Parental Education Sets the Expectation

Abstract

First-generation students are worse than their non-first generation peers in their ability to recognize and respond to faculty members’ expectations (Collier & Morgan, 2008). Further, first-generation students have a lower sense of self-efficacy (Hellman, 1996) and lower self esteem(McGregor, Mayleben, Buzzanga, Davis, & Becker, 1991) than other students. I expected first generation students to more inaccurately predict how they will perform on their first introduction to psychology exam compared to their non-first generation student peers. I also expected first generation students to place a higher value of importance on their exam and experience higher levels of depression than their non-first generation student peers after the exam. We use a framework that investigates the relationship between parent’s educational attainment and college student’s educational expectations. We further this investigation by exploring how first generation status influences exam importance prior to a midterm and levels of depression experienced after the midterm. College students (N = 1435) reported their expectations and reactions before and shortly after, their midterm exam in an introductory course. They reported their expectations about how they would perform on the exam, the importance of the exam, and their depression. We examined how first generation status influenced each of these three variables. We expected first generation students to report more inaccurate expectations on exam performance, higher levels of exam importance, and higher levels of depression. Our hypothesis attempted to bridge the limited research on first generation expectations to the literature on first generation student’s well-being. First generation students and their non-first generation peers differed in their expectations and actual exam performance. First generation students reported lower expectations and performed worse than their non-first generation peers. Whether or not students were the first in their family to attend college did not affect the accuracy of their expectations for their midterm grade. First generation students and their non-first generation peers were similarly inaccurate in predicting their exam performance. Students who were first generation did differ from other students in the importance placed on the exam, and they experienced higher levels of depression after the exam.