Parental Expectations

How Important Are Educational Expectations?

All parents want what’s best for their children, but the support they provide varies significantly depending on the level of their expectations. If expectations are high, parents may encourage their child to take higher-level courses, provide help for homework and tests, assist in researching colleges and universities, or make sure that the school coursework is in line with the admissions criteria for post secondary education. This kind of support often plays a key role in getting the children future-ready and determining successful career decisions. 

Research has shown that there is a clear relationship between what parents expect and the achievement scores of students. Thus, parental expectations for educational attainment strongly predict students’ scores across a variety of subjects (e.g., mathematics, language), and this relationship remains stable even after controlling for socioeconomic status (Fan, 2001; Neuenschwander et al., 2007). Moreover, the effects of early parental expectations (formed as early as Grade 1) tend to persist throughout the years of schooling, influencing children’s performance and self-concept at later grades (Entwisle et al., 2005). 

Interestingly, research shows that this relationship is bidirectional, which means that the better children do in school, the higher the expectations, and the higher the expectations, the better children do (Englund et al., 2004). Parental and student expectations mutually influence each other, but this influence may also be moderated by gender. For instance, a recent multiple-group analysis revealed that the effects of parental expectations on student expectations were stronger among boys than girls (Zhang et al., 2011). 

This brief synopsis investigates the effects of parental and student expectations on student achievement in Canada, using data from two programs: the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS 2011), which assesses reading literacy at the Grade 4 level, and the Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP-2010), which focuses on mathematics performance at the Grade 8 level.

 see more at http://cmec.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/316/AMatters_No4_EN.pdf