Academic Achievement And Its Relation To Perceived Teacher/Parent’s Expectation And Academic Self-Concept Among Middle School Students

The middle school stage is an important transitional period for individuals in their psychosocial development.Student in middle school changes dramatically both in physical and psychological development,which makes them access to available developmental resources.Meanwhile they are bearing the burden of learning task heavily.Academic achievement,acting as an important index to school adaptation,is found to be related to teacher/parent’s expectation perceived by students in existing research.Student is inclined to develop their academic self-concept according to their perception of teacher/parent’s expectation.Academic self-concept is a critical factor in predicting students’ academic achievement.It is supposed that teacher/parent’ expectation has direct effect on student’s academic achievement and indirect effect through academic self-concept.In addition,teacher and parent play different roles in student’s life across different school stage.And parent in Chinese culture often expect their child to have excellent academic performance.It is found that parent had differential expectation for boy and girl,and girl was more sensitive to emotional information and more likely to be influenced by other people.The present study was to explore the direct effect of perceived teacher/parent’s expectation on their following academic achievement and the indirect effect through academic self-concept,as well as gender differences in these direct and indirect predictions among middle school students.434 middle school students from four middle schools in Jinan,Shandong Province completed anonymous questionnaires,which are Teacher-Expectancy Consciousness Scale,Parents’ Expectation Perception Questionnaire,and Self-Description Questionnaires-TypeⅡ.The results showed that:(1)Junior high school students scored higher on perceived teacher expectations than senior high school students.And boys scored higher on perceived parental future achievement expectations than girls.(2)In junior high school,boys’ perception of teacher’s expectation had positive effect significantly on their academic achievement while girls’ perception parental academic performance expectation could predict positively their academic achievement significantly.In senior high school,girls’ perception of teacher’s expectation had positive effect significantly on their academic achievement.(3)Academic self-concept mediated the association between boys’ perception of teacher’s expectation and their academic achievement in junior high school as well as the association between girls’ perception of teacher’s expectation and their academic achievement in senior high school.