Exploring the educational aspirations–expectations gap in eighth grade students: implications for educational interventions and school reform

Kirk, Chris; Lewis, Robin J.; Scott, Angela; Wren, Denise; Nilsen, Corinne; Colvin, Deltha Q.

doi:10.1080/03055698.2011.643114

Cited by 37 publications

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“…This paper adds to a relatively recent body of literature that explores the causes and correlates of discrepancies between educational aspirations and expectations (for example , Boxer, et al, 2010;Hellenga et al, 2002;Kirk et al, 2011). Intervention or longitudinal studies on discrepancies can further clarify their role in child outcomes and work towards balance in educational possible selves and the resulting benefits.…”

Section: International Journal Of Adolescence and Youth 81mentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Prior research has suggested that most parents want their children to attend college (for example, Spera, Wentzel, & Matto, 2009). As children consider their options and the practicality of this aspiration, they may determine that their expected level of educational attainment is below college and there may be a discrepancy (see Beal & Crockett, 2010;Cook, Church et al, 1996;Kirk et al, 2011). Although it would seem that as students age and become more realistic (see Cook et al, 1996) there may be a greater gap between their expectations and parents' aspirations for them, the conflicts and negotiations of early adolescence (see Fuligni & Eccles, 1993), and the process of stabilisation during later adolescence (see Jacobs et al, 2003), may result in comparatively greater discrepancies that later resolve.…”

Section: The Influence Of Parentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, discrepancies between a child's educational expectations and his parent or caregiver's educational aspirations for him may also have associations with lower wellbeing. The application of possible selves and self-discrepancy theory to educational attainment is an area of recent study (for example, Boxer, Goldstein, DeLorenzo, Savoy, & Mercado, 2010;Hellenga, Aber, & Rhodes, 2002;Hanson, 1994;Kirk et al, 2011); however, few studies examine the associations of a discrepancy with the important outcome of emotional well-being, nor do they explore differences in this association by age or source of the discrepancy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Emotional well-being and discrepancies between child and parent educational expectations and aspirations in middle and high school

Rutherford

2013

International Journal of Adolescence and Youth

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Using data from a sample nationally representative of the United States (N ¼ 1,115), this study investigates the association between emotional well-being and discrepant educational possible selves. Discrepancy is characterized as a mismatch between child educational expectations and parent educational aspirations for child or child educational aspirations for self. Age-related hypotheses are tested. Results suggest that middle school children who have expectations that don't match their parents' aspirations for them have lower well-being, and that among high school students, mismatch between a child's own aspirations and expectations is linked with lower wellbeing. Antecedents of discrepancies are explored: reading and math self-efficacy emerge as having small, but significant positive associations with well-being, partially mediated in middle school students by aspiration/expectation matches between parent and child.

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Section: International Journal Of Adolescence and Youth 81mentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: The Influence Of Parentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Emotional well-being and discrepancies between child and parent educational expectations and aspirations in middle and high school

Rutherford

2013

International Journal of Adolescence and Youth

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“…Stephenson (1957), for example, distinguished between occupational aspirations (i.e., what one would like to achieve) and plans (what one expects to do), and found a larger gap between occupational aspiration and expectation in students from lower social background. In fact, the "aspiration-expectation gap" in minority groups or those with low socioeconomic status has long been one of the major topics in sociology (e.g., Arbona, 1990;Holloway & Berreman, 1959;Kirk et al, 2012). There is also a long line of research examining an apparent paradox that African American parents tend to have high aspiration for their children despite their poor academic achievement or low parental expectations (Mickelson, 1990).…”

Section: Potential Negative Effects Of Parental Over-aspirationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is also a long line of research examining an apparent paradox that African American parents tend to have high aspiration for their children despite their poor academic achievement or low parental expectations (Mickelson, 1990). The majority of these studies, however, considered the gap between aspirations and expectations as a consequence of minority status or impoverished socioeconomic background (Cook et al, 1996;Elliott, 2009;Kirk et al, 2012;Metz, Fouad, & Ihle-Helledy, 2009); Little attention has been paid to the potential harmful effects of having such a gap.…”

Section: Potential Negative Effects Of Parental Over-aspirationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Don’t aim too high for your kids: Parental overaspiration undermines students’ learning in mathematics.

Murayama¹,

Pekrun²,

Suzuki³

et al. 2016

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Publisher's copyright statement:c 2016 APA, all rights reserved. This article may not exactly replicate the nal version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Author NotesThis research was supported by four grants from the German Research Foundation (DFG) (to R. Pekrun; Project for the Analysis of Learning and Achievement in Mathematics, PALMA; PE 320/11-1, PE 320/11-2, PE 320/11-3, PE 320/11-4). This research was also partly supported by the Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (CIG630680; to Kou Murayama) and JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number 15H05401; to Kou Murayama). We thank the German Data Processing and Research Center (DPC) of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) for conducting the sampling and the assessments of the main study. We also thank Dr. Satoshi Usami (University of Tsukuba; University of Reading) and Child Development Group (CDG) at the University of Reading for helpful and insightful comments. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kou Murayama, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Earley Gate, Whiteknights, Reading, UK, RG6 6AL. E-mail: k.murayama@reading.ac.uk. Running head: PARENTAL ASPIRATION 2 AbstractPrevious research has suggested that parents' aspirations for their children's academic attainment can have a positive influence on children's actual academic performance. Possible negative effects of parental over-aspiration, however, have found little attention in the psychological literature. Employing a dual-change score model with longitudinal data from a representative sample of German schoolchildren and their parents (N = 3,530; grades 5 to 10), we showed that parental aspiration and children's mathematical achievement were linked by positive reciprocal relations over time. Importantly, we also found that parental aspiration that exceeded their expectation (i.e., over-aspiration) had negative reciprocal relations with children's mathematical achievement. These results were fairly robust after controlling for a variety of demographic and cognitive variables such as children's gender, age, intelligence, school type, and family SES. The results were also replicated with an independent sample of US parents and their children. These findings suggest that unrealistically high parental aspiration can be detrimental for children's achievement.

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Do you know what I'm thinking? A comparison of teacher and parent perspectives of underachieving gifted students' attitudes

Siegle

Rubenstein

McCoach

2020

Psychology in the Schools

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The Achievement Orientation Model posits students are motivated to do well in school when they believe they have the necessary skills to perform a task (self‐efficacy), find the task meaningful (goal valuation), and see their environment as supportive. When these factors are present, students self‐regulate and achieve. We examined these factors from underachieving gifted students', their parents', and teachers' perspectives. Results indicated teachers recognize students who are confident and not confident about their abilities to be academically successful; however, they are less able to recognize when students value the work they are encountering in school. Parents' perceptions of students' attitudes more closely correlated with students' perceptions than teachers' perceptions correlated with students' perceptions. Teachers and parents appeared to base their perception of the importance students hold for school on their perception of students' self‐regulation. Furthermore, gender differences existed in students' perceptions. Females' self‐efficacy scores were statistically lower than males' self‐efficacy scores, and males' self‐regulation scores were lower than females' self‐regulation scores. We provide suggestions for how school psychologists may use these findings to (a) collect important information from students, teachers, and parents, (b) interpret these data to identify underlying influential factors, and (c) guide the development of appropriate interventions to address student underachievement.

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Exploring the educational aspirations–expectations gap in eighth grade students: implications for educational interventions and school reform

Cited by 37 publications

References 37 publications

Emotional well-being and discrepancies between child and parent educational expectations and aspirations in middle and high school

Emotional well-being and discrepancies between child and parent educational expectations and aspirations in middle and high school

Don’t aim too high for your kids: Parental overaspiration undermines students’ learning in mathematics.

Do you know what I'm thinking? A comparison of teacher and parent perspectives of underachieving gifted students' attitudes

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