ABSTRACT
It is well established in the literature that one’s economic and social position is linked to the social position of one’s parents. Consequently children in families with limited economic and social resources are less likely to achieve their educational goals and occupational aspirations than their more advantaged peers.1 Much of the research in this area has focused on differences in educational and career aspirations by race and ethnicity and socio-economic status to explain differences in educational attainment. However, researchers differ in how they specify the role of aspirations in their models with regard to the processes by which aspirations shape educational outcomes. A primary challenge for this research has been in establishing a common con-
ceptualization and measurement of aspirations. For example, do we measure what a student hopes to achieve or what they expect to achieve? Are we interested in an individual’s educational plans or their occupational plans? Variation in how aspirations are defined has critical implications for how we think about the role of aspirations in predicting educational outcomes. It is possible that having high educational aspirations is a better predictor of achievement than having high occupational aspirations, or that expectations provide a more accurate measurement of someone’s educational plans than a more abstract definition of aspirations would. Additionally, as the amount of schooling needed for more prestigious occupations has increased, researchers have had to adapt their definition of ‘high’ aspirations, further complicating the analysis of the relationship between aspirations and educational and career outcomes. The term aspirations has been commonly associated with the early work of Sewell and
Hauser (1972), who introduced the construct as an explanatory variable in their status attainment model. Models of status attainment prior to their work had focused on the structural processes by which individuals attain different economic and social positions in society, directing specific attention the antecedents of academic performance. Blau and Duncan (1967), for example, modeled the association between fathers’ educational attainment and occupation status on their sons’ educational attainment, first job, and subsequent occupation. They found that fathers’ education and occupation each have an
independent effect on their sons’ careers, but these two factors interact as well; males in families whose fathers held higher levels of education and occupation were more likely to attain more prestigious jobs than males in less advantaged circumstances. Sewell and Hauser (1975; 1980) expand on Blau and Duncan’s work by using aspira-
tions to explain the relationship between socio-economic background and educational and occupational outcomes.2 In their ‘Wisconsin Model’, the authors measured educational aspirations by asking how much further beyond high school a student planned to go; a student was determined to have ‘high’ aspirations if they planned to attend four years of college or higher. Occupational aspirations were initially measured using occupational prestige scores developed through the North-Hatt Occupational Prestige Questionnaire.3 Sewell and Hauser find that family background ascriptive characteristics are largely predictive of children’s academic success. Children are socialized through their interactions with their significant others (i.e., their family members, peers, and teachers); through these relationships they develop aspirations that shape their educational outcomes. These aspirations, according to Sewell and Hauser, therefore are integral for predicting educational and occupational outcomes (Sewell et al. 1969; 1972). The Wisconsin Model has played a foundational role in the way that sociological
researchers have examined how family background characteristics influence educational attainment. Subsequent data collection has allowed Sewell and Hauser to refine their models and extend them to include experiences of the original survey participants, tracing their occupational success through various stages of adulthood. Surveys conducted from 1992-94, for example, provided updated data on occupations, health, wealth, marital status, child-rearing, and other measures of attainment in adulthood (Hauser et al. 1992; 1994). With longitudinal data that follows participants throughout their occupational careers, the role of aspirations remains prominent in explaining how plans made during childhood and adolescence have effects on educational attainment that follow individuals into adulthood. However, despite its strength in explaining how family background and socio-
economic status impact educational attainment status, the Wisconsin Model is limited to the extent to which it can explain variation by race/ethnicity or gender. This is due in large part to the fact that the foundational work in the areas was conducted primarily on samples of white males.4 The status attainment model does not appear to hold up for African Americans, women, or students from low socio-economic backgrounds (Kerckhoff and Campbell 1977; Portes and Wilson 1976). Subsequent research on aspirations has since shifted to investigating more closely the relationship between aspirations and race and ethnicity, above and beyond any SES differences that emerge (Kao and Tienda 1998).
