The Impact Of Educational Expectations On The Academic Performance Of Primary And Secondary School Students: A Moderated Mediation Mode

Since ancient times,“expecting sons to become dragons and daughters to become phoenixes” has expressed the expectation of parents for their children.In China’s social context,influenced by rapid economic and social changes,traditional Confucian culture and national policies,parents in China generally have high expectations for their children,agreeing that “knowledge changes fate” and that receiving quality education is still an important way to obtain a better material life and achieve class advancement.Most of the current studies on educational expectations have examined the relations between parental educational expectations and self-educational expectations and academic achievement separately from a single perspective.Few studies have examined the effects of parental educational expectations and self-educational expectations on students’ academic achievement simultaneously from a family systems perspective,and less is known about the relative importance of their roles,their synergistic effects in a family,and their mechanisms.Therefore,this study examined the effects of both parental educational expectations and self-educational expectations on students’ academic achievement from a family systems perspective based on expectancy theory and self-determination theory,and further explores the mechanisms of their effects.In this study,a questionnaire survey was used to select elementary and junior high school students as the participants.The Educational Expectations Scale,the Academic Self-Regulation Scale,and the Academic Achievement Rating Scale were used to measure parental educational expectations,self-educational expectations,autonomous motivation,and academic achievement.The data were statistically analyzed using SPSS26.0 and Mplus 8.3.The main findings and conclusions of the study are as follows.(1)There were significant grade,only-child,and urban-rural differences in educational expectations.The details were as follows,elementary school students’ parental educational expectations and self-educational expectations were higher than those of junior school students;only child students’ self-educational expectations were higher than those of non-only students;urban students’ parental educational expectations and self-educational expectations were higher than those of rural students.(2)Parental educational expectations and self-educational expectations all positively predicted academic achievement of primary and secondary school students,and the higher the educational expectations,the better the academic achievement of students,and self-educational expectations had a greater predictive effect on academic achievement.(3)There are significant gender and urban-rural differences in the contribution of educational expectations to academic achievement: The promotion of self-educational expectations on academic achievement was higher for female students than for male,and the promotion of self-educational expectations on academic achievement was higher for urban students than for rural.However,there is no grade or only-child significant difference in the promotion of educational expectation on academic achievement.(4)The contribution of parental educational expectations to academic achievement is achieved through the pathway of parental educational expectations influencing self-educational expectations influencing autonomous motivation and thus students’ academic achievement;the contribution of self-educational expectations to academic achievement is achieved through the pathway of self-educational expectations influencing autonomous motivation and thus students’ academic achievement.(5)The degree of parent-child discrepancies in educational expectations moderated the relationship between educational expectations and achievement,while the direction of the difference in educational expectations does not play a moderating role.Specifically,the degree of parent-child discrepancies in educational expectations only moderates the direct path of the mediating effect of autonomous motivation between self-educational expectations and students’ academic achievement.The positive effect of self-educational expectations on academic achievement was significantly strengthened the smaller the parent-child educational expectation differences were.