Research has shown that socioeconomic and psychological resources may influence educational trajectories. There are still unanswered questions, however, about the unique roles of these resources and the interplay between them. We consider two such questions: First, how do major psychological resources—a sense of school belonging and optimistic future expectations—predict educational trajectories when controlling for the effect of socioeconomic resources? And, second, do these psychological resources compensate for lacking socioeconomic resources or do they reinforce the influence of socioeconomic resources on educational trajectories? We used data from a 15-year-long Swiss panel study (N = 1989) and investigated educational trajectories concerning individuals’ transitions from lower-secondary to academic upper-secondary education, and from there to university. Findings indicated that both socioeconomic and psychological resources were significantly associated with individuals’ probability of transitioning to academic upper-secondary education. We also uncovered some evidence of resource compensation between socioeconomic resources and future expectations, suggesting that optimistic expectations may buffer the adverse effect of scarce socioeconomic resources on educational attainment. Furthermore, we found that both the sense of school belonging and future expectations were significantly associated with individuals’ probability of transitioning to university. Overall, we conclude that psychological resources play a critical role in academically oriented educational trajectories and that they may partly compensate for the effects of limited socioeconomic resources on these trajectories.

中文翻译：

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起源、归属感和期望：评估学术教育轨迹中的资源补偿和强化


研究表明，社会经济和心理资源可能会影响教育轨迹。然而，关于这些资源的独特作用以及它们之间的相互作用，仍然存在未解答的问题。我们考虑两个这样的问题：首先，在控制社会经济资源的影响时，主要的心理资源——学校归属感和乐观的未来期望——如何预测教育轨迹？其次，这些心理资源是否弥补了社会经济资源的不足，或者是否加强了社会经济资源对教育轨迹的影响？我们使用了一项长达 15 年的瑞士小组研究（N = 1989）的数据，并调查了个人从初中到学术高中教育以及从那里到大学的过渡的教育轨迹。研究结果表明，社会经济和心理资源与个人过渡到学术高中教育的可能性显着相关。我们还发现了一些社会经济资源与未来预期之间资源补偿的证据，表明乐观的预期可能会缓冲稀缺的社会经济资源对教育成就的不利影响。此外，我们发现学校归属感和未来期望与个人过渡到大学的可能性显着相关。总体而言，我们得出的结论是，心理资源在以学术为导向的教育轨迹中发挥着关键作用，并且它们可以部分补偿有限的社会经济资源对这些轨迹的影响。