ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1649713
Early Home Literacy and Math Environment: Cross-Domain Associations Between Parental Literacy and Math Beliefs
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Missouri, Columbia, United States
- 2University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, United States
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Using data from the Early Home Learning Environment dataset (EHLE;Ellis et al., 2022a), we examined how parents' beliefs are related to home environment practices within and across academic domains (i.e., literacy and math) while examining the mechanisms through which parents' beliefs shape home environments. The sample included 945 parents of 0-6-yearold children (M = 4.01, SD = 1.55). Parents answered questions on beliefs, expectations, perceived appropriateness of activities, math anxiety, and home literacy (HLE) and math (HME) learning environment activities. Using path analysis, we examined the extent to which parents' beliefs, expectations, perceptions of activity appropriateness, and math anxiety were associated with the HLE and HME; whether expectations for children mediate the associations between parental beliefs and home environments; and whether perceptions of appropriateness of activities and math anxiety moderate the association between parental beliefs, expectations, and home environments. Literacy expectations and perceived appropriateness of literacy activities were positively associated with the HLE, while literacy beliefs and perceptions of appropriateness of literacy activities were associated with the HME. Math beliefs, expectations, and perceptions of appropriateness of math activities were positively associated with the HME, whereas math beliefs, perceptions of appropriateness of math activities, and math anxiety were associated with the HLE. Expectations were only significant within domains and mediated the associations between beliefs and activities for both literacy and math. Only perceptions of appropriateness of math activities moderated the association between math beliefs and HLE. Our study supports the interconnectedness of HLE and HME activities and the importance of parental beliefs in shaping home learning environments.
Keywords: Home math, home literacy, home learning environment, parent beliefs, Parent expectations, parental math anxiety, Preschool children
Received: 18 Jun 2025; Accepted: 07 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bosire, Palermo and Napoli. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jamlick Peter Ondieki Bosire, University of Missouri, Columbia, United States
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