Chapter Outline

Achievement as an Adolescent Issue

Adolescence is a time period set aside to begin preparation for adult work roles. Social scientists have been interested in how young people are prepared for these roles, and how and when young people make educational and occupational decisions. It is not until adolescence that young people are able to assess what they would like to do and what they are good at and mesh those options into a future educational and occupational plan.
The advanced thinking abilities of the adolescent (hypothetical, logical and systematic) allow the adolescent to engage in this type of decision-making. It should be noted that sex role socialization limits the options of each gender. These concerns become particularly intense during adolescence.

Achievement Motives and Beliefs

The motive to achieve

Psychologists have discovered that people differ in regard to the extent to which they strive for success (need for achievement).
High need for achievement is associated with certain parenting behaviors. Adolescents with high need for achievement tend to have parents who set high performance standards, reward success, encourage autonomy and independence, and maintain warm parent-child relations.
A complementary motive to need for achievement is fear of failure. Moderate levels of fear of failure can improve performance under certain circumstances, but strong fear of failure can interfere with performance. Strong fear of failure is particularly detrimental in educational settings.
The best combination appears to be a strong need for achievement coupled with low fear of failure.
Young people who have low need for achievement and who have relatively strong fear of failure may become underachievers.

Patterns of Achievement in Adolescent Boys and Girls

On standardized tests of intellectual abilities, females and males tend to perform at about the same level. Still, girls are less likely to pursue advanced courses in math and science and they are underrepresented among college graduates in fields requiring mathematic and scientific preparation.
Several explanations have been put forward to account for this discrepancy between ability and attainment including fear of success, intensified gender expectations, changes in attitudes toward math and science and differences in achievement attributions and beliefs.

The importance of beliefs

Individuals differ in regard to how intrinsically and extrinsically motivated they are and this effects how they approach learning situations.
Intrinsically motivated adolescents are more likely to work hard in school even in the face of challenge.
Providing rewards for good grades and punishments for bad grades can lead children to become extrinsically motivated, which can be detrimental for learning and school success.
There are also differences in performance for students who believe intelligence is fixed versus students who believe that intelligence is a malleable characteristic.
Students who believe intelligence is fixed are greatly effected by the degree of confidence they have in their own abilities (self-efficacy).
Students with more confidence in their abilities tend to persist even when confronting challenging material.
Achievement attributions also influence student performance.
Achievement attributions have to do with interpretation of success and failure.
If a student tends to attribute success to internal causes like ability or effort, then he or she is more likely to approach learning tasks with confidence.
On the other hand, if a student attributes success to external causes, such as luck or ease of task completion, then he or she is likely to evidence less self-assurance in future learning tasks.
It is also important to note that interpretation and response to failure affect learning. Attributing failure to internal causes usually results in the student putting forth more effort in future tasks. Believing that failure is due to external causes (luck, task difficulty) will result in less effort on future tasks.
Unfortunately, some students develop the belief that no matter what they do, they will always fail in particular learning situations. This phenomenon is known as learned helplessness.

Environmental influences on achievement

Environmental factors play a significant role in educational and occupational achievement during adolescence.
School environments differ and those differences can influence an adolescent's ability to achieve.
Of particular concern are schools where there is a high concentration of poverty. These schools tend to be plagued by multiple problems (infrastructure decay, lack of textbooks, crime) that can negatively affect even the most talented students.

The influence of the home environment

The home environment is the strongest predictor of educational and occupational achievement.
Parents who encourage school success set high standards, support consistent values, and tend to be involved in their child's education.
Not surprisingly, authoritative parenting has been linked with school success in adolescence. Inconsistent parenting has been linked with the poorest academic outcomes.
Quality of the home environment along with the amount of exposure to culturally enriching experiences and social support and encouragement have also been positively linked with academic success in adolescence.

The influence of friends

Peers can have either a positive or a negative influence on school performance.
Having friends who value school success and earn high grades tends to have a positive influence on school performance, whereas having friends who have a negative orientation toward school can actually impede school performance.
Peers play an important role in impeding academic achievement in African American males.

Educational achievement

There are three ways of defining and measuring educational achievement.
One way is through school performance (school grades).
The second way is performance on standardized tests known as academic achievement.
The third way is educational attainment (the number of years of schooling completed).

Stress as the Link Between Socioeconomic Status and Achievement

Adolescents from lower-class families achieve less in school and complete fewer years of schooling than adolescents from middle-class homes. Early explanations for these differences include the quality of early home environments and differences in parents' expectations and aspirations.

Robert Felner and colleagues have found that stress is also an important mediating variable (a variable that helps explain the link between two other variables) between socio-economic status and achievement.

The importance of socioeconomic status

Socioeconomic status is a very important influence on educational achievement. Middle-class adolescents tend to outperform lower-class adolescents on the three basic measures of educational achievement mentioned above.
Both genetic and environmental influences have been suggested.
Preschool interventions have been successful at overcoming some of the academic deficits of lower-class children.
The level of stress experienced by lower-class youngsters has been found to be an important mediating variable that is helpful in explaining the link between poor school performance and low socioeconomic status.

Ethnic differences in educational achievement

African American and Hispanic students tend to do more poorly in educational settings than White youngsters.
The academic performance of Asian American students tends to exceed the performance of all three groups.
Asian American adolescents tend to be socialized to believe that effort plays a fundamental role in school success, and Asian American parents set high standards for school performance.

Changes in educational achievement over time

Levels of educational attainment have increased among American youth over the last 60 years.
Currently over 60 percent of American adolescents pursue an education beyond high school.
Minority student college enrollment and graduation has not changed much over the last 25 years, and when it has changed it has decreased, not increased.
Unfortunately, although more American young people are attending school longer, achievement test scores do not indicate that they are learning more. This is particularly true of minority students.

Dropping out of high school

Social and economic changes have made dropping out of high school a deleterious decision often with lifelong consequences.
The national drop out rate is around 25 percent in the United States. Close to half of these individuals eventually complete or receive credit for a high school level education by their mid-twenties.
Hispanic youngsters are more likely than White or African American youngsters to drop out of high school, presumably because of language differences.
Youngsters with a socially and economically disadvantaged background who have a history of school problems are far more likely to drop out of high school than young people without such a background or history.
School environments can contribute to dropping out.

Occupational Achievement

The development of occupational plans

Donald Super has developed an influential theoretical approach to describing the process of occupational decision making in adolescence.
According to Super, it is during middle adolescence that the young person begins to develop occupational plans that are related to his or her skills and abilities. This process is known as crystallization.
Following this period, the late adolescent begins to be more specific in his or her occupational planning, deciding among the many options that fit with his or her occupational self-conception. It is during this period, known as specification, that the adolescent narrows in on a particular career path.

Influences on occupational choices

The role of personality

John Holland has developed an approach to occupational decision making that addresses why some individuals choose to be teachers while others opt for more clerical professions, such as secretary.
Holland believes that certain occupations are best for people with certain personalities.
Holland has developed a personality inventory to measure personality traits and interests so that individuals can identify their particular personality type and match it with appropriate occupational options.

The influence of parents and peers

Adolescents' occupational achievements tend to be integrally linked with the achievements of parents and peers. Middle-class youngsters are more likely to enter middle-class occupations. There are numerous reasons for this match, including the level of educational attainment, stronger need for achievement, the opportunities available, the type of role models provided and the values shared.

The broader context of occupational choice

Finally, young people will often tailor their occupational decisions to fit the broader social context in which they live. This can be particularly limiting for lower class, female and minority youth.

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