Stable, unstable, and later self-expectations’ influence on educational outcomes

ABSTRACT

At a time when most students aspire for college but not all necessarily attain it, do educational expectations still matter? High self-expectations are said to influence future educational success, but studies have often focussed on expectations at a single point in time. Thus, this research asks how stable, unstable, and later expectations predict students’ educational attainment. Using a longitudinal dataset of tenth-grade US students in 2002 (n = 15,244), the research finds that rising and stable high expectations increase the likelihood of entering and graduating from college. However, the opposite is true for those with falling and volatile low expectations, since expectations have marginal effects on predicting entrance to college but have stronger effects on preventing graduation. These findings suggest the salience of expectation stability, and the need to help students sustain and manage their expectations.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-expectations
• status attainment
• college-for-all
• inequality
• expectation stability

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for the help, assistance and comments given by Joshua Uyheng, Arvin Boller, Nikki Carsi Cruz, Ana Martina Nevada, and the editors and anonymous reviewers of the journal.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jose Eos Trinidad is a doctoral student at the Department of Comparative Human Development, The University of Chicago. He was previously research coordinator at the Ateneo de Manila’s Institute for the Science and Art of Learning of Teaching. His research interests include programme evaluation, teachers’ responses to bureaucratic processes, and effects of non-cognitive factors on long-term outcomes.

ORCID

Jose Eos Trinidad http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9986-8683