Latino Middle School Students Research Articles

The Role of Young Adolescents' Perception in Understanding the Severity of Exposure to Community Violence and PTSD

This study seeks to (a) identify and measure the lifetime exposure to community violence of 137 African American and Latino middle school students from a low income neighborhood and apply numerical weights to each violent event; (b) examine the relationship between the objective severity of child self reported violence exposure and the child's subjective perception of the most bothersome event; and (c) examine the relationship between child's exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Results highlight that students' designation of their most bothersome exposure to community violence did not correspond to the most severe violent event they experienced. Regression analyses reveal the weight of the most severe event explains a larger percentage of the variance in PTSD compared with the relationship to victim, level of exposure, weight of the most bothersome exposure, and cumulative weight of all exposure. This study underscores the importance of assessing a child's perception of violent events.

Preschool Antecedents of Mathematics Achievement of Latinos

Seventy-three Latino middle school students participated in a longitudinal study of the preschool antecedents of their mathematics achievement. Path analysis indicated that family resources (parents' educational level, occupation, and income) predicted home literacy activities, which predicted combined early Spanish literacy and English language proficiencies at kindergarten entry, which predicted elementary mathematics achievement, which in turn predicted middle school mathematics performance. These results and qualitative analyses with a subsample of 30 randomly selected families suggest that literacy and numeracy proficiency go hand in hand, and to close the Latino mathematics achievement gap a combined effort of preschool and early elementary literacy and numeracy interventions programs are needed to supplement efforts in middle and high school.

Parent involvement in the academic adjustment of Latino middle and high school youth: Teacher expectations and school belonging as mediators

A path model based in a theory of social capital was tested with Latino middle school ( n=195, 58% female, average 13.8 years of age) and high school students ( n=129, 64% female, average 16.8 years of age). Most participants (77%) were immigrants (predominantly from Mexico). Questionnaires assessed student perceptions of parent involvement, school belonging, and academic competence. Teachers rated their expectations for student academic attainment and grades were obtained from school records. Perceived school belonging and teacher expectations mediated cross-sectional associations of parent involvement with academic adjustment. Links between parent involvement and academic adjustment were stronger for high school than middle school students. Middle school parent involvement was unrelated to teacher expectations and its indirect effect on school grades was non-significant. Future research should examine the link between middle school parent involvement and teacher expectations and its potential role in increasing Latino youths’ school success.

Dietary correlates of emotional eating in adolescence

To better understand the relation between emotional eating and dietary choices, dietary correlates of emotional eating were investigated in an adolescent sample. Participants were 617 predominantly Latino middle school students from seven schools in Los Angeles County. Analyses of cross-sectional data revealed that emotional eating was associated with increased frequency of intake of sweet high energy-dense foods, such as cake and ice cream, salty high energy-dense foods like chips, and soda. Gender stratified analyses revealed an association between emotional eating and more frequent fruit and vegetable intake in boys only, and a positive association between emotional eating and salty high energy-dense intake in both boys and girls. These data support previous literature that reports a preference for high energy-dense food in emotional eating, and shows that this association may be generalizable to Latino youth. Considering that emotional eating may lead to overeating because it often takes place in the absence of hunger, it may be appropriate to develop interventions to teach youth healthier substitutions and regulate mood by means other than eating in order to reduce risk for obesity, especially in high risk populations, such as Latinos.

Counseling Latino Immigrants in Middle School

The increase of Latino immigrants in the United States places more pressure on school counselors to assist in the adjustment of Latino students entering school systems (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). This may particularly affect schools that only a few years ago had no Latino immigrants. This article addresses how one Southern school district's counseling program is working to meet the needs of its non-English-speaking Latino middle school students by hiring a Spanishspeaking counselor and offering intervention strategies to facilitate the transition and adjustment of incoming students.

Counseling Latino Immigrants in Middle School

The increase of Latino immigrants in the United States places more pressure on school counselors to assist in the adjustment of Latino students entering school systems (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). This may particularly affect schools that only a few years ago had no Latino immigrants. This article addresses how one Southern school district's counseling program is working to meet the needs of its non-English-speaking Latino middle school students by hiring a Spanish-speaking counselor and offering intervention strategies to facilitate the transition and adjustment of incoming students.

Social Support, Conflict, Major Life Stressors, and Adaptive Coping Strategies in Latino Middle School Students:

Structural equation modeling techniques were used to test a conceptual framework for improved understanding of the relationships involved in adolescent risk and protective factors. Specifically, the model examined the direct and indirect associations, via adaptive coping strategies, that acute life stressors and contextual support and conflict have with psychological adjustment (internalizing and externalizing symptoms) and school competencies (GPA, classroom-conduct scores, and peer ratings of social competence). Participants were 304 inner-city Latino 6th- and 7th-grade middle school students (133 boys, 171 girls). Results found both acute stressors and social conflict to be positively associated with psychological symptomatology and negatively associated with school competencies.In addition, both social support and adaptive coping strategies were negatively associated with symptomatology; social support was positively associated with school competencies. Moreover, support and conflict were associated with psychological symptomatology and school competencies indirectly, mediated by adaptive coping strategies. Adaptive coping strategies were inversely related to school competencies, an unexpected finding. Implications, limitations, and future areas of study are discussed.

Teacher Support and the School Engagement of Latino Middle and High School Students at Risk of School Failure

This investigation examined the effects of social support from teachers on the school engagement of middle and high school Latino students identified as being at risk of school failure. Regression analyses indicated that social support from teachers is an important factor in affective and behavioral aspects of school engagement. Specifically, teachers exerted an important effect on school engagement, beyond the effect of parental support. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for developing more effective dropout-prevention interventions for Latino students.

La relación entre los juegos de viodeo violentos, la aculturación y la agresión entre adolescentes latinos

Multiple factors are involved in the occurrence of aggressive behavior. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the hypotheses that Latino middle school children exposed to higher levels of video game playing will exhibit a higher level of aggression and fighting compared to children exposed to lower levels and that the more acculturated middle school Latino children will play more video games and will prefer more violent video games compared to less acculturated middle school Latino children. This study involved 5,831 students attending eight public schools in Texas. A linear relationship was observed between the time spent playing video games and aggression scores. Higher aggression scores were significantly associated with heavier video playing for boys and girls (p < 0.0001). The more students played video games, the more they fought at school (p < 0.0001). As Latino middle school students were more acculturated, their preference for violent video game playing increased, as well as the amount of time they played video games. Students who reported speaking more Spanish at home and with their friends were less likely to spend large amounts of time playing video games and less likely to prefer violent video games (p < 0.05).

Academic, Social, and Personal Uses of the Internet

As more and more K–12 students gain access to the Internet at home and at school, the potential exists for students, families, and schools to use this resource in new ways. However, we know little about Internet use and perceptions by students and families from outside the middle class, main-stream U.S. culture. This study presents cases of four Latino middle school students from three families who gained home Internet access for the first time in connection with an educational technology project set in a public school in Detroit, Michigan. We asked how the students and their families perceived and used the Internet as a tool for education, recreation, and socializing.

Motivation and Learning Environment Differences between Resilient and Nonresilient Latino Middle School Students

This study tries to address the problems of Latino students by drawing on two distinct and emerging theoretical frameworks: (a) educationally resilient students and (b) classroom learning environments. The authors compared the motivation and learning environment of 60 resilient and 60 nonresilient Latino middle school students from a multiethnic metropolitan city located in the south central region of the United States. The multivariate analysis and univariate post hoc tests revealed that resilient students had significantly higherperceptions of involvement, satisfaction, academic self-concept, and achievement motivation than nonresilient students. The discriminantfunction analysis revealed that the variables of academic aspirations, involvement, academic self-concept, expectations for high school graduation, not being held back in school, and satisfaction were related most highly to the overall discriminant function. Results are discussed in relation to previous work on educational resilience and to implications for improving the education of students at risk of failure.