The present study examined Latinx school readiness and 3rd grade student achievement, considering differences based on social categories of gender, race, ethnicity, and home language. The sample included 683 racially diverse children (M[subscript age] = 4.94; SD = 0.57) of Dominican- or Mexican-origin from Spanish-English or Spanish-only…

This study explores communication and retelling skills that are revealed after Mexican-American preschoolers engaged in culturally sensitive read alouds. Participants, highlighted in this article, included two four-year-old preschool children in a Spanish/English dual language classroom. The children selected culturally relevant texts and engaged…

In the teaching of social studies, the use of funds of knowledge is beneficial for children to understand different experiences and perspectives. Families use funds of knowledge to teach their children what is important and valuable in their culture. In the case of Latino families, being bilingual is part of their history while for other families…

This article examines the language ideologies of the lead teacher and of five Mexican mothers of Spanish-speaking, emergent bilingual children in a Head Start program in Arizona. Data from semi-structured interviews, informal conversations, and participant-observation field notes were analyzed using the interrelated concepts of language ideologies…

"Parent involvement", valued by the field of early childhood education, is shown to contribute to the growth and development of children. However, what has in fact, been "valued" are engagement practices based on normalized white middle class cultural patterns. The current understandings of and expectations for "parent…

Research Findings: Using two groups of dual language learners (DLLs), the current study examined links between two developmental constructs closely linked to school readiness: the home language environment (HLE) and executive function (EF). In a sample of 90 children (age range = 38-70 months, 59% girls) from either Mexican American (MA, N = 46)…

American schools have been dealt a blow that included a pandemic, economic crisis, as well as racial unrest, initiating an energized charge for social justice advocacy. Our superintendents are currently facing an unprecedented challenge in ensuring that the campus community lives in a fair, inclusive, and opportunity-rich society. However, school…

This paper draws on practitioner inquiry and participatory action research methodologies to recount how five K-12 educators, who inhabit a range of positionalities and levels of teaching experience, engage in a collaborative professional development program, called Teaching Out Loud as they draw upon critical literacy theory and practice to…

This biographical study of Dr. George I. Sanchez, a leading Mexican American educator, intellectual, and activist from the 1930s through the 1960s, opens up the idea of compensatory education--the prevalent notion of the 1960s that schools use specialized instructional programs to combat the alleged cultural deprivation of some children,…

Data from a sample (n = 145) of low-income Mexican-American mothers and their toddlers (9-26 months) were used to explore the prevalence of high-frequency book-sharing (?3 days/week) and its association with maternal immigrant status (Mexico-born vs US-born), as well as other demographic and psychosocial factors. Mexico-born mothers were more…

This paper draws data from a 5-year ethnographic study of young multilingual (Mixteco/Spanish/English) children in their early childhood classrooms. In this paper, we focus on two of the children and their distinctive paths as they develop language and literacy. Using a sociocultural and multimodal theoretical framework we examine how these two…

This article provides an overview of the public school system in Mexico from early childhood to high school, and compares it with the American education system. It also identifies educational terminology and concepts unique to the Mexican system that can become possible sources of conflict and confusion for American educators. (Contains 7…

Preschoolers' inhibitory control and early math skills were concurrently and longitudinally examined in 255 Chinese, African American, Dominican, and Mexican 4-year-olds in the United States. Inhibitory control at age 4, assessed with a peg-tapping task, was associated with early math skills at age 4 and predicted growth in such skills from age 4…

Using narrative story-completion tasks with a sample of 97 preschool-age Mexican-heritage children from a large urban area, the authors examined differences in children's representations about their mothers and teachers. The authors also looked at teachers' perceptions to determine whether teachers viewed children in the same way as children…

Research Findings: Home literacy involvement (e.g., shared book reading) has been linked to enhanced cognitive development and school readiness during early childhood. Furthermore, precursory reading and math skills are key predictors of high school achievement. This study examined prospective relations between Mexican mothers' English…