The Relationship Between Educational Expectation And Academic Achievement:The Mediation Of Educational Exploration And Commitment

For the ultimate education level or degree that adolescents could receive in the future,both adolescents and their parents will have certain expectations on it.Many previous studies about educational expectations focus on the predictive powers of parental and self educational expectations.Previous studies indicated that parental educational expectations and self educational expectations could statistically predict academic achievement(Maria,Taningco,& Pachon,2009;Rutchick,Smyth,Lopoo,& Dusek,2009).Previous studies indicated that both adolescents' parents and themselves generally have a high level of educational expectation with adolescents.However,in consideration of the difference in age and experience,the parental educational expectations and self educational expectations may be different.Few studies have addressed the association between educational expectation discrepancy and academic achievement.Furthermore,the majority of previous researches have been carried out in the western culture backgrounds,considering the culture is so different,the effects of parental and self educational expectations and expectation discrepancy to Chinese adolescents' academic achievement is unclear.As the most important progress of future planning,educational exploration and commitment might play a intermediating role between parental and self educational expectations and academic achievement.However,there was a lack of evidence that the effect of educational expectations on academic achievement could be mediated by educational exploration and commitment.Therefore,we applied the psychological measurement method,with a sample of773 students from two junior high school in Shandong province.The present study was to investigate the direct prediction of parental and self educational expectations and expectation discrepancy to academic achievement,and reveal the mediation of educational exploration and commitment in the relationship between parental and self educational expectations and educational expectation discrepancy and academic achievement.The main conclusions of this study were as follows:(1)Both parental and self educational expectations could positively predict students' academic achievement.The educational expectation discrepancy could negatively predict students' academic achievement.(2)Educational exploration and commitment played intermediating roles between self educational expectations and academic achievement,but not between parental educational expectations and academic achievement.(3)Educational exploration and commitment played intermediating roles between the educational expectation discrepancy and academic achievement.This indicated that both parental educational expectations and self educational expectations are important for adolescents' academic achievement.The discrepancy between parental educational expectations and self educational expectations was detrimental to the development of adolescent academic.Educational exploration and commitment played intermediating roles,but the effects of parental educational expectations and self educational expectations for academic achievement were different.