Esparza, P. & Sanchez, B. (2008). The Role of Attitudinal Familism in Academic
Outcomes: A Study of Urban, Latino High School Seniors. Culture Diversity and
Ethnic Minority Psychology, 14, 193-200.
This purpose of this study was to look at Latino students and the role that family importance (familism) plays regarding academics. In the Latino culture, the sense of obligation regarding the family is much greater than many American families. Latino children in American schools today though do not graduate at a higher rate than any other ethnic group and there have been many studies done to attempt to find out why that is. This study took a look at group of Latino children that rarely are study, one’s in an Urban, underachieving school that are on course to graduate. They hypothesized that a greater sense of family importance would positively correlate with greater academic results. Also, those students that had more highly educated parents would have a higher sense of familism and academic outcomes.
Students that participated came from an urban high school where 80% of the students received free lunch and had a 53% graduation rate. They were all Latino seniors (n=143) that were on the path to graduating. The students were assessed in nine different categories: demographics, familism, acculturation, Spanish Language Preference, Perceived Discrimination, parents’ education level, academic motivation, academic effort, and academic achievement and truancy.
After examining the results the level of family importance did not predict motivation, success, intrinsic value, nor the students’ GPAs. If familism was high it did predict lower truancy and more academic effort though. One finding that contracted all other previous research was the relationship between the mother’s educational level (father was found to be insignificant) and familism and GPA. In this study they found that greater importance of the family when the mother’s education level was at least a high school diploma predicted a lower GPA, where the lower education level and high familism was related to a higher GPA. They believe the surprise in their hypothesis regarding the mother’s education level can be described because of the environment they live in (low SES). The students with high familism whose mom has a higher education level are still attending a school and living in an area where 80% of the students qualify for free lunch. They could conclude that education is not the answer and they realize they need to find other ways to be a help in their family. Secondly they concluded that students with high familism and mothers with low education levels obtained higher GPA could still feel as though education is the key to helping their family.
In schools, Latino students are looked at negatively. In the previous paragraphs it was noted that this ethnic group has the highest dropout rate and continues to under perform in schools. Because of this, there is generally a negative twist when researchers want to examine Latino’s in a school setting. This article wanted to examine steer away from the Latino students that have typically been researched in the past and focused on the one’s that were succeeding in school. Using what is known about the strong family togetherness in the Latino culture and how it relates to students success with this group of students has not been done before and very useful knowledge for schools to have.
Implications for school counselors would start with the understanding of the Latino culture. Having the knowledge regarding the importance’s that Latinos place on family, education, etc would be very helpful for a counselor. This would be helpful as a counselor to see the differences between cultures and have a better understanding of what their culture values compared to others. If you are a counselor in an environment such as this one, understanding that many Latino students have an obligation to their families and that in some cases this drives them to succeed, but also force them to place academics on the backburner would help clarify their levels of academic success. It would allow the counselor when meeting with a Latino student that does not have strong academic success to not just assume they are unmotivated but rather place stronger values in other places.