High-school seniors' college enrollment goals: Costs and benefits of ambitious expectations

Educational Expectations and Academic Persistence among Rural Adolescents: The Protective Role of High Self-Esteem

Rural adolescents are at higher risk of reduced academic persistence due to socioeconomic barriers. Educational expectations are theoretically viewed as important for adolescents' learning behaviors, and cross-sectional research has supported this assumption. However, few longitudinal studies have investigated the influence of educational expectations on adolescents' academic persistence. In addition, research has not clearly identified whether self-esteem moderates this link among adolescents who experience greater economic risk. Using data from two time points (i.e., six months apart), this study aims to provide a more complete understanding of whether, and under what conditions, rural adolescents' educational expectations influence academic persistence. The participants consist of 631 adolescents (Mage = 13.34 years at T1), and all the adolescents are from families with rural household registrations. The results show that the interaction term of educational expectations and self-esteem significantly predicts academic persistence. Specifically, after controlling for baseline academic persistence, educational expectations positively predict later academic persistence for rural adolescents with lower self-esteem, and educational expectations do not significantly predict later academic persistence for those with higher self-esteem. This study reveals the protective role of self-esteem in rural adolescents. High self-esteem benefits rural adolescents by protecting them from the effects of lower educational expectations on academic persistence. This finding also emphasizes the importance of developing self-esteem interventions for rural adolescents with low educational expectations to prevent them from experiencing weaker academic persistence.

Unequal expectations? Testing decisional mechanisms for secondary effects of social origin

It is a common research practice to decompose the effect of social origin on an educational expectation into a primary effect, via academic performance, and a secondary effect, computed as the inequality that survives the control of performance. In this paper, I examine how specific decisional mechanisms described in the Cultural Capital and Rational Action theories contribute to explain the inequalities that survive the control of performance in the configuration of educational expectations. Cultural Capital Theory argues that participation in the dominant culture at schools, the endowment of educational resources and the development of skill-generating habits contribute to holding ambitious expectations over and above performance. In Rational Action Theory, students form expectations at each level of performance by gathering information, pondering benefits and costs, and evaluating the risk of academic failure and social demotion, which in turn might account for the secondary effect of social origin. Relying on Spanish data from 2018 PISA, I observe that Cultural Capital and Rational Action mechanisms are compatible in the explanation of the secondary effects of social origin, although two-thirds of that inequality remain unexplained. Nonetheless, I find differences in how those mechanisms perform in vertical (whether to enrol an educational level) and horizontal expectations (what alternative is preferred in that educational level).

Unrealized Educational Expectations and Mental Health: Evidence from a Low-Income Country

The rapid expansion of schooling across low-income countries, combined with intensive governmental and nongovernmental efforts to promote education, has encouraged youth in these contexts to form exceptionally high educational expectations, despite immense structural barriers to achieving them. Consequently, many young people's educational expectations go unmet, driving concerns over the possible unintended consequences, including their elevated risk of mental health problems. At the same time, role transitions (e.g., marriage, parenthood) remain important elements of the transition to adulthood in many low-income countries, and may be a source of resilience-allowing youth to shift their identity away from education towards a new role. In this study, we explore the mental health implications of young women's unmet educational expectations, and the possible buffering impact of motherhood, in a low-income community in Malawi, in southeast Africa. Analyses of six years of longitudinal data show that young women's unmet expectations to continue school are associated with multiple indicators of mental health disadvantage across two points in time. In the short term, however, this is only true of young women who did not enter motherhood in the midst of their educational plans going unrealized: young women who became mothers-and thus achieved a key element of the transition to adulthood in this setting-experience fewer mental health disadvantages. The findings demonstrate the potential mental health consequences of young adults' expectations exceeding their outcomes while also highlighting a source of resilience.

Self-efficacy and future career expectations of at-risk adolescents: The contribution of a tutoring program

Tutoring and mentoring programs may be a promisingintervention to help at-risk children who may be in need of a positive influence in their lives. The purpose of the current study was to examine the contribution of tutoring to at-risk adolescents' self-efficacy and future career expectations. Ninety-eight tutees and 147 college student tutors completed the Self-Efficacy Questionnaire for Children, the Work and Education subscale of the Future Expectations Scale for Adolescents, and a background questionnaire twice: first at the beginning and then toward the end of 8 months of tutoring. Both tutees and tutors reported higher levels of tutees' social and emotional self-efficacy as well as future expectations toward the end of the year. Tutors also reported higher levels of tutee academic self-efficacy. Increased self-efficacy was associated with increased levels of future expectations. Changes in academic and social self-efficacy predicted changes in tutees' future career expectations. Implications for theory and research are discussed.

Agency and Motivation in Adulthood and Old Age

This review addresses conceptual and empirical research about how individual agency and motivation influences development during adulthood and old age. The major life-span approaches to individual agency and developmental regulation are discussed, with a focus on the motivational theory of life-span development. Developmental agency unfolds through action cycles of pursuing long-term goals for optimal development. Individuals differ in their capacity to regulate their goal engagements effectively within the age-graded structure of opportunities and constraints in their life courses. We discuss a set of research examples about specific developmental challenges, such as transition to adulthood, biological aging, illness, and societal transformation, and show how individuals, as agents in their own development, navigate change for better or worse. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

Expecting the Unexpected? Expectations for Future Success Among Adolescent First-Time Offenders

Adolescent first-time offenders demonstrate greater risk of continued offending, justice system contact, and high school dropout. The current study evaluates if optimistic expectations protect youth by reducing offending and improving school grades for 3 years following a first arrest (N = 1,165, M_age  = 15.29). This article also considers whether improved behavior raises expectations about the future and uses autoregressive latent trajectory modeling with structured residuals to examine the within-person cross-lagged associations between expectations and behavior. The results indicated that positive expectations reduce offending and improve grades, which are in turn associated with higher expectations. Although raising expectations may improve outcomes following an arrest, ensuring adolescents have the tools to meet their goals may be an effective way to raise expectations.