Attitudes of Elementary School Latino Children

ATTITUDES OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LATINO CHILDREN

TOWARDS MATHEMATICS

By Alma D. Quesnel

Spring 2002

This investigation is a qualitative case study designed to examine whether and when the Latino population in elementary school develops negative attitudes toward mathematics. Thirty eight randomly selected Latino students in two California elementary schools, on urban and one rural, were interviewed to collect information about their perception of what mathematics is, their attitude towards mathematics, their perception of their own performance in this discipline, and their perception of the utilization of mathematics outside of school.

The subjects’ answers were transcribed and then arranged in a matrix in order to identify, interpret, and summarize the patterns in each categorical question. Subjects in this study tended to conceptualize mathematics almost exclusively as arithmetic. The provided few examples of how mathematics is used outside of school. The research found that the Latino population studied tends to like mathematics until about grade four; by grades five and six, negative attitudes emerge with a sense of inadequacy especially evident in the female subjects.