We investigate how context might influence adolescent boys' and girls' ambition and the impact of gender role conformity and social status. Adolescent participants (N = 270) reported their ambition in one of three experimentally manipulated contexts: future education, future work, or a control. Boys experienced a significant negative drop in…

Background: Despite a well-documented underrepresentation of women in STEM majors and occupations, empirical evidence on whether there really is a "leaky STEM pipeline" is mixed due to a lack of methodological consistency. Studies vary by (1) the definition of STEM, (2) the decision to measure choices alone or to also include…

This article reports on research investigating the aspirations of pupils in primary schools located in low-socioeconomic areas in one English county. The research adopted a qualitative approach to explore aspirations, self-efficacy, opinions regarding the merits of investment in education, and notions of perceived future selves. The research also…

The current study suggested and tested a model to investigate the associations between adolescent future expectations of work and education (AFE-WE; adaptive responses) and positive future expectations (PFE; adaptivity) through concern, control, curiosity, and confidence (adaptability resources) as well as the role of the gender. The data were…

The Prospective Students Survey is one of the Graduate Management Admission Council's (GMAC) keystone research programs. The global graduate management education (GME) community has relied on data from this survey to gain insights about candidates' decision-making processes when considering and applying to graduate business schools since 2009. The…

Using interviews with 74 Korean undergraduate students at ten elite U.S. colleges, I explore how intersections of gender and class decide who pursues transnational mobility and cosmopolitan life more successfully. Men from highly-transnational families tried to exert 'agency for becoming' while mapping out their 'choice biographies', aspiring and…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the link between upper secondary school students' experiences of school democracy and their future role as democratic citizens, focusing on a comparison between men and women. Design/methodology/approach: The data derives from a questionnaire conducted to all last year upper secondary school students…

Students' social identity is considered to have profound effects on their learning and academic performance, but there was a lack of research on whether students' social identity would also influence their aspirations to pursue STEM careers. This research studied the associations between the social identity of students and their aspirations to…

Background: Despite gender similarity in math performance, gender disparities persist in math-related attitudes and STEM aspirations among adolescents globally. To disentangle this puzzle, some studies adopt the dimensional comparison theory to investigate the role of intra-individual comparative advantage across academic subjects, while others…

Today, young adults from lower-income backgrounds are pursuing educational trajectories that would have been distant dreams for their parents. In many Global South countries, this expansion has followed a neoliberal logic in which private universities purport to provide students skills and increased earning capacity, and employers the necessary…

Current literature on parent aspirations has not empirically explored the factors that may lead to differences in aspirations among similar types of parents. Additionally, little is known about the gendered nature of these differences. In this study, we seek to understand factors shaping mothers' aspirations in regards to education, marriage, and…

Peers' parents with a certain educational status generate spillover effects on adolescents' education outcomes through several extrinsic channels. However, evidence on the intrinsic mechanisms driving these spillover effects remains limited. Exploiting the data from China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) and a quasi-random class assignment design, we…

This study examined adolescents' social-emotional skills profiles before the educational transition to upper secondary education. Further, the study examined differences in gender; socioeconomic status (SES); and perceived social relationships, educational aspirations, and school anxiety across the profiles. The study used OECD data collected from…

This article explores the complex relationship between gender, mathematical self-concept, and choosing to pursue a STEM degree program in Austria. Additionally, it evaluates the accuracy of mathematical self-perception relative to performance across genders. Employing quantitative methodologies including linear mixed-effects models, matching…

Sustainable Development Goal 5 challenges governments to address child marriage, which may inhibit girls from developing an agentic self. This paper assesses the direct influence of community gender norms on adolescent agency, and the normative contexts in which gender gaps in adolescent agency are larger or smaller in Nepal. Using baseline data…