ABSTRACT

Research on parental roles in explaining the early numeracy in Indonesian children is relatively limited, leaving the understanding of this specific topic inconclusive. This study aims to address this research gap by investigating the links between several parental factors i.e., numeracy activities with children, parent expectation and parent judgment, and early numeracy in Indonesian preschool children. A total of 84 preschool children (45% girls and 55% boys; mean age = 59.56 months, SD = 5.29) and their parents participated in two measurement points. The children underwent early numeracy tests at both points (the Early Numeracy Test–Revised with 45 items per parallel version; α = .90 for Version A and α = .88 for Version B), while parents completed questionnaires regarding home numeracy activities (5 items, α = .82), their expectations (6 items, α = .95), and judgments about their children's early numeracy skills (2 items). The first measure of early numeracy was utilized as a control variable for the second early numeracy that was treated as a dependent variable in a hierarchical regression. Parent judgment was significantly correlated with early numeracy (r = .53, p < .01) and remained a significant concurrent correlate after controlling for prior early numeracy (b = 0.31, SE = 0.10, p = .002), supporting Hypothesis 3. Home numeracy activities and parent expectations, by contrast, were not significantly related to early numeracy, so Hypotheses 1 and 2 were not supported. These findings suggest that parents' judgments may provide complementary information about young children's numeracy competence.

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