Across all levels of education, persistent academic achievement gaps exist between students from higher and lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Despite these daunting odds, many students from lower-SES backgrounds manage to maintain high levels of academic motivation and persist in the face of difficulty. One factor that has been shown to contribute to lower-SES students’ academic outcomes are their perceptions of socioeconomic mobility, or their beliefs about whether or not socioeconomic mobility—a powerful academic motivator—can occur in their society. Indeed, examining both pre-university and university-enrolled students, prior research demonstrates that if lower-SES students believe that socioeconomic mobility generally does not occur in their society, their desire to persist academically—to work hard in a domain that is touted as contributing to upward mobility—suffers. By contrast, when these students believe that mobility can occur, their desire to persist in school remains high. Building from prior research on the processes that contribute to positive outcomes for students at different education levels, the purpose of this dissertation was to explore whether strengthening lower-SES students’ perceptions of socioeconomic mobility also functions via psychological mechanisms that have emerged in prior experimental research among lower-SES pre-university and university-enrolled students. Chapter I focuses on low-SES pre-university students and reviews the importance for these students of education-dependent future selves, or the extent to which they internalize images of their futures that hinge on educational attainment. Therein, Study 1 begins by providing initial support that stronger perceptions of socioeconomic mobility are related to the development of education-dependent future selves among low-SES pre-university students. Building from these findings, Study 2 then demonstrates the motivational importance of providing all students—not just those who are university-bound—with a viable school-based means for connecting their current lives and the socioeconomic futures they envision for themselves. Chapter II then shifts the focus to lower-SES university-enrolled students and the importance of a complementary mechanism for enhancing academic outcomes: by enhancing feelings of fit and belonging in higher education. Therein, Study 3 provides direct evidence that lower-SES university-enrolled students may have different psychological needs than their pre-university counterparts. Study 4 then explores whether strengthening lower-SES university students’ perceptions of socioeconomic mobility enhances feelings of fit and belonging in higher education. Together, the present studies represent a first attempt at integrating and comparing many of the theoretical and applied approaches in the social-psychological literature on SES and education and highlight many important directions for future research and intervention.

Last modified

• 01/29/2019

Creator

• Alexander S. Browman

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2KQ5X

Subject

• Psychology

Keyword

• Socioeconomic mobility
• Academic performance
• Academic motivation
• Socioeconomic status

Date created

• 2017-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright