This paper examines the experiences of a group of 16- to 18-year-old students in two publicly funded London schools who did not conform to expectations and rejected university as a post-school destination. The students' experiences offer insights into how current Higher Education (HE) policy in England combined with a competitive school market…

The way in which young people's post-school intentions and pathways reflect their social background has been the subject of a good deal of research. However, much less attention has been paid to social differentiation in the amount and kind of career guidance information received by young people and its role in reinforcing or ameliorating social…

We previously proposed that science capital (science-related forms of cultural and social capital) can be used as a theoretical lens for explaining the patterned nature of aspirations and educational participation among young people aged 11-16. Building on these findings, the present article investigates whether science capital is related to…

Scholarship on adult education throughout the life course focuses on the relationship between education and upward mobility. Scholars rarely examine how adults' educational aspirations or trajectories are affected by downward mobility or an increasingly precarious labor market. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 21 job seekers in the…

This study assesses students' motivation for the pursuit of higher degree in the field of Education. Due to their current low-income status (mean value of less than $2 day) and their desired income (mean value of $500 per day) 10 years after acquiring the degree, it is instructive and tractable to examine the income effect of their motivation.…

This article reports a study that investigated secondary school students' higher education aspirations (towards university studies, ISCED 6 and above) and how these differ between student groups as well as how these are impacted by values of education. Panel data of more than 300 secondary school students in two countries, Luxembourg and…

Both students and parents have expectations about students' academic future. The present study analyses the influence of both sets of expectations when students are at age 15-16 on the level of education achieved by students when they are 23-24 years old. For this purpose, a structural equation model is estimated by three-stage least squares,…

The purpose of this study is to describe the perceptions and expectations of German language students, especially in terms of receptive skills. This study asks two main questions: (i) what are the expectations of students towards learning German and (ii) how are students' perceptions of German learning, especially reading and listening, the data…

Using a mixed-methods approach, this study examines the college expectations of high school students in Hanoi, Vietnam. Findings from a survey of approximately 4,000 students and interviews with 76 students, teachers, and school leaders revealed that the majority of students planned to apply to college. However, rural students had significantly…

Empirical educational research nearly universally tacitly assumes that people attend college only in order to improve their likely earnings. Thus, it ignores the immense cultural importance ascribed to education (and particularly higher education) in modern culture, or at least proceeds as if this cultural valorization is irrelevant to…

Formal education has all too often been portrayed as a means of achieving social and economic mobility, there is a need to address the unequal footing for adolescents in the Global South attempting to achieve social mobility through education. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Sri Lanka, this article considers the impact of upward…

We present a conceptual exploration of armed love as a component of liberatory pedagogy. We ground our work in community cultural wealth theory (CCW) that centers social capital often found in non-dominant communities under pressure. We argue that recognizing and working against exploitation using the community's social, cultural, and historical…

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…

SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timed) are advocated as the gold standard for goal setting. However, goals which are non-specific and exploratory, referred to as 'open goals', may be preferred in specific circumstances. In this pre-registered experiment, we compared SMART goals, compared to do-your-best (DYB), and…

This mixed methods study investigated the change types and the underlying mechanisms of Chinese undergraduates' deep learning approach at a research-oriented university in eastern China. In Study 1, the deep learning approach of 273 freshmen was assessed using R-SPQ-2F at the beginning and end of a semester. The changes were categorized into three…