academic achievement eara

8/11/2019 Academic Achievement EARA

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Academic achievement:The role of (in)congruence between

parental/students educational aspirand academic self-efficacy beliefs in

14th BiennalConference of the European Association for

Research on Adolescence (EARA). Cesme, Turkey

Antonio Zuffian a, Paula Luengo Kanacri b, Maria GerbRosalba Ceravolo b, Concetta Pastorelli b& Gian Vittorio C

a University of Toronto, Canadab Sapienza, University of Rome


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Academic achievement

Academic achievement exerts a prominentinfluence on adolescents life as a majorindicator of psychological adjustment (Cole,Martin, Peeke, Seroczynski, & Fier, 1999; Salmela-Aro & Tynkkynen, 2010)

As a consequence, a large effort has beendevoted to identify major psychologicalpredictors of academic success, in particularduring adolescence (e.g., Di Giunta et al., 2013; Zuffian etal., 2013).


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Academic achievement (contd)

Among the several individual factors

conducive to academic success (e.g.,intelligence, personality traits, motivation, etc.),previous studies pointed out to the role of:

(1) self-effiacy beliefs in self-regulated learning(Caprara, Vecchione, Alessandri, Gerbino, & Barbaranelli, 2011;Zimmerman & Schunk, 2004; Zuffian et al., 2013)

(2) parental/students academic asmajor predictors of academic perfo(Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996, 200


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Self-efficacy beliefs in self-regulatedlearning (SESRL)

SESRL refers to students beliefs in theirperceived capability related to self-regulating learning activities, such as thecapacity to plan and organize academicactivities, the ability to structureenvironments conducive to learning, andself-motivation for academic work (Bandura et al.,1996, 2001; Zuffian et al., 2013)


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Academic aspirations

Parental academic aspirations refer to thehighest educational level that a parent thinkshis/her child can achieve (Bandura et al., 1996, 2001)

Students academic aspirations refer to thehighest level that they themselves think they canachieve (Bandura et al., 1996, 2001)

Previous studies (e.g., Bandura et al., 1996, 2001) found thataspiring parents can raise their childrens SESRL(by fostering their educational commitment),their academic aspirations as well as their

academic performance


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The present study

Although the positive role of academic aspirationsand SESRL on students achievement has beenempirically corroborated in several studies, it is not stillclear how the match between parental andadolescents aspirationscan foster studentsacademic self-efficacy and performance.

Differently from previous works that focused on inter-individual differences in average level of SESRL (e.g.,Bandura et al., 1996, 2001; Zuffian et al., 2013), or in its normativedevelopment (Caprara et al., 2008), in the current study weinvestigated the instability(i.e., the fluctations overtime) of students SESRL.


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The present study (contd)

Similar to the instability of other self-beliefs such asself-esteem (e.g., Kernis, 2000, 2003), high fluctuations in SESRLover time may indicate a fragile/insecure studentsself-efficacyin regulating their own learningactivities.

In the current study we hypothesized that if students

perceive their parental academic aspirations higherthan the educational level they expect to complete,this may cause stressand feelings of inadequacythat can undermine the stability of students' SESRL.This high SESRL instability, in turn, can decreasestudents academic performance.


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The hypothesized model

(In)congruencebetween

parental and studentsacademic aspirations

A

SESRLinstability


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Measures Academic achievement. Adolescents achievement was collecte

time points: at the end of sixth and eighth grades through the use o

school records. In the Italian school system, teachers evaluate theirby using a ten-level gradation (from1= extremely insufficient to 10=for each subject: Italian, math, science, foreign language (English French), and social studies.

Parental and adolescents academic aspirations. Academic aspiracollected at the end of seventh grade. Adolescents rated the edu

level they expected to complete and the educational aspirations parents had for them (from completing middle-school, to graduaticollege). The degree of (in)congruence was computed as (perceiparental educational aspirations students' educational aspiration

A value of zero indicated perfect congruence between parental andadolescents academic aspirations. Values >0 indicated that the pareacademic aspirations were perceived higher than the students acad

aspirations.


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Measures (contd) SESRL.SESRL was collected at three time points: (T1)at the end of se

grade, and at the (T2) beginning and at the (T3) end of eighth gra>.80). The SESRL scale (Bandura et al., 1996) includes 9 items scored on a 5Likert scale from 1= cannot do at all to 5= highly certain can do(e.gwell can you study when there are other interesting things to do?)

SESRL instability was computed as the within standard deviations amoscores across the three time points (see Kernis, 2000, 2003).

Intelligence. Intelligence was assessed via the Italian version of the

Fair Intelligence Test for children from 8 to 13 years old (Cattel & Cattel, instrument comprises two parallel forms (form A and B). For our purpconsidered the mean of forms A and B as a measure of intelligenceSpearmanBrown split-half coefficient of reliability was .77.

SES.SES was defined using the information reported by the studentconcerning their parents' occupation and education.


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Analytical approach We ran two multiple linear regressions in SPSS 18 to test the

hypothesized mediated effect:

academic aspirations (in)congruence SESRL instability aachievement (8 grade).

Previous academic achievement (6 grade), intelligence, SESwere included as control variables.

Only one student was missing data on academic achievement at the end of overall pattern of missingness was assessed via the Littles Test (1988) for missingrandom (MCAR). The test was not significant2(29)=41.11, p=.07, indicating thastrict assumption of MCAR.

In order to not reduce the number of subjects in the analyses, we computed

likelihood estimates of missing data via the expectationmaximization algorithm(Enders, 2010).


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ResultsSESRL instability

R2= 10%Academic ach

R2=

Sex (0=boys, 1= girls) .01 .0

SES -.14 .0

Intelligence .07 .15

Academic achievement (6th) -.18* .65

Academic aspirations incongruence .23** -.0

SESRL instability -.1

Note. Standardized beta coefficients. p< .10; * p< .05; ** p< .01


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The hypothesized model

(In)congruencebetween

parental and studentsacademic aspirations

A

SESRL

instability

Unstandardized mediated effect with 95% confidence int

(5000 bias-corrected bootstraps) was -.02 (95%CI: -.05, -


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Discussion The incongruence of academic aspirations between

parents and adolescents can undermine students

academic performance via the mediational role ofSESRL instability.

Parental academic aspirations higher than theeducational level that the adolescents expect tocomplete can favor the onset of a fragile/unstableacademic self-efficacy because the student can

perceive the family environment as too demanding.

Unstable academic self-efficacy beliefs accompanied by feelings of inadequacfear of failure), in turn, can negatively af

adolescents academic performance.


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Conclusion

Family environment perceived as excessively

academically demanding might becounterproductive if the adolescents are not readyand/or do not feel confident to reach higheducational levels (Zimmermann & Schunk, 2004).

The Expectancy-Value Theory (Atkinsalready stressed the importance ofexpectancies and to posit moderagoals to foster students achievem


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Conclusion (contd)

Building strong and stable SESRL allowsadolescents to take more control of theiracademic lives (Zimmermann & Schunk, 2004).

In this process, it is highly important and adolescents are aligned in settreachable academic goals in orde

school failures.

What can we do to avoid adolescentsacademic failure?


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Thank you very much for yourattention!

[email protected]@uniroma1.it

[email protected]

[email protected]@uniro

gianvittorio.caprara@uniro

academic achievement eara

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