Too Much Expectation, Too Much Help: The Impact of Parental Expectations on Student’s Perceived Achievement

• In Event: 30203 - Demography and Inequality in East Asia

Abstract

Research on education in East-Asian countries tends to focus on high student achievement, often using the completion of degrees as benchmarks for success and failure. However, this emphasis focuses more on family investment in education or educational performance than how the meaning of education may vary dramatically from what we see in western nations. In the South Korean context, families make immense educational investments in their children’s education, adopting a narrow success frame that focuses on elite university admissions. This way of understanding educational success leads to the vast majority of Koreans “failing” to accomplish their educational goals, as the fail to attain admission to the most elite universities, even if objectively many are educational successes. To better understand these complexities, we use qualitative interviews with college students to examine success and failure in South Korea. Rather than focusing on the “winners” of the Korean education, those in super-elite ‘SKY’ schools, we examine students who have failed to achieve admission to elite schools but were admitted to top 10 schools within Seoul. This group of students occupying what we call, “the bottom of the top” are in a unique position as they represent objective educational success while also experiencing a level of failure as they were unable to attend the very best schools. We find that the subjective perception of success and failure is influenced by recognition from others, especially parents. Among students at the “bottom of the top”, those with higher parental aspirations experienced lower satisfaction with their admission results. Conversely, students with lower parental aspirations often report higher satisfaction. Additionally, the combination of parents' educational and aspirational levels provides both advantages and disadvantages in shaping students' perceptions of success from the admission process. Therefore, we find that perceptions of success are not one dimensional but complicated and fluid.

Authors

• Jonathan A. Jarvis, Brigham Young University-Provo

• Jiwon Choi, University at Albany, SUNY