Navigating and Negotiating Home, School, and Peer Linkages in Adolescence

Project Overview Principal Investigators: Margarita Azmitia - University of California, Santa Cruz Catherine R. Cooper - University of California, Santa Cruz Project Period: June 1996-July 2002 3.3 Final Report 3.3 Executive Summary This study investigated how students, family members, teachers, peers, and program-based organizations coordinate students' experiences as they try to manage schoolwork and chores, consider their future school and career goals, and reflect on their moral values in the transition from elementary to middle school. Two longitudinal studies are reported. The first was a school-based study following Latino and Euro-American sixth graders through the transition to middle school. The second study was program-based and followed Latino students enrolled in an academic outreach program though middle and high school. Five research questions were addressed: 1) What continuities, discontinuities, and linkages occur across students' family, peer, school, and community worlds as they move from elementary to junior high school? 2) What resources and difficulties do students and parents encounter in navigating and negotiating their worlds? 3) How are students' experiences linking their worlds reflected in their school achievement and future school, work, and moral goals? 4) How can students develop relationships across ethnic and income groups that help them coordinate worlds in ways that benefit their academic performance and further their academic, work, and moral goals? 5) How do peers and siblings in program-based activities become resources in students' schoolwork and goals? The findings suggest that families played a key role in supporting students' present and future academic, career, and moral pathways. Important continuities between the family and school worlds were (a) parents, teachers, and students held college-based aspirations, (b) parents, siblings, and teachers provided assistance with homework and other school-related activities, and (c) students' peer world encouraged academics, with students seeking more assistance from peers after surpassing their parents' level of education. Discontinuities between home and school were (a) parents in both ethnic groups de-emphasized academics as definitive of being on "the good path of life," whereas in schools, being on the good path is primarily defined in terms of academic performance and goals; and (b) although Latino parents' higher-education aspirations for their children were constant over the transition to middle school, they lacked information about U.S. schools and how to guide their children towards college. An implication of these findings is that intervention programs for Latino and other immigrant families should provide information about U.S. schools and college pathways so they can help their children attain their high aspirations. Also, there is a continuing need for students' families, schools, and community-based programs to orchestrate students' negotiation and navigation of these worlds and establish linkages across worlds in ways that promote academic success.