Las expectativas parentales no explican el rendimiento escolar

Abstract

Many authors, since the Wisconsin model, defend that parents' educational expectations are one of the main causes of the differences in school success by social origin. According to them, educational expectations produce school success increasing parents' involvement and son's expectations and self-concept. On the contrary, other authors defend that educational expectations depend on school success. This article checks both theories with the "Social Survey 2010", which offers data of two students' cohorts, 12 and 16 years old. First, we compare parents' expectations between both cohorts controlling by grades and social origin. Then we analyze the relation of parents' expectations with parents' involvement. The results show that expectations adapt to school performance: parents expectations decrease distinctly from 12 to 16 years in the lower social strata -which suffer a big school failure in secondary education- and there is very little relation between parents' expectations and parents' involvement.