Emotional Capital, School Climate and Educational Attainment

• In Event: Exploring the role of socio-emotional skills for educational attainment

Proposal

Relevance to CIES 2025
In a digital society and its global economy, the importance of a college degree cannot be overstated. Understanding the mechanisms that shape students’ educational attainment can assist policymakers by identifying additional areas for effective intervention. Using the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS: 2002), our study investigates the role emotional capital and school climate, as perceived by the students when they were in 10th grade, play in their eventual educational attainment measured ten years later.

Theoretical Framework and Research Questions
A large body of educational research investigated the factors associated with educational attainment, particularly with college attendance. Family socio-economic background has been consistently linked to post-secondary attendance (Bumpus et al., 2020; Charles et al., 2007). In the US, racial disparities have been documented in the high school completion rates, college attendance and post-bachelor’s degrees (Boylan, 2020; Morgan & Gelbgiser, 2014). In addition to family and students’ demographic characteristics, students’ behavior and emotional wellbeing have been linked to educational attainment. Higher levels of internalizing and externalizing behaviors in children were linked to lower likelihood of high school completion and college attendance (McLeod & Kaiser, 2004; McLeod & Fettes, 2007; McLeod et al., 2012; Owens, 2016; Zbar et al., 2016). Non-cognitive traits and emotional competencies were also linked to educational attainment in the US (Lundberg, 2013) and the UK (Joshi et al., 2016; Schoon et al., 2021).

Emotional capital has received a fraction of attention from social scientists compared to cultural and social capitals. Within sociology of education, much of the early attention to this concept is found around parental feelings (especially mothers’) towards their children’s education (Gillies, 2006; Reay, 2000, 2004). Moving the focus from parents to students themselves, Gendron (2017, 2019) defined emotional capital as a “set of emotional competencies that is useful for personal, professional, and organizational development… and has personal, economic, and social return” (Gendron, 2017, p.50). While Gendron’s research was conducted among college students in France, author et al. (2022) explored the factors shaping emotional capital among the US elementary school students. No study to the best of our knowledge examined the role emotional capital plays in shaping educational attainment,namely matriculation into college versus acquiring post-baccalaureate degree versus not attending college.

Furthermore, consistent evidence suggests that school climate could be a significant factor in enhancing student academic performance (Demirtas-Zorbaz et al., 2021; Eugene, D., 2019; Erdem & Kaya, 2023; Kotok et al., 2016; Thapa et al., 2013). Several studies have examined the longitudinal associations between school climate and academic achievement (Author et al., 2013; Daily et al., 2020; Wang & Holcombe, 2010). However, no study to our knowledge has investigated the long-term effect of school climate on educational attainment. Our study aims at answering two main research questions. First, whether students’ perceptions of school climate are associated with their emotional capital, net of students’ and schools’ demographic characteristics and their math and reading scores. Second, to what extent students’ emotional capital and their perceptions of school climate shape their eventual educational attainment, net of students’ and schools’ demographic characteristics and their math and reading scores.

Data and Method
The National Center for Education Statistics selected a nationally representative sample of the U.S. 10th graders in the spring of 2002 and followed them throughout secondary and postsecondary years. Approximately 15,000 students and their parents from 750 schools participated in the study. The main dependent variable was the highest level of education earned by 2012, with emotional capital (mathematics self-efficacy, English self-efficacy, motivation, and grit) and school climate (student’s perception of student and teacher relationship, school safety, and disciplinary climate) measured in 10th grade.

We used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models to investigate the relationship between student perception of school climate and their emotional capital. We estimated a multinomial regression to assess the extent to which school climate and emotional capital play a role in determining students’ highest educational attainment. All models controlled for various student’s demographic characteristics and their 10th grade math and reading scores, as well as school-level characteristics.

Contributions and Findings
The theoretical contribution of our study is in expanding the relatively modest literature on emotional capital in education that has so far been focused either on parental feelings towards their children’s education (Gillies, 2006; Reay, 2000, 2004) or on academic achievement and behavior in the elementary school (Author et al., 2022; Wang & Hindman, 2023) by linking it to post-secondary educational attainment. The empirical contribution of our study is in highlighting the long-term effects of emotional capital and school climate on educational attainment measured a decade later. By doing so we map additional mechanisms through which educational attainment is shaped and the ways it can be affected via interventions during high school years.

We found that Black and Hispanic students reported higher levels on all four components of emotional capital (math and English self-efficacy, motivation and grit) compared to White students. Asian students exhibited higher level on math self-efficacy, motivation and grit. Higher parental education was associated with higher English self-efficacy, motivation and grit. Girls reported lower math self-efficacy, but higher grit compared to boys. We found that stronger disciplinary climate and positive perception of teacher-student relationships were associated with higher measures on all four components of student emotional capital: math and English self-efficacy, motivation and grit. Further, perceived school safety and positive teacher-student relationships were associated with a higher likelihood of post-secondary education. Moreover, higher motivation and grit in 10th grade were associated with a higher likelihood that a student will attain a college or a post-graduate degree.

Our findings highlight the intricate relationship between students’ various perceptions and their educational attainment, showing that perceived school environment early in their high school years affects their educational outcomes a decade later. Likewise, emotional capital exhibited by 10th graders seems to play a role in their educational attainment. These findings provide a foundation for future research that should disentangle these relationships further, as well as potential interventions to invest in students’ emotional capital.

Authors

• Katerina Bodovski, Penn State University

• Dajung Sohn, Penn State College of Education

• Yeonwoo Lee, The Pennsylvania State University