Academic achievement and professional aspirations: between the impacts of family, self-efficacy and school counselling

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, we study several determinants of academic achievement and professional aspirations on a sample of 397 Romanian high schoolers. Our aim is to shed light on the family, individual and school related factors that contribute to the students’ academic achievement and professional aspirations. We focus on Romania, an ex-transition, Central Eastern European country, overlooked in the scholarly literature. We carry out the first empirical, causal analysis on the impact of school counselling on academic success and professional aspirations in Romania. We rely on Pierre Bourdieu's cultural capital theory [Bourdieu, 1986. The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. Greenwood Press; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977. Reproduction in education, society and culture. Sage] and Albert Bandura's self-efficacy theoretical framework [1989. Social cognitive theory. In R. Vasta (Ed.), Annals of child development (Vol. 6, pp. 1–60). JAI Press., 1995. Self-efficacy in changing societies. Cambridge University Press]. Our results confirm our expectations that academic achievement is positively influenced by family income and the time parents spend with their children during the weekends. Professional aspirations are positively influenced by students’ perceived self-efficacy, parental moral support and parental career guidance. We further discuss the implications of our results for Romanian teenagers, their families and Romanian educational policies.