Socioeconomic Mobility Beliefs Predict the Perceived Value of Academics in Late (but not Middle) Childhood

• In Event: Children’s Beliefs about Social-Class and Mobility: Implications for Socioemotional Development, Stereotype Formation, and Academic Motivation

Abstract

Promoting academic success requires considering the kinds of futures students envision for themselves, and whether they see education as valuable for helping them attain those futures (see Eccles, 2009). As economic inequality increases, one future aspiration that many young people increasingly express is a desire to attain upward socioeconomic mobility—to have better occupations, incomes, and living conditions than they currently experience (CIRP, 2009). As a result, research has shown that when adolescents and young adults feel that they have the ability to attain upward mobility, they are more likely to see academics as valuable for their futures and, ultimately, to experience greater long-term academic success (Browman et al., 2019; Laurin et al., 2011). However, research has yet to identify at what age children’s beliefs about the attainability of mobility first begin to be associated with their beliefs about the value of academics.

To test this, we recruited 541 elementary school students (ages 8-12; 48% male). Children’s personal SES mobility beliefs were assessed using a modified version of the MacArthur scale of subjective SES (Adler et al., 2000). Specifically, students where shown a picture of a 10-runged ladder that depicted “how America is set up—at the top are the people who have the most money and at the bottom are the people who have the least money,” and they were asked to indicate where “your family is on this ladder now” (M=6.42, SD=1.62) and where “you and your family will be on this ladder when you are an adult” (M=7.42, SD=1.68; 1=lowest, 10=highest). Following prior work (Browman et al., 2019; Davidai, 2018; Shariff et al., 2016), we quantified children’s beliefs about the likelihood of experiencing socioeconomic mobility by computed a ladder-based score that involved subtracting their “now” responses from their “when you are an adult” responses. The extent to which children perceived academics as valuable for their futures was then assessed using a measure adapted from prior research (e.g., “It’s important to know math as an adult”; M=5.49, SD=.79; Fennema & Sherman, 1976). Children responded using a 1-6 scale (1=“Really don’t agree,” 6=“Really agree”).

Children’s perceptions of the value of academics were regressed on their mobility beliefs, age, and their interaction. A significant mobility beliefs x age interaction emerged, b=.044, t=2.68, p=.008. As shown in Figure 4, simple slopes analyses revealed that mobility beliefs did not significantly or marginally predict perceptions of the value of academics for 8-year-olds, b=.088, t=-1.43, p=.154, or 9-year-olds, b=.002, t=.04, p=.972, but did for 10-year-olds, b=.091, t=1.77, p=.077, 11-year-olds, b=.181, t=2.46, p=.014, and 12-year-olds, b=.271, t=2.65, p=.008.

These findings suggest that the relationship between mobility beliefs and the perception of academics as valuable may first emerge in late childhood. This work extends the existing literature by demonstrating that not only do children first begin to concretely imagine their desired futures around this age (Harter, 2012; McLean, 2005)—they also begin to draw concrete connections between their current actions (i.e., doing well in school) and those futures (i.e., attaining upward mobility).

Authors

• Alexander S. Browman, College of the Holy Cross
  Presenting Author

• David B. Miele, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sidney May, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author