Abstract
This article examined the extent to which Japanese high school students' academic self-perception mediated the effects of gender and socioeconomic status on their educational expectations. In this study, students' academic self-perception was defined as their subjective ability in an academic domain and was measured by gauging math self-concept and math self-efficacy. The main hypothesis of this study predicted that the effects of gender and socioeconomic status on the educational expectations of high school students were mediated by their academic self-perceptions.
To test this and related hypotheses, the author analyzed Japanese data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted in 2003 by OECD. In statistical analyses, school-level heterogeneity was controlled using the fixed effects regression model. The results of regression analyses showed that: first, boys and students from privileged families were likely to have higher educational expectations, second, boys had higher math self-concepts and self-efficacies compared with girls, third, socioeconomic status was positively correlated with math self-efficacy, fourth, math self-efficacy had a statistically significant positive effect on educational expectations while math self-concept did not, and fifth, the results of the Sobel test showed that the effects of gender and socioeconomic status on educational expectations were partially (but not completely) mediated by math self-efficacy.
The main hypothesis of this study was supported for math self-efficacy, which explained about 30% of the effect of gender and 5% of the effect of socioeconomic status on educational expectations. While the direct effects of gender and socioeconomic status remained significant even after taking into account the mediation effect of academic self-perception, academic self-efficacy partially explained the effects of gender and socioeconomic status on the educational expectations of Japanese high school students.
