A Social Inequality of Motivation? The Relationship between Beliefs about Academic Success and Young People's Educational Attainment

Autor/inn/en	Smith, Jonathan F.; Skrbiš, Zlatko
Titel	A Social Inequality of Motivation? The Relationship between Beliefs about Academic Success and Young People's Educational Attainment
Quelle	In: British Educational Research Journal, 43 (2017) 3, S.441-465 (25 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0141-1926
DOI	10.1002/berj.3272
Schlagwörter	Social Differences; Competition; Foreign Countries; Academic Achievement; Correlation; Educational Attainment; Longitudinal Studies; Secondary School Students; Program Descriptions; Student Attitudes; Work Ethic; Family Relationship; Student Motivation; Disadvantaged; Rural Areas; Educational Background; Gender Differences; Australia + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Sozialer Unterschied; Wettkampf; Ausland; Schulleistung; Korrelation; Bildungsabschluss; Bildungsgut; Longitudinal study; Longitudinal method; Longitudinal methods; Längsschnittuntersuchung; Sekundarschüler; Schülerverhalten; Arbeitsethos; Schulische Motivation; Rural area; Ländlicher Raum; Vorbildung; Geschlechterkonflikt; Australien
Abstract	Meritocratic ideals, which emphasise individual responsibility and self-motivation, have featured prominently in discourses about Australia's international competitiveness in academic achievement. Young people are often encouraged to attribute academic success and failure to individual factors such as hard work and talent, and to downplay extrinsic factors such as luck, task difficulty, or broader structural advantages and disadvantages. Using longitudinal data on a large, single-age cohort (n = 2,145) of young Australians participating in the Social Futures and Life Pathways ("Our Lives") project, we analyse the relationship between attributions for academic success across their final years of secondary schooling and how they related to educational attainment at the end of school. The belief that hard work would lead to academic success was widespread within the sample and positively associated with subsequent educational performance. Most students also emphasised the importance of having a supportive family, despite this being negatively associated with performance. Consistent with claims about a "social inequality of motivation," the findings suggest that emphasising meritocracy may compound the disadvantages of young people from less educated or vocational backgrounds, and those living in rural and regional Australia, whilst impacting unevenly on males' and females' academic performance. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01