Leslie Reese
(University of California, Los Angeles)

Leslie Reese's experience in the areas of bilingual education, multicultural education and parent involvement in schooling blends both practical teaching experience with program development and coordination and research activity. After graduation from Stanford University, Dr. Reese worked as an anthropologist for the Peruvian government on an urban renewal and reconstruction project following the earthquake disaster of 1970. Her work with community development groups provided the impetus for her entering the field of bilingual education on her return to California five years later. In 1992 she was awarded a Ph.d. in education from UCLA.

Dr. Reese has extensive experience in public schools at various levels of teaching and administration. She coordinated school site bilingual, School Improvement, and computer magnet programs, and has been instrumental in the establishment of a dual-model bilingual program at a local elementary school. She worked as a consultant to principals and staffs on the coordination and improvement of their programs of instruction for language minority students, chaired district-level and school-site parent advisory councils and has developed curricula for parent education training.

Dr. Reese also worked extensively on both in-service training of teachers of language minority students as well as providing in-class mentoring and demonstration lessons for intern teachers. Dr. Reese's research interests center on the themes of educational and post-educational equity for language minority students, parental goals and strategies for their children's futures, cultural models of early literacy development, and U.S./Mexico immigration. Since 1988, she has been involved in a longitudinal study of immigrant Latino children and their families in the Los Angeles area, focusing on the relationship between the home and school in the child's academic success and on the environments for literacy and learning co-constructed in the home . In her research on the early literacy development of Spanish-speaking children in the U.S., Dr. Reese has examined the role of cultural schemas in motivating and guiding parents in their literacy activities with their young children. She is currently carrying out research in Jalisco and Michoacan, Mexico, on non-immigrant Mexican parents' beliefs, expectations and practices regarding childrearing and learning, which will complement the Los Angeles studies' findings.

Selected Publications
Context effects on the use of early literacy materials in Spanish-speaking children's homes. (1992). American Journal of Education, 100, 4, 497-536. (with C. Goldenberg and R. Gallimore).

Ecocultural context, cultural activity, and emergent literacy of Spanish-speaking children. (1995). In S.W. Rothstein (ed.) Class, culture and race in American schools: A Handbook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, pps. 199-224. (with C. Goldenberg, J. Loucky and R. Gallimore).

Immigrant Latino Parents' Future Orientations for their Children. (1995). In R. Macias & R.G. Ramos (eds.). Changing Schools for Changing Students. Regents of the University of California: UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute Publication. (with R. Gallimore, C. Goldenberg and S. Balzano).

The Concept of Educación: Latino family values and American schooling. (1995). International Journal of Educational Research, 23, No. 1. (with S. Balzano, R. Gallimore and C. Goldenberg).

Kendall Kroesen
(University of California, Los Angeles)

Kendall Kroesen is an anthropologist interested in education, Latin American immigrants, and ethnopsychological issues. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA.

After initial doctoral studies, which focused on psychological and medical issues in anthropology, Kroesen spent 1 1/2 years in central Mexico doing fieldwork. His doctoral dissertation examined stories of social conflicts which were said to result deep emotional upset, as well as illness. Emotion concepts and illnesses were analyzed in relation to a world view in which emotional stability and calm were desirable. The work was an effort to link local ethnopsychological constructs employed in everyday life to a more taken-for-granted level of cultural schemas. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from UC San Diego in 1997.

More recent research at UCLA has focused on the adaptation of immigrant Latino families to Los Angeles communities and the adaptation of their children to Los Angeles schools. He has sought to examine children's understandings of their environment and how that corresponds to parents' and teachers' perceptions of their lives. The emphasis had been on how they
construct an understanding of the worlds they live in, and the varying levels of agency they seem to exercise in their lives. Current postdoctoral research is turning to the transition of the same children to high school and their preparation for higher education and/or employment.

Other current research includes a study at the Tucson VA Medical Center of veterans' ecological and cultural adaptation to chronic diseases. Kroesen is also working with a taskforce at the UCLA Division of Social and Community Psychology to develop a practical guide to qualitative methods for researchers who have been primarily trained in quantitative methods.

Publications:
Kroesen, K., with Chin, D., Gallimore, R., Ryan, G., Subramanian, S., Takeuchi, D., Tucker, B., and Weisner, T. (1998) Qualitative Tools for Multimethod Research: A Guide to the Literature. Los Angeles: UCLA Division of Social and Community Psychology.

Submitted Kroesen, K., Reese, L. & Gallimore, R. (1998) "Navigating Multiple Worlds: Latino Children Becoming Adolescents in Los Angeles."

In press Reese, L., Kroesen, K., and Gallimore, R. (1998) "Agency and School Performance among Urban Latino Youth." Philadelphia: Laboratory for Student Success.

In press Reese, L., Gallimore, R., and Kroesen, K. (1998) "Combinando Métodos de Investigación Cualitativos y Cuantitativos." In Metodología Cualitativa, Rebeca Mejía Arauz, ed. Guadalajara: Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores del Occident