Goal-setting plays a significant role in one's life and contributes to one's success (Locke & Latham, 2012, 2006, 1990). As high school students approach the end of their K-12 education, they benefit from setting goals and planning for their future. They also profit from strategizing and designing an action plan that delineates how they will…

Increasing numbers of Cigano people in Portuguese schools show that this is the most educated generation to date. However, according to recent data only 2.6% are enrolled in secondary education. Using an intersectional approach examining gender, ethnicity, and family socioeconomic status to explore the youngsters' academic trajectories, and…

Studies on language teachers' agency and self-efficacy have shown that both are essential elements of teachers' identities and practices. However, only some researchers have explored how teachers perceive their agency and self-efficacy in the Indonesian context. Thus, this study aimed to investigate how English teachers perceive their agency and…

A growing number of college students today are First-Generation. First-Generation (FG) college student experiences and performance on student success measures differ from their peers whose parents have earned college degrees (Astin, 1975; Chen & Carroll, 2005; Ishitani, 2006; Pascarella et al., 2004). The purpose of this quantitative study was…

In this paper, the experiences and aspirations of seven students who are members of an excellence program at a large Australian university are foregrounded. The theoretical concepts of performativity and responsibilisation are drawn on to highlight (1) how these students responsibilise themselves and (2) how they are responsibilised by the…

Science self-schemas are students' cognitive generalizations of their selves in learning science. Students who hold contrasting science self-schemas are hypothesized to learn consistently with their salient self-conception in science. A survey and an experiment provided complementary evidence supporting the self-congruent engagement hypothesis.…

This article reports on research investigating the experiences and resources that make science thinkable for undergraduate science majors as they engage in postsecondary science contexts. We regard these experiences and resources as contributing to science majors' "science capital," and we suggest that science capital accumulates over…

The link between marriage and premature school-leaving among females in the Global South is a major preoccupation within the field of international development and education, yet theoretically-grounded qualitative scholarship unpacking this relationship remains scarce. This paper uses models developed to conceptualise female agency in constrained…

Positive life aspirations among adolescents and young adults have been associated with greater wellbeing in the future. However, belonging to a stigmatized minority may jeopardize this process. In this work, we sought to understand the role of sexual and gender identity in the life aspirations (desires and expectations) of adolescents and young…

An evaluation of extant research reveals a significant blind spot around investigating the enrolment decision-making of Indian international students in the STEM fields. This study qualitatively explores the motivations of Indian international students to pursue a STEM Master's program in an industrialised country. To elicit pertinent information,…

East St. Louis educators provide critical counter-narratives to Jonathan Kozol's depiction of teaching and learning in East St. Louis, Illinois in "Savage Inequalities." Teachers, educators, and administrators provide a complex view of urban schooling beyond deficiency, inadequacy, and despair. Findings highlight educators' voices as…

Individual academic achievement is highly valued in Chinese society, with vocational education students positioned at the bottom of the educational hierarchy and suffering considerable societal prejudice. In this paper we present new findings from the choice-making experiences of students in two vocational education colleges in China, how they are…

This article presents ethnographic research on the aspirations of graduates from a private university in New York City, some of whom move to Los Angeles. Findings depict financial and family pressures exerting a governing force upon the graduates' futures, often beyond their control. Focusing on the narratives of four individuals, we introduce the…

Despite an expenditure of over $45 billion in the last decade aimed at meeting the "Closing the Gap" strategies, successive Federal and state governments have overseen a generation of Aboriginal students who have experienced a failure of promised improvements to their educational outcomes. Recent scholarship has highlighted the paucity…

In the 2020-2021 pro-democracy protests in Thailand, an unprecedented number of high school students participated on all levels: from organizing rallies to small symbolic actions. To better understand this phenomenon, we engaged 691 Thai students from diverse backgrounds to write a letter to a recipient on the other side of the political divide.…