This paper examines conditions influencing achievement in and attitudes toward mathematics among middle-school Latino students. Observations were carried out in a rural California middle school that served a largely Mexican American student population and that was in the process of implementing a new thematic mathematics curriculum in…

This chapter focuses on the innermost level of Bronfenbrenner's four-level conception of the human environmental ecology, namely the microsystem, and more specifically, the child's socialization in the family. Following discussion of concepts related to socialization, competence, and environmental ecology, selected research studies are reviewed to…

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the reliability of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence and to measure whether this reliability is affected when subjects are from a disadvantaged group. The subjects were 25 male and 24 female 5 1/2-year-old poor Mexican-Americans. Generally, the Wechsler Preschool Scale showed high…

Results indicated that instruction by an experimenter using modeling procedures had a significant effect on Mexican-American six-year-old's production of causal questions, and that this behavior generalized to new stimuli without significant loss. (Authors)

This project used six environmental variables identified by Dave (1963) and Wolf (1964) and three additional variables (identification with models, range of social interaction, and perception of practical value of education) to predict academic achievement in six-year-old Mexican-American children from an economically depressed area. The children…

The relationships among cooperation-competition, perceptions of locus of control in social situations, and locus of control in intellectual-academic situations were compared among fourth- and fifth-graders in traditional and open classrooms. Open education children were more cooperative, and traditional students displayed higher internality for…

This study was designed as a pilot effort to generate hypotheses for future investigations of continuities and discontinuities in socialization role perceptions of Mexican American families and their schools. (Author/NCR)

In a study of the effects of mixing children of different backgrounds, 18 disadvantaged Mexican-American children were integrated into classes with 36 advantaged Anglo peers to see if the intellectual performance of the Mexican-Americans would be favorably affected. Comparisons were also made between 18 children of the same ethnic group who were…

This investigation was designed to assess the effects of parent influences on the question-asking skills of their children. A total of 43 randomly selected, first grade, Mexican-American children were chosen as subjects and divided equally into a control and an experimental group. In each group the children were further subdivided into two groups…

Reports a college-school project that examined the effects of thematically integrated mathematics instruction on Mexican American middle school students' mathematics achievement, attitudes, and motivation. Students receiving thematic instruction surpassed traditionally instructed students on mathematics concepts and applications. The two programs…

This paper reports the effects of thematically integrated mathematics instruction on achievement, attitudes, and motivation in mathematics among middle school students of Mexican descent. A school-university collaborative effort led to the development and testing of a thematic approach undertaken as a means of contextualizing instruction for…

The history and accomplishments of the Arizona Center for Early Childhood Education from its founding in 1966, as a component of the National Laboratory on Early Childhood Education, to its reorganization in 1972, as the Arizona Center for Educational Research and Development, are presented. The Arizona Center originated with a commitment to the…