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Don’t aim too high for your kids: Parental overaspiration undermines students’ learning in mathematics

Murayama, K.; Pekrun, R.; Suzuki, M.; Marsh, H.W.; Lichtenfeld, S.

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Authors

K. Murayama

R. Pekrun

M. Suzuki

H.W. Marsh



Abstract

Previous research has suggested that parents’ aspirations for their children’s academic attainment can have a positive influence on children’s actual academic performance. Possible negative effects of parental overaspiration, however, have found little attention in the psychological literature. Employing a dual-change score model with longitudinal data from a representative sample of German school children and their parents (N = 3,530; Grades 5 to 10), we showed that parental aspiration and children’s mathematical achievement were linked by positive reciprocal relations over time. Importantly, we also found that parental aspiration that exceeded their expectation (i.e., overaspiration) had negative reciprocal relations with children’s mathematical achievement. These results were fairly robust after controlling for a variety of demographic and cognitive variables such as children’s gender, age, intelligence, school type, and family socioeconomic status. The results were also replicated with an independent sample of U.S. parents and their children. These findings suggest that unrealistically high parental aspiration can be detrimental for children’s achievement.

Citation

Murayama, K., Pekrun, R., Suzuki, M., Marsh, H., & Lichtenfeld, S. (2016). Don’t aim too high for your kids: Parental overaspiration undermines students’ learning in mathematics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111(5), 766-779. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000079

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Nov 23, 2015
Publication Date Nov 1, 2016
Deposit Date Nov 7, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Print ISSN 0022-3514
Electronic ISSN 1939-1315
Publisher American Psychological Association
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 111
Issue 5
Pages 766-779
DOI https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000079
Related Public URLs http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/44843/

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