My dissertation explores the higher education transition decisions made by senior high school students from diverse social backgrounds in Chile. I examine how family, school, and the broader institutional and political context interact with and influence these decisions during times of major social changes and educational reform. Through a…

Upward social mobility is often framed in research in ways that may disguise the unique journeys that Women of Color travel in college and as they aspire toward graduate degrees. This assets-based approach to a multisite case study explored how undergraduate Women of Color who aspire toward graduate education viewed the meaning of their potential…

This study focuses on the disparities between the educational aspirations and expectations of high school students in the U.S., and explores why students do not expect to earn a bachelor's degree despite their aspirations. Using a national dataset and logistic/multinomial logistic regression analyses, the study identified the factors associated…

The extant literature on parental involvement in the university choice process sheds light on the positive impact of parents' social capital on enrolment. Little research captures the complex dynamics of parental social capital that might within certain sociocultural and economic contexts compound the effects on university choice and access. This…

Purpose: This study examines the factors influencing educational aspirations among adolescents in secondary and high schools across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan (officially Kyrgyz Republic), and Tajikistan, with a focus on their aspirations for higher and postgraduate education. Through an analysis of a sample comprising 1360 students from grades 7 to…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between motivation in high school and postsecondary enrollment among 10th-grade students whose parents did not go to college. Specifically, this study (1) identified distinct groups of students' self-reported reasons for attending schools among 10th graders, (2) examined whether these…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating effect of student achievement in mathematics and science in individuals' intergenerational social mobility between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and their future occupational prestige. We also examined the mediating effect of other factors, such as parental expectation for…

We examined the self-determination of English learners with disabilities in secondary school, based on a secondary analysis of the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2012 (NLTS 2012). Self-determination characteristics of English learners with disabilities differed significantly from those of other students with disabilities, and of English…

According to sociological rational choice theory, students' class-specific educational decisions at key transition points significantly contribute to educational and social inequalities. Yet, while theory missed to clearly accentuate all relevant actors' influences on students' decisions, research generally failed to adequately empirically account…

Objective: This quantitative study constructed a statistical model to measure family social capital and college social capital among community college students. The authors also examined influences of these two types of social capital constructs on degree aspiration. Method: This study utilized the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and…

This paper investigates patterns of social reproduction of science education outcomes for high school students in Israel, specifically by examining the relationship between one aspect of science capital -- as measured by having a scientist in the family -- and SES with three measures of science education success: interest in science; science…

School infiltration is an important aspect of family parenting research in recent years. This study reexamines the evaluation mechanism of higher education access path to explore the feelings of schooling winners (also Gaokao winners). Different from stratified education's understanding of family authority, this study proposes to deconstruct the…

This article concentrates on the transition from comprehensive school to the upper secondary level from the viewpoint of migrant background girls. Emphasis is on understanding the "bounded agency" and the ways in which gender and family background are expressed in the modalities of the agency. Previous studies show that ethnic minorities…

This article presents the results of a research project which examined the factors enabling educational upward mobility. The findings are based on 58 qualitative interviews with successful first-generation students who are scholarship holders from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. From an in-depth analysis of the individual resources,…

Family, school, and community contexts each link to secondary school enrollment, yet these factors have been comparatively examined only in limited ways. A holistic examination of contextual factors will be particularly important for engineering where college enrollment patterns vary by demographics. To begin explaining patterns of engineering…