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.