting that Family Math Nights are a worthwhile strategy for improving attitudes and values towards mathematics, and for fostering academic and social connections between families, schools and universities. The research article contains four figures, an appendix with survey questions, and seven cited references.