Mighty oaks from little acorns? The role of self-assessment in educational transitions: mediation and moderation effects

This paper is the revised and recalculated version of the working paper entitled: ‘Talented but unaware? An analysis of the role of self-assessment in educational transition’, Budapest Working Papers on the Labour Market, BWP – 2014/9. Available at: http://www.econ.core.hu/file/download/bwp/bwp1409.pdf

Abstract

This paper investigates the transitions to secondary and to tertiary education. As a new contribution to prior scholarship, it focuses on the role of self-perceived ability (self-assessment), which might impel pupils to make costly efforts in education now, in order to have an uncertain payoff later on. The paper builds on the assumption that while making educational decisions, especially low-educated families overemphasise ability relative to effort. Therefore, there is a need to identify the factors that contribute investing effort in education. It will be revealed that self-assessment might be such a factor in educational transitions. It especially helps the offspring of low-educated parents to reach their potential and to opt for college-bound secondary tracks. The paper concludes that it would be useful to concentrate more on how effort is influenced by parental background, since our knowledge is still limited about this kind of influence.

Keywords:

• Self-assessment
• self-confidence
• transition to secondary and to tertiary education
• school tracks
• inequality in educational opportunities
• track choices in education
• educational panel data
• effort and ability
• Hungarian Life Course Survey (HLCS)

Acknowledgements

I warmly acknowledge the useful comments and suggestions received from Zoltán Hermann, Dániel Horn, Michelle Jackson and Márton Medgyesi, and also the two anonymous reviewers of this article. All remaining errors are solely mine.

Notes

This paper is the revised and recalculated version of the working paper entitled: ‘Talented but unaware? An analysis of the role of self-assessment in educational transition’, Budapest Working Papers on the Labour Market, BWP – 2014/9. Available at: http://www.econ.core.hu/file/download/bwp/bwp1409.pdf

1. Pupils also have the opportunity to enter secondary general school after year 4 or year 6. This means that besides the 8 + 4 template, 4 + 8 and 6 + 6 systems are also in operation. The majority of pupils, however, go on to secondary school after year 8. Usually talented high-status pupils choose the early track. This selection could therefore bias the estimations.

2. http://www.felvi.hu/felveteli/ponthatarok_rangsorok/elmult_evek/!ElmultEvek/elmult_evek.php?stat = 4.

3. Results are consistent using multinomial logit; results are available from the author on request.

4. Results are robust to use of other kinds of definition, such as only mother’s or only father’s educational level.