Parents’ Experiences as Mediators of Their Children’s Learning: the Impact of Being a Parent-teacher

This article discusses the way parents’ past experiences influence the construction of their mathematical identities, their representations and their valorizations of current school mathematics, and how these factors mediate involvement with their children’s mathematical learning. Two different groups of parents, with and without teaching experience, were interviewed. Participants within the groups showed similarities in the ways they constructed their own mathematical identities, and differences in how they constructed representations and valorizations of current school mathematics. Whilst those with teaching experience generally held more positive representations of current practices, the way they valued these practices changed according to their perceptions of their child’s needs, and the various roles they adopted.