Educational aspiration, talent and schooling: Parents as promoters of success?

Abstract

The article examines the connection between the educational aspirations of parents and the path of schooling undertaken by their sons and daughters. Serving as empirical basis is a longitudinal study of 400 17-year-olds on the effects of the pre-school acquisition of competence in reading and mathematics. The analysis examines the extent to which the educational aspirations of parents constrain the scholarly success of their child and its professional ambitions at the end of the period of compulsory schooling; and whether this is particularly applicable for families with highly gifted children. Essentially, the analysis suggests a differentiation between five basic patterns of parental educational aspirations, whereby two patterns demonstrate significance with regard to a differentiation according to high talent profiles: (a) a group of parents that are «accustomed to education» and ambitious, whose child has successfully completed its course of schooling and has also developed similar professional ambitions to those of its parents; (b) a group of parents with diametrically opposed tendencies, designated «expectant parents», due to the fact that their educational aspirations are predominantly manifested in high demands, but where their child’s school career is somewhat associated with failure and whose professional ambitions do not reflect the wishes of the parents.