The Different Role of Mothers' and Fathers' Beliefs in the Development of Adolescents' Mathematics and Literacy Task Values

This study examined how interest and importance values concerning mathematics and literacy develop from grade 7 to grade 9 in comprehensive school and to what extent gender, in addition to mothers’ and fathers’ beliefs about the abilities of individual children, predicts the level of and changes in these values. A total of 206 Finnish students (100 girls, 106 boys) were followed from grade 7 to grade 9, just before an important transition from compulsory comprehensive school to secondary education occurs in the Finnish context. Students’ parents participated in the study when the students were in grade 7. The results of multivariate latent change models showed that interest and importance v…