Parent-Identified Benefits, Barriers, and Recommendations for Using Home Math Materials With Their Young Children With Disabilities

The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand themes of parent-identified benefits and barriers to using math activities in the home setting. Specifically, parents of seven 4- to 5-year-old children with disabilities implemented math activities with their child for 3 weeks and provided feedback via logs and interviews. This served as an initial step toward identifying barriers to existing materials and iteratively developing a new, inclusive home math intervention. We used open coding to identify themes. Two benefit themes ((a) Improvements to the Child’s Behavior and Content Knowledge, (b) Increased Math Talk), three barrier themes ((a) Behavior Management Impedes Content Learning, (b) Lack of Confidence in Content and Teaching, (c) Factors Outside of the Study Impacts Capacity to Engage) and three recommendation themes were identified ((a) Prioritize Child Engagement, (b) Provide Explicit Instruction During Training, and (c) Prioritize Convenience and Ease). These themes offer insight into challenges with existing commercially available materials for families of children with disabilities, and future directions for the development of inclusive mathematics interventions.