Characteristics of Female Students Who Aspire to Science and Engineering or Homemaking Occupations

The Dynamic Relationships between Educational Expectations and Science Learning Performance among Students in Secondary School and Their Later Completion of a STEM Degree

The educational expectations of students for themselves have been commonly corroborated to directly predict their higher academic performance. Nevertheless, some recent research has reported that the academic performance of students may also contribute to their better development of educational expectations. Moreover, more advanced but limited research has argued that both the educational expectations and academic performance of students are developmental and changeable over time rather than fixed and stable. Due to the importance of students' science learning performance during the years of secondary school in relation to their later STEM development in adulthood, the current study is intended to investigate how the developmental and growth trajectories of students' educational expectations and science learning performance reciprocally affect each other directly and inversely in secondary school and then later contribute to their successful completion of a STEM degree in adulthood. Based on the six-wave panel data containing a nationally representative sample of adolescent students from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY), the current study was conducted by parallel-process latent growth curve modeling (PP-LGCM) and found that both the developmental and growth trajectories of students' educational expectations and science learning performance were mutually predictive of each other across the years of secondary school, which then contributed to their later higher likelihood of successful completion of a STEM degree in adulthood. In addition, the conditional direct PP-LGCM model, which is to model the effects of students' educational expectations on their science learning performance, and the conditional inverse PP-LGCM model, which is to model the effects of students' science learning performance on their educational expectations, showed significant within- and cross-domain effects differently. The implications of the study findings related to educational reforms and policy designs are discussed.

Characteristics of Students who Express Stable or Undecided Occupational Expectations during Early Adolescence

A predictive discriminant analysis (PDA) was used to classify students who expressed stable or undecided occupational expectation patterns during early adolescence. High school sophomores ( N = 6,935) who completed questionnaires in Grades 8 and 10, as part of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), comprised the data pool. Significant gender differences were found in the distribution of adolescents across four occupational expectation groups. Female adolescents were more likely to expect high-prestige and low-prestige occupations, whereas more male adolescents expressed moderate-prestige expectations. PDA results indicated that educational aspirations contributed the most to classification accuracy for both male and female adolescents with high-prestige expectations. Undecided female adolescents were characterized by a generalized and negative self-perception, whereas undecided male adolescents were characterized by a focused and negative perception of eventual occupational attainment.

Career and Vocational Assessment 1995-1996: A Biennial Review

This selective review of career assessment literature covers the period 1995 to 1996. The authors emphasize published research related to vocational theories and instruments, particularly research concerning career counseling and individual career development, and identify trends and new advances in career assessment. They conclude that Holland's vocational typology continues to be prominent, that the structure of interests is an unresolved issue, that more research has been conducted in previously neglected areas, that the development of new measures and improvement of old ones continues at a rapid pace, that type of methodology affects results, and that other literatures contain possibilities for career assessment. The authors also suggest implications for policy and research.

Career Goals and Retention-Related Factors Among College Freshmen

The relationships of four types of career goals (job related, school related, value related, and unknown) with factors of school retention, academic performance, self-esteem, educational self-efficacy, and school and career commitment are studied among 401 first-semester college freshmen. Differences in types of goals based on gender are also considered. Students reporting job-related goals are more likely to make positive persistence decisions than students reporting unknown goals. Men are more likely to report value-related goals than women, whereas women are more likely to report job-related goals than men. Implications of these findings for those working in college settings that help foster students’ career development and academic success are discussed.

Factors Influencing High School Students to Persist in Aspirations of Teaching Careers

This study longitudinally tracks 10th grade students for 4 years regarding their persistence in aspirations of teaching careers using a nationally representative sample (National Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1988). Factors contributing to persistence in aspirations of teaching careers are examined based on the social-cognitive career theory (SCCT). Results suggest that there are racial differences in persistence in aspirations to teaching careers. Students who persist perform better on academic achievement, score higher on locus of control, and come from a family that had a higher socioeconomic status and a higher parental education level than students who do not persist. Results also suggest a good fit of the social-cognitive model in prediction of persistence in teaching aspirations.

Parental interest in children's education, children's self-esteem and locus of control, and later educational attainment: Twenty-six year follow-up of the 1970 British Birth Cohort

BACKGROUND

Few studies have investigated if mother's interest and father's interest in child's education are linked to educational attainment via their impact on child's self-esteem and locus of control.

AIMS

(1) To investigate (after controlling for known confounding factors) the long-term effect of mother's and father's interest in child's education at age 10 and child's locus of control and self-esteem at age 10 in educational attainment at age 26; and (2) to explore if mother's interest and father's interest in child's education are linked to child's educational attainment via their effect in increasing child's self-esteem and internal locus of control.

SAMPLE

The study used longitudinal data from sweeps of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70). The initial sample was those 1,737 men and 2,033 women with valid data on age 10 self-esteem, locus of control, father's interest, mother's interest, and age 26 educational attainment. Of these, 1,326 men and 1,578 women were included in the final analysis.

METHOD

The birth to age 10 factors that were controlled for were birth weight, parental social class, socio-economic disadvantage, emotional/behavioural problems, cognitive ability, and mother's educational attainment.

RESULTS

At the multivariate level, internal locus of control and mother's interest (but not self-esteem) were significantly related to educational attainment in both men and women. Father's interest was a significant predictor of educational attainment only in women. Parent's interest was not linked to educational attainment via its impact on child's self-esteem or locus of control. Self-esteem predicted educational attainment in both genders by increasing internal locus of control, and fathers' interest predicted educational attainment in men by increasing mother's involvement.

CONCLUSION

Although mothers' and fathers' interest in their children's education were not linked to educational attainment via their impact on children's self-esteem or locus of control, they were significant predictors of educational attainment especially in daughters.

Self-efficacy and academic achievement in Australian high school students: the mediating effects of academic aspirations and delinquency

Studies have shown that self-efficacy, aspirational, and other psychosocial influences account for considerable variance in academic achievement through a range of mediational pathways, although no research to date has tested the mediational relationships identified. The present research investigated the structural relations among self-efficacy, academic aspirations, and delinquency, on the academic achievement of 935 students aged 11-18 years from ten schools in two Australian cities. The Children's Self-Efficacy Scale, Adapted Self-Report Delinquency Scale (Revised), and Children's Academic Aspirations Scale were administered to participants prior to academic achievement being assessed using mid-year school grades. Structural equation modeling was employed to test three alternative models for the relationships from academic, social, and self-regulatory efficacy on academic achievement. A partial mediation model showed the best overall fit to the data. Academic and self-regulatory efficacy had an indirect negative effect through delinquency and a direct positive effect on academic achievement. Academic and social self-efficacy had positive and negative relationships, respectively, with academic aspiration and academic achievement; however, the relationship between academic aspiration and academic achievement was not significant in the final model.

Ambitious mothers--successful daughters: mothers' early expectations for children's education and children's earnings and sense of control in adult life

BACKGROUND

Mothers' expectations for their children's educational attainment are related to children's educational and occupational attainment. Studies have yet to establish, however, the long-term links between maternal expectations and offspring earnings, which are not always related to occupational attainment especially in women, or between maternal expectations and offspring sense of control and self-efficacy, which are pivotal factors in career choice and development.

AIMS

To explore the role of mothers' expectations for their children's educational attainment in children's earnings attainment and sense of control later in life.

METHOD

Data from sweeps of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) were used. The study sample was those cohort members with complete information on all the variables of interest. The study sample (N=3,285) was more educated and less disadvantaged than the whole sample. If cohort members of this type are more likely to have a mother who has high expectations, then our results are biased downwards, which suggests that we underestimate the effect of expectations on our two outcome variables.

RESULTS

Mothers' expectations at the age of 10 were positively related to daughters' sense of control at the age of 30 even after controlling for ethnicity, educational attainment, and concurrent partner, parent, and labour market participation status, as well as the following confounding variables (measured at the ages of 0-10): general ability and general ability squared, locus of control, emotional and behavioural problems and emotional and behavioural problems squared, socio-economic disadvantage, parental social class, parental family structure, and mothers' education, child-rearing attitudes, and mental health. Mothers' expectations had no effect on sons' adult outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS

Given that women are particularly at risk for poor psychological and economic outcomes in adulthood, and that this study likely underestimated the effect of expectations on these two outcomes, this is an important conclusion.

The Path through Math: Course Sequences and Academic Performance at the Intersection of Race-Ethnicity and Gender

Using new national data from Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement (AHAA), this article examines high school math patterns for students of different race-ethnicity and gender. Compared with white males, African American and Latino males receive lower returns from taking Algebra I during their freshman year, reaching lower levels of the math course sequence when they begin in the same position. This pattern is not explained by academic performance, and, furthermore, African American males receive less benefit from high math grades. Lower returns are not observed for minority female students, suggesting that more attention to racial-ethnic inequality in math among male students is needed.

Race and self-esteem: meta-analyses comparing whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians and comment on Gray-Little and Hafdahl (2000)

These meta-analyses examine race differences in self-esteem among 712 datapoints. Blacks scored higher than Whites on self-esteem measures (d = 0.19), but Whites scored higher than other racial minority groups, including Hispanics (d = -0.09), Asians (d = -0.30), and American Indians (d = -0.21). Most of these differences were smallest in childhood and grew larger with age. Blacks' self-esteem increased over time relative to Whites', with the Black advantage not appearing until the 1980s. Black and Hispanic samples scored higher on measures without an academic self-esteem subscale. Relative to Whites, minority males had lower self-esteem than did minority females, and Black and Hispanic self-esteem was higher in groups with high socioeconomic status. The results are most consistent with a cultural interpretation of racial differences in self-esteem.

Women and career development: a decade of research

This chapter reviews the vocational experiences of women as they have been revealed in the literature during the past decade. The review considers primarily empirical literature; findings are sampled relative to women's self-concept development, readiness for vocational choices, actual choices made, work-force entry, experiences at work, and retirement. Suggestions are made regarding the next generation of research on women and career development.