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A modified, bilingual Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inventory (ATMI) instrument was administered to 1,258 high school students in South Texas in an NSF-funded project on informal learning of mathematics and near peer mentoring. We explore students’ survey response behaviors and examine the existence of careless and insufficient effort (CIE) responses. This is empirical research for handling the challenge of CIE responses that leads to improved survey data quality, thus eventually validating the intervention effect of the mathematical informal learning project. 

Research in mentoring has shown that students may at times be more willing and able to absorb information that is delivered to them by their near-peers, rather than by traditional figures of authority, like teachers and professors. In this study, underrepresented minority high school students participated in an informal learning experience that was led by college students who were near-peers to the high schoolers. Students were engaged by participating in interactive MathShows, following a Math Social Media Campaign, and attending a summer Math Internship. Participants in the quantitative component of the study included N = 559 U.S. high schoolers who were from predominantly (99%) Hispanic ethnic backgrounds. The qualitative component of the study involved another 19 students from the same school. The mixed methods study addresses associations between high schoolers’ attitudes toward mathematics and their identity alignment, as well as classes of reasons that students gave for their identity alignment. Interactions with the college near-peers that occurred during the experiential learning intervention are also discussed. Results of this study address the goal of broadening participation of underrepresented student groups in STEM careers. 

Abstract Using an assemblage of four ice cores collected around the Pacific basin, one of the first basinwide histories of Pacific climate variability has been created. This ice core–derived index of the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO) incorporates ice core records from South America, the Himalayas, the Antarctic Peninsula, and northwestern North America. The reconstructed IPO is annually resolved and dates to 1450 CE. The IPO index compares well with observations during the instrumental period and with paleo-proxy assimilated datasets throughout the entire record, which indicates a robust and temporally stationary IPO signal for the last ~550 years. Paleoclimate reconstructions from the tropical Pacific region vary greatly during the Little Ice Age (LIA), although the reconstructed IPO index in this study suggests that the LIA was primarily defined by a weak, negative IPO phase and hence more La Niña–like conditions. Although the mean state of the tropical Pacific Ocean during the LIA remains uncertain, the reconstructed IPO reveals some interesting dynamical relationships with the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). In the current warm period, a positive (negative) IPO coincides with an expansion (contraction) of the seasonal latitudinal range of the ITCZ. This relationship is not stationary, however, and is virtually absent throughout the LIA, suggesting that external forcing, such as that from volcanoes and/or reduced solar irradiance, could be driving either the ITCZ shifts or the climate dominating the ice core sites used in the IPO reconstruction.