There is a significant gap in the literature about Indiana Latino students' struggles to access post-secondary options. This study uses focus groups and interviews to explore parents', students', and teachers' perceptions about barriers and opportunities Latino high school students have to transition into education options after high school.…

This article reports on research investigating the aspirations of pupils in primary schools located in low-socioeconomic areas in one English county. The research adopted a qualitative approach to explore aspirations, self-efficacy, opinions regarding the merits of investment in education, and notions of perceived future selves. The research also…

Conventional wisdom suggests that parents' educational expectations (how far they expect their children to go) and aspirations (how far they want their children to go) positively impact academic outcomes and benefits from attending high-ability schools. However, here we juxtapose the following: largely positive effects of educational expectations…

Sallie Mae partnered with Ipsos, a global independent market research company, to introduce this new study. The study focuses on how high school students and their parents are planning for higher education. In addition, it examines the value students and their families place on higher education and, among those who plan to attend, how they are…

Background: School closures and service disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted students' postschool transitions. Students with disabilities who were also members of historically marginalized groups including immigrant students, multilingual students, students of color, and those experiencing poverty, were…

This article focuses on the parents of secondary school Polish boys and their capacity to realise their educational and professional aspirations for their children. Our primary finding is that although many Polish parents face considerable challenges in manoeuvring through the educational system, some Polish parents display a level of agency…

This study explored the factors that motivate student parents to pursue post-secondary education. Student parents at four Canadian universities (n = 398) completed open-ended questions on their reasons for attending school in an online survey. Using Possible Selves Theory as a lens, we conducted a directed content analysis and found that student…

Drawing on sociocultural and related theories, 4 questions examined career and educational aspirations and expectations among 24 immigrant Latina/o early adolescents and their parents as predictors of students' grades. First, adolescents' career aspirations and expectations were correlated, and both parents and adolescents held educational…

What is the relation between parents' views of their own friendships and their beliefs and practices about their children's friendships? Do parents who enjoy high-quality adult friendships understand and support adolescent friendships in ways different from parents who do not have close adult friendships? Relying on systematic analysis of…

Educational and occupational aspirations have become an important reference point in policy debates about educational inequality. Low aspirations are presented as a major barrier to closing educational attainment gaps and increasing levels of social mobility. Our paper contributes to this on-going debate by presenting data on the educational…

Parents' aspirations and expectations are communicated to their offspring. Children internalize their parents' aspirations and accept some of the expectations while rejecting others, all part of the developmental process and identity-consolidation. When the aspirations and expectations of youth and parents are incongruent, the outcomes…

This paper focuses on parents and the way they perceive and formulate expectations and aspirations about their children's educational and occupational outcomes. Drawing on evidence from a survey among more than 700 parents of primary school pupils this paper demonstrates that interesting patterns in parental aspirations can be observed. These…

The aim of this article is to explore aspiration in contemporary urban locations in the context of almost universal policy initiatives to raise aspirations of young people to participate in higher education. The article is based on a study of how children's career and further education aspirations are shaped over time in five schools in western…

The purpose of this study was to explore the postsecondary educational and occupational expectations of work-bound rural youth. Three groups of work-bound youth were identified (work-bound, work-bound with future educational plans, and work-bound but unsure/undecided about postsecondary education), and each group was compared to college-bound…

This qualitative study investigated the internal and external protective factors that serve to ameliorate barriers to academic achievement posed by the cultural factors of poverty, minority status, and rural residence for high-ability students, rendering them academically resilient. While there has been ample research on underachievement among…