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Proyecto Educando Niños (The Bringing Up Children Project)

Margaret Bridges, Project Manager mbridges@berkeley.edu
Bruce Fuller, Principal Investigator b_fuller@berkeley.edu
Conducted in collaboration with Eugene Garcia and Angela Arzubiaga, Arizona State University. Funded by the Spencer Foundation.

Goals:

• To describe socialization beliefs and practices of Mexican-American parents and how they vary across diverse family subgroups.
• To examine the congruence and/or discontinuity of Mexican-American parents’ beliefs and practices with those of their children’s preschool teachers.
• To develop a culturally situated assessment of children’s social outcomes, and assess its measurement properties.

Background
Policy makers and parents have turned increasingly to the preschool as a remedy for closing early achievement gaps experienced by Latino children in elementary school. Disparities in cognitive, pre-reading, and language skills are wide as early as age five for Latino children.1 These disparities are of grave concern as the nation’s demographics are shifting: 21% of the child population under age five will be of Latino origin in 2006 (U.S. Census, 2004). This share rises to 32% in 2050. In response to these disparities, Latino enrollments in Head Start and state preschools have climbed steadily in recent years. About 1.5 million Latino children are now enrolled in preschool programs, including those of middle-class parents who pay fees.2
The empirical base remains sparse in specifying the similarities and differences in socialization practices among Latino parents and their children’s preschool teachers, as well as in culturally appropriate measures of Latino children’s social-emotional outcomes.
Project Description
We are conducting a 33-month study of 226 Mexican-American children, their parents, and their preschool teachers in California and Arizona to address the research questions. During the first year we conducted ethnographic work with 26 families, observing and assessing the prevalence of culturally situated home practices that pertain to parents’ socialization goals and practices. Following the qualitative work inside Mexican-American homes, we delineated specific constructs of socialization that can be measured through interviews and observations with parents and preschool teachers. We developed the MAS—the Mexican-American Socialization Scale—an inventory of children’s social and emotional behaviors. Currently, we are pilot testing this instrument with 200 parents and preschool teachers to ascertain its measurement properties.

Publications
Arzubiaga, A., Fuster, T. & Salazar, C. (April, 2007). Mexican heritage parenting beliefs and practices: Root metaphors and activity theoretical explanations. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Chicago, Illinois.

Arzubiaga, A., Santamaría, C. & Chen, T. (March, 2007). Immigrant and Latina/o student development related to schooling outcomes in early education. Invited paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development. Boston, Massachusetts.

Bridges, M., Fuller, B., Livas, A., Mangual, A., Mireles, L., & Scott, L. (2007). The daily activities of young children in diverse Mexican-American families. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development. Boston, Massachusetts.

Fuster, T. & Arzubiaga, A. (2006) Daily routines of immigrant and non-immigrant mothers of Mexican descent. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.  San Jose, CA.

Livas, A., Bridges, M., Fuller, B., Mangual, A., & Mireles, L. (2007). Acculturation and parenting across Mexican-American families. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development. Boston, Massachusetts.

Mangual, A., Bridges, M., Fuller, B., Livas, A., & Mireles, L. (2007). An Ethnomethodological approach to studying Mexican mothers’ emic concepts of self and other. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Chicago, Illinois.

Mireles, L., Bridges, M., Fuller, B., Livas, A., & Mangual, A. (2007). Mexican mothers’ school involvement. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Chicago, Illinois.

1 Jencks & Phillips (2000), Rumberger & Arellano (2003).
2 The census bureau estimates that about 31% of Latino children ages 3-4, with employed mothers, attended center-based programs in 1999 (Smith, 2002).