Research indicates that Hispanic technical students exhibit patterns of performance in problem solving tasks that are clearly distinct from those exhibited by Anglo students. This may be because problem solvers working problems in a nonnative language are in more danger of misinterpreting problems due to sentence construction, jargon, etc., than…

Compared background characteristics of 49 Hispanic technical college students to those of 53 nonminority students. Findings suggest that socioeconomic factors are influential in the academic achievement of the Hispanic group, particularly in mathematics. Fewer Hispanics received career counseling in high school than did their nonminority peers.…

Research findings that indicate the need for greater integration in the development of verbal and mathematical skills for college technical majors are presented in this paper. Although the project discussed was originally designed to isolate language-related difficulties that affect mathematical skills among bilingual Hispanic students, some…

Investigated performance of Hispanic science and engineering students (N=43) on reading a sentence describing the mathematical relationship between two variables and writing an equation describing the relationship. Results compared with (1) subjects' grade point average and language proficiency and (2) monolingual group (N=52). (Author/SK)

Minorities have for some time faced underrepresentation in the technical professions. However, recent statistics indicate that many more minorities are enrolled in higher education than ever before. This report centers on identifying the particular difficulties that bilingual Hispanic students majoring in technical subjects have in performing…

Minorities have for some time been underrepresented in the technical fields, such as engineering and computer science. This development is known to be caused by a variety of factors, but the primary purpose of this report is to help identify those factors that adversely affect the cognitive development of the technical bilingual student in terms…

Summarizes a one-year study of five Anglo and nine Hispanic Massachusetts' ninth-grade beginning algebra students intended to analyze students' manipulative skills, problem-solving habits, and attitudes toward algebra. Proposes recommendations to improve algebraic problem-solving skills of students in general, and of Hispanics in particular. (NEC)

This study investigates factors which may adversely affect the technical education of Hispanic bilinguals. Hispanic bilingual students (N=36) majoring in science or engineering at the University of Massachusetts were given a variety of exams in both English and Spanish aimed at ascertaining the level of certain mathematically related skills. An…

The predictive validity of several mathematics and language variables relative to criteria of grade point average and word problem-solving skills for 60 bilingual Hispanic technical students is investigated. Examination of standardized college admission criteria is urged. Revealed is a disparity in academic performance between bilingual and…

This document reports in detail an investigation of the cognitive processes and learning difficulties of ninth-grade students in Algebra I. A clinical interview approach was used with 14 students. A group of six Hispanic students and a group of five Anglo students were enrolled in the same algebra class; a group of three Hispanic students who had…

An overview of contemporary assessment practices often used with Latino students is provided, and it is maintained that these practices often overlook the influence of culture and linguistic proficiency on cognitive performance. A new approach, the Sentence Verification Technique (STV), is proposed as an alternative method to assess the linguistic…