Elsevier

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

Volume 48, January–February 2017, Pages 14-24
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

Mexican-origin adolescents' educational expectation trajectories: Intersection of nativity, sex, and socioeconomic status

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2016.11.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Mexican-origin early adolescents expected to complete post-bachelor's degrees.

  • However, expectations declined in middle adolescence and improved in late adolescence.

  • This curvilinear pattern was more pronounced for immigrant adolescents, compared to U.S.-born adolescents.

  • Boys and girls did not differ in their initial levels of expectations but differed in their trajectories.

  • Nativity further moderated the sex differences in adolescents' trajectories.

Abstract

Expectancy value theory and a cultural-ecological framework are integrated in this study to examine the trajectories of 246 Mexican-origin adolescents' (Mage = 12.52, SDage = 0.58; 51% girls, 62% U.S.-born) educational expectations across eight years. Findings from a multilevel growth model revealed that early adolescents expected to complete a post-bachelor's degree, but expectations declined in middle adolescence and improved in late adolescence. This pattern was more pronounced for immigrant, compared to U.S-born, adolescents. Higher socioeconomic status was associated with higher expectations. Boys and girls differed in their trajectories, such that boys showed a curvilinear trajectory and girls showed a stable trajectory. Nativity moderated these sex differences. Immigrant boys showed curvilinear trajectories that dipped in middle adolescence and immigrant girls showed a declining trajectory. In contrast, U.S.-born boys and girls showed linear and stable trajectories. The discussion addresses suggestions for targeted interventions with at-risk subgroups during a sensitive period in adolescence.

Introduction

Mexican-origin adolescents' educational achievement merits attention, given that their high school (58.4%) and college degree (9.9%) attainment rates lag substantially behind national averages (86.3% and 29.1%, respectively; U.S. Census, 2013). Scholars who study Mexican-origin adolescents' achievement gap have focused on educational attainment (e.g., obtaining a high school degree or not), but few have focused on adolescents' educational expectations: self-assessments of the level of schooling adolescents expect to complete (Bohon et al., 2006, Eamon, 2005). This oversight is significant, as cognitive theories (Expectancy-Value Theory: Eccles & Wigfield, 2002) and research (Mello, Anton-Stang, Monaghan, Roberts, & Worrell, 2012) suggest that expectations of school success predict future educational and career attainment. Further, theory suggests that individual characteristics (i.e., nativity, sex) and family socioeconomic status (SES) can inform such expectations (García Coll et al., 1996, Wigfield et al., 2004).

Among ethnic minority adolescents, the intersection of individual characteristics and family SES create unique experiences that may play a role in their educational trajectories (García Coll et al., 1996). For example, immigrant adolescents may be aware of the barriers they face in applying for and receiving financial aid for college, and this may influence what level of schooling they expect to achieve (Olivas, 2009). However, adolescents' expectations of educational achievement may develop in ways that depend on their social positions at a given point during adolescence. Given our lack of attention on Mexican-origin adolescents' educational expectations, little is known about how social position informs changes in educational expectations over the course of adolescence. To address these gaps in the literature, the current study integrates a cultural-ecological framework (García Coll et al., 1996) with expectancy-value theory (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002) by exploring the trajectories of Mexican-origin adolescents' educational expectations from early to late adolescence and assessing within-group variability among these adolescents by testing the moderating roles of nativity, sex, and family SES.

Expectancy-value theory (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002) suggests that adolescents' expectations for success and perceived value of an outcome are associated with their persistence, performance, and task choices. For example, educational expectations can be important precursors to studying, getting good grades, seeking out educational enrichment programs, and applying for college. Adolescence is a developmental period generally defined by important transitions through middle school (i.e., early adolescence), high school (i.e., middle adolescence), and into tertiary education (i.e., late adolescence; Smetana, 2010). During adolescence the link between educational expectations and attainment is most important. In early adolescence (i.e., age 11–13), adolescents begin to explore their educational and career goals (Oyserman & Markus, 1990). In middle adolescence (i.e., age 14–17), adolescents begin planning and preparing for such goals. In particular, SAT preparation, college, and financial aid applications are due within this period (Hossler, Schmidt & Vesper, 1999). Finally, youth in late adolescence (i.e., age 18–20) experience the social realities of aging out of high school and transitioning into available higher educational and occupational opportunities (Shanahan, 2000).

Currently, only two studies explore changes in educational expectations across adolescence and into young adulthood (Mello, 2008, Mello, 2009) and none have focused solely on normative samples of Mexican-origin youth. Mello's studies use the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) data, which include a multi-ethnic sample with 12% of the sample being Hispanic youths. Mello identified a curvilinear trajectory where youths' expectations dropped slightly from age 12 to 14 but increased from age 16 to 20, and dropped slightly from age 20 to 26. Despite the curvilinear trajectory, youths' educational expectations always fell between completing some college education and completing a college degree. Youths' educational expectation trajectories did not differ for African American, Native American, European American, or Hispanic youths. However, these studies focus on Hispanic youth as a monolithic group, ignoring the unique histories, social expectations, and educational experiences of Hispanic youth from different countries of origin (Delgado et al., 2016, Portes and Rumbaut, 2006). Only one study has focused on Mexican-origin youth (Bravo, Toomey, Umaña-Taylor, Updegraff, & Jahromi, 2015); however, this study used data from adolescent mothers beginning in the third trimester of pregnancy and extended for three years.

There is substantial variability across Hispanic subgroups in social characteristics that may influence trajectories of educational expectations. Mexican-origin adolescents – the largest U.S. Hispanic and immigrant subgroup – are at risk because of higher economic disadvantage (U.S. Census, 2013), school climates that may discourage Hispanic youths' academic integration and enrollment in higher level coursework (see Gandara & Contreras, 2009, for an in-depth review), and parents' lower knowledge of the U.S. education system (Bohon et al., 2006, Sanchez et al., 2006), relative to non-Hispanic adolescents. Further, sociopolitical dynamics within the U.S. have racialized and marginalized Mexican-origin individuals leading to higher experiences of discrimination, especially for young men, immigrants, and darker-skinned individuals (Ortiz & Telles, 2012). Recently, as Mexicans comprise the largest number of unauthorized immigrants to the U.S. (62%; Hoefer, Rytina, & Baker, 2010), state and U.S. political rhetoric has further targeted Mexican-origin individuals, especially Mexican-origin immigrants, by proposing anti-immigrant legislations across several southern and southwestern states (Arrocha, 2011). The increased anti-immigrant rhetoric expressed in political and media spheres and the increase securitization of southern border states has intensified the feelings that Mexican-origin individuals are highly monitored and unwelcome in the U.S., especially in the southern and southwestern regions (Menjívar, 2016). This larger sociopolitical context may have implications for Mexican-origin adolescents' educational expectation trajectories, making this group of youth important to study.

Changes in Mexican-origin adolescents' educational expectations have not been documented; thus, our understanding is limited to insights from cross-sectional and comparative data in early and middle adolescence. Using data from the Children of Immigrants Project, St. Hilaire (2002) noted that 47% of the Mexican-origin early adolescents believed they would complete a graduate degree and only 1% did not expect to finish high school. Using a subset of the Add Health data, Bohon et al. (2006) noted that Mexican-origin middle adolescents reported they were moderately likely to attend college, but that they were less certain of their college prospects as compared to non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, and Cuban adolescents. Taken together, these studies suggest that, although a subset of Mexican-origin adolescents hold high educational expectations, Mexican-origin adolescents' expectations are lower than many subgroups of the U.S. population, including other Hispanic subgroups.

Taking into account the sociopolitical context in which Mexican-origin youth reside, we expect that Mexican-origin adolescents' educational expectations may exhibit curvilinear trajectories, as suggested by previous research on ethnically diverse groups (Mello, 2008, Mello, 2009), but in a more pronounced manner. Mexican-origin adolescents may begin their educational careers with expectations tied closely to their ideal “possible-selves” and less to their social realities (Oyserman & Markus, 1990). As Mexican-origin adolescents become more aware of opportunity (Gottfredson, 1981, Quintana, 1998) and discriminatory differences in social class and ethnicity in early adolescence (Ortiz and Telles, 2012, U.S. Census, 2013), and then combine this with their understanding of personal identity and social position in middle and late adolescence (Quintana, 1998, Trusty and Harris, 1999), they may significantly lower their expectations to fit their perceived opportunities and barriers. Previous research suggests Mexican-origin adolescents recover their high expectations in late adolescence (Mello, 2008). This recovery is potentially a result of adolescents learning about financial aid opportunities available to support college attendance, developing concrete plans to aid in their college and career transitions (Zimmer-Gembeck & Mortimer, 2007), and feeling pressure to make the on-time transition into college along with their peers (Shanahan, 2000).

A cross-cultural iteration of expectancy-value theory (Wigfield et al., 2004) provides support for the idea that cultural and social contexts must be acknowledged to understand cultural variation in academic achievement. We take this idea one step further, and integrate a cultural-ecological framework (García Coll et al., 1996), which suggests that social positioning constructs (e.g., nativity, race, sex, and social class) intersect to create barriers and opportunities towards successful development, both between and within ethnic groups. Current research focuses our attention on nativity, sex, and family SES as three individual and family characteristics that may uniquely and interactively impact Mexican-origin adolescents' educational expectations (Bohon et al., 2006, St. Hilaire, 2002).

Looking to adolescents' nativity, we are not aware of any research that explores cross-sectional nor longitudinal differences in educational expectations between immigrant and non-immigrant Hispanic or Mexican-origin youth; therefore, we turn to research focused on nativity differences in educational adjustment in general. This body of research has noted “immigrant paradox” phenomena, which suggests immigrants show better health and educational outcomes than native-born individuals (García Coll & Marks, 2012). Specifically, Hispanic immigrant youth show higher achievement (e.g., grade point average) and engagement (e.g., valuing and liking school) than later generation youth (Pong & Zeiser, 2012). Further, a growing literature suggests that the “immigrant-paradox” is not only an intergenerational phenomenon, but also an intragenerational phenomenon (Almeida et al., 2012, Salas-Wright et al., 2016, Suárez-Orozco et al., 2009), such that the protective effect of being an immigrant declines the longer adolescents live in the U.S. This research guides our hypothesis that immigrant adolescents will report higher educational expectations than U.S.-born adolescents, but such benefits may decline over time.

The role of adolescents' sex is also important to consider as adolescence is a period marked with biological and social changes that intensify the perceived and expected differences among boys and girls (Hill & Lynch, 1983). Previous qualitative work suggests immigrant boys perceive their friends and peers to be less school oriented and more work oriented (Qin-Hilliard, 2003), thus creating a male adolescent peer culture that undervalues education. In contrast, immigrant girls are more likely to be protected with more support networks at school and at home (Qin-Hilliard). Girls are also more likely to be shielded from the negative context intertwined with ethnic minority status (Qin-Hilliard), supporting the empirical findings that minority males are at higher risk for discrimination and marginalization (Ortiz & Telles, 2012). Indeed, Qin-Hilliard's work finds that Mexican-immigrant boys were more likely to consider work right after high school (25%) than Mexican-immigrant girls (11%) who are more likely to have college plans (90% of girls compared to 51% of boys). Supporting such qualitative research, trajectories of ethnically diverse adolescents living in the U.S. suggest that girls report higher educational expectations in early adolescence and a slower decline in late adolescence as compared to boys (Mello, 2008). Another related body of research, focused on recent Hispanic and Asian immigrants, notes that adolescent girls, as compared to boys, report higher GPAs (Hagelskamp, Suarez-Orozco, & Hughes, 2010) and more stable trajectories of educational performance (i.e., GPA; Suárez-Orozco, Bang, & Onaga, 2010). Sex differences for Mexican-origin adolescents' educational expectations trajectories have been scarcely explored, though the results of previous qualitative (Qin-Hilliard) and quantitative (Mello; Suarez-Orozco et al.) studies guide our hypothesis that Mexican-origin girls will show higher and more stable educational expectations as compared to boys.

Another important aspect of capital for adolescents' educational expectations is family SES. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES; Cowan et al., 2013) defines SES as a combination of family economic (i.e., family income) and human resources that reflect a holistic assessment of social capital in families to support educational success. Human resources may include parents' or other family members' educational background, which could increase family members' knowledge of the education system (Sanchez et al., 2006). Research has consistently noted a positive association between family SES and adolescents' educational expectations at a single time point (Bohon et al., 2006, St. Hilaire, 2002, Trusty et al., 2003). Mello (2009) has also noted a positive relation between SES and overall educational expectations, but no differences in trajectories. Taken together, such work suggests that higher and lower SES youth may differ in their educational expectations but not the manner in which expectations change across development.

Our cultural-ecological framework (García Coll et al., 1996) further guides our goals to understand the intersection of nativity with sex and family SES. In particular, we identify adolescents' nativity as a strong orienting factor that is related to adolescent and family differences in their endorsement of gender role and child rearing attitudes (Raffaelli and Ontai, 2004), and their knowledge of government systems and resources (Ojeda & Flores, 2008). For this reason, we believe it is important to consider how nativity further qualifies sex and SES differences in educational expectations. Existing research in this regard is often conflicting or non-existent. For example, prior research suggests that Mexican immigrant parents uphold more traditional gender role attitudes, as compared to later-generation parents, and, as a result, give sons more freedom than daughters (Leaper and Valin, 1996, Raffaelli and Ontai, 2004). This gendered pattern has been offered as a reason why girls outperform boys in academic achievement (Qin-Hilliard, 2003, Suárez-Orozco et al., 2010). However, immigrant parents' more traditional attitudes also have been linked to girls' increased pressure to remain close to the family after high school graduation (Sy & Romero, 2008). Therefore, these cultural values, which make girls more prone to higher academic achievement, may become deterrents towards college attendance for immigrant girls.

Turning to the interaction of nativity with family SES, family economic and educational resources may be more important factors for immigrant versus non-immigrant families' perceptions of college affordability because they may be less aware of resources (e.g., federal grants) and more aware of barriers to paying for college (Ojeda & Flores, 2008). Despite the potential importance of nativity status in creating a context of perceived opportunities and barriers, the intersection of SES and nativity is rarely studied. This lack of research may be partially because immigrant status and SES are often confounded because immigrant families tend to reside within low SES households (García Coll & Marks, 2012). One study explored the role of SES on nativity differences in academic adjustment (Crosnoe, 2012). In this study using national data to compare first-generation and second-generation Mexican immigrant youth, Crosnoe (2012) noted nativity differences supporting the immigrant paradox phenomena and these nativity differences increased when SES was accounted for in this model. However, this work only controlled for SES; it did not compare youth of different SES backgrounds; thus, the intersecting role of SES and nativity remains unexplored to our knowledge. Given the conflicting and lacking research, our study explores the moderating role of nativity on sex and SES differences in adolescents' trajectories of educational expectations.

Guided by a cultural-ecological perspective and expectancy-value theory, with the goal of understanding the factors that may shape Mexican-origin adolescents' educational attainment, the current study investigated changes in educational expectations and tested whether individual and family characteristics moderated these changes. First, by using a longitudinal ethnically homogenous design, we aimed to identify the average trajectories of Mexican-origin adolescents' expectations for their educational attainment from early (age 12) to late adolescence (age 20). Second, we tested the moderating role of adolescents' individual and family characteristics and resources. Research informed by the “immigrant paradox” (Pong and Zeiser, 2012, Suárez-Orozco et al., 2009) guided our first hypothesis that immigrant adolescents would show higher educational expectations than their non-immigrant peers, and that such expectations would decrease over time. Next, studies on sex differences in educational attainment (Qin-Hilliard, 2003, Suárez-Orozco et al., 2010) informed our second hypothesis positing that girls would show higher and more stable trajectories of expectations as compared to boys. Research focused on socioeconomic inputs to educational outcomes among Hispanic adolescents (Mello, 2008, St. Hilaire, 2002) informed our third hypothesis that Mexican-origin adolescents' educational expectations would be higher for high SES adolescents, as compared to low SES adolescents. Finally, our study explored whether adolescents' nativity further qualified differences in trajectories of educational expectations for boys and girls and adolescents from varying SES backgrounds. This portion of the study was exploratory given that current research was lacking or conflicting in its evidence for the potential role of nativity on sex differences (Qin-Hilliard, 2003, Sy and Romero, 2008) and SES differences (Crosnoe, 2012). Given the research noting that having at least one parent who is knowledgeable of the U.S. school system is impactful to adolescents' academic achievement (Rumbaut, 1997), and the convention to control for educational achievement (e.g., GPA, test scores) when studying educational expectations (Eccles and Wigfield, 2002, Trusty et al., 2003), we controlled for parents' immigrant status and adolescents' self-reported GPA at the onset of the study.

Section snippets

Participants

The current data included mothers, fathers, and young adolescents in 246 Mexican-origin families who were part of a longitudinal project on family socialization and adolescent development (Updegraff, McHale, Whiteman, Thayer, & Delgado, 2005). Given the goals of the larger project, participating families met the following criteria: (a) mothers were of Mexican-origin; (b) target adolescents were living in the home with an older sibling and were not diagnosed with a learning disability; (c)

Adolescents' average educational trajectories from 12 to 20 years of age

The intraclass correlation assessing similarity in educational expectations reports across time was 0.34, indicating there is substantial change (66%) across time within-persons and supporting our decision to estimate a 2-level growth model. The initial growth model predicting adolescents' educational expectations (Table 2, Model 1), including control (i.e., parents' immigration status, adolescents' self-reported GPA) and social position variables (i.e., adolescents' nativity, sex, and family

Discussion

Expectancy-value theory suggests that expectations of success influence achievement-oriented behaviors (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002). Our ethnically homogenous and longitudinal design contributes to insights regarding within-group variability in Mexican-origin adolescents' educational expectation trajectories as a function of adolescents' nativity, sex, and family SES as a means to identify subgroups and sensitive periods when youth may be at risk for lower educational achievement. This study is

Author contribution

NPB conceived the study, participated in its design and coordination and drafted the manuscript; MYD, SAR, KU and AUT participated in the study design, interpretation of the data, and drafted the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the families and youth who participated in this project, and to the following schools and districts who collaborated: Osborn, Mesa, and Gilbert school districts, Willis Junior High School, Supai and Ingleside Middle Schools, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Gregory, St. Francis Xavier, St. Mary-Basha, and St. John Bosco. We thank Susan McHale, Ann Crouter, Mark Roosa, Nancy Gonzales, Roger Millsap, Jennifer Kennedy, Leticia Gelhard, Sarah Killoren, Emily Cansler, Lorey Wheeler,

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