Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 1 Adolescence 8th edition By Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D. Chapter Twelve: Achievement

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 2 Chapter 12 Overview  Why is achievement an adolescent issue?  Why are achievement motives and beliefs about one’s abilities important?  What are the influences of the home environment or friends on achievement?  How is educational achievement influenced by socioeconomic status? By ethnicity?  What influences occupational achievement?

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 3 What is Achievement?  Achievement is the development of motives, capabilities, interests, and behaviors that have to do with performance in evaluative situations  Includes performance in educational settings, hopes and plans for future scholastic and occupational careers Insert DAL photo

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 4 Why is Achievement an Adolescent Issue?  Achievement is a lifelong concern, but adolescence merits special attention because:  It is a time of preparation for adult work roles  Teens evaluate differences in school performance in regard to future success  Educational decisions are numerous and consequences of decisions are serious

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 5 What Motivates Adolescents to Achieve?  Need for achievement  Extent to which an individual strives for success and is intrinsically motivated to perform well  Teens with high need for achievement have authoritative parents who have encouraged success and:  Set high performance standards  Rewarded achievement success during childhood  Encouraged autonomy and independence

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 6 What Motivates Adolescents to Achieve?  Fear of failure  Often manifested by feelings of anxiety  Interferes with successful performance  Interacts with adolescents’ need for achievement  Underachievers  Have weak need for achievement and high fear of failure  Tend to avoid and dread challenging situations  Grades are lower than expected based on ability  Self-handicapping strategies

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 7 Why Are Beliefs Important for Achievement?  Adolescents’ beliefs about their abilities influence their actual achievement, which, in turn, shapes their beliefs about their abilities

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 8 Why Are Beliefs Important for Achievement?  Two types of motivation are affected by adolescents’ beliefs about their abilities:  Intrinsic motivation  Strive to achieve because of the internal pleasure they get out of learning and mastering the material  Extrinsic motivation  Strive to achieve because of external rewards or punishment for performance

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 9 Why Are Beliefs Important for Achievement?  Stereotype Threat (Claude Steele)  Students’ beliefs about their abilities, and their subsequent performance can be affected by situational factors  Telling ethnic minorities or females that their group typically does poorly on a certain kind of test results in lower scores on that test

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 10 Why Are Beliefs Important for Achievement?  Three factors interact to predict students’ behavior in school  Belief that intelligence is fixed or malleable  Intrinsic or extrinsic orientation  Sense of self-efficacy  Achievement Attributions  Explanations students give for their success or failure  Learned helplessness is the belief that failure is inevitable

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 11 Does the Home Environment Influence Achievement?  Despite the importance of school environment, aspects of the home are better predictors of academic achievement:  Parents’ values and expectations  Parents’ general approach to parenting  Quality of the home environment provided (cultural capital, social capital)

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 12 How Do Friends Influence Achievement?  Friends are the most potent influence on adolescents’ day-to-day school behaviors such as doing homework and exerting effort in class  Friends do not always undermine success  Having friends who earn high grades and aspire to further education appears to enhance adolescents’ achievement  Typically, peer influences on achievement in the United States are far more negative than positive  By middle school, adolescents are increasingly worried about their friends’ reactions to school success  Students did not want their classmates to know that they worked hard in school, even though they knew it would be helpful to convey this fact to their teachers

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 13 What Is Educational Achievement?  Educational achievement is defined in three ways  School performance (grades earned)  Academic achievement (performance on standardized tests)  Educational attainment (years of schooling completed)

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 14 How Does SES Affect Educational Achievement?  Compared to lower-class peers, middle-class adolescents:  Score higher on basic tests of academic skills  Earn higher grades in school  Complete more years of schooling  Reasons for worse school performance of poor youth?  They begin school with a distinct academic disadvantage (scoring lower on tests of basic skills)  Genetic (lower IQ) and environmental (less cultural and social capital) disadvantages

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 15 Are There Ethnic Differences in Educational Achievement?  African-American and Hispanic- American students achieve less than white students  Educational achievements of all groups lag behind Asian-American students  Many Asian American adolescents believe that the only way to succeed in mainstream American society is through educational achievement  Sense of obligation to parents does not seem to predict school achievement Insert DAL photo

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 16 Are There Ethnic Differences in Educational Achievement?  Asian Americans’ success may be because they:  are intrinsically motivated  spend more time on homework  spend less time watching TV and socializing  Contrary to popular belief, Asian- American students:  Are not subject to greater anxiety, depression, or stress  Report more positive moods when studying than other groups Insert DAL photo

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 17 Has Educational Achievement Changed Over Time?  Trends in academic achievement (what students know) have not paralleled trends in educational attainment  Students stay in school longer but are not learning more

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 18 Has Educational Achievement Changed Over Time?  American students fare poorly in international comparisons, despite the fact that spending on education in the United States is among the world's highest  Reasons given for poor achievement in the United States  Teachers aren’t spending enough time on basic instruction  Textbooks have become less challenging  Parents do not encourage academic pursuits at home  Students choose their own classes  Grade inflation – good grades without hard work

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 19 Dropping Out of High School  National dropout rate has remained ~25% since 1970s  Hispanic Americans drop out at more than twice the rate of white or African Americans  Dropping out is the culmination of a long process (repeated academic failure and alienation from school)  Interventions that focus on guided discussions of options are promising

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 20 How Do Adolescents Develop Occupational Plans?  Super’s Theory  Occupational plans develop in stages  Crystallization (ages 14 to 18)  Individuals begin to formulate ideas about appropriate work  Specification (ages 18 to 21)  Recognizes the need to specify vocational interests  Begins to seek appropriate information to do this  Involves an integration of influences from one’s past with one’s hopes for the future  Labor force changes have pushed this process back to later ages – now crystallization may begin in late college years and specification not until mid-20s

Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 21 What Influences Occupational Plans?  John Holland’s perspective: The role of personality  Self-Directed Search  Work Values  The different sort of rewards individuals seek from their work  Contemporary adolescents have unrealistic and overly ambitious ideas about these rewards