ABSTRACT At a time when most students aspire for college but not all necessarily attain it, do educational expectations still matter? High self-expectations are said to influence future educational success, but studies have often focussed on expectations at a single point in time. Thus, this research asks how stable, unstable, and later expectations predict students’ educational attainment. Using a longitudinal dataset of tenth-grade US students in 2002 (n = 15,244), the research finds that rising and stable high expectations increase the likelihood of entering and graduating from college. However, the opposite is true for those with falling and volatile low expectations, since expectations have marginal effects on predicting entrance to college but have stronger effects on preventing graduation. These findings suggest the salience of expectation stability, and the need to help students sustain and manage their expectations.

中文翻译：

---

稳定，不稳定和以后的自我期望对教育成果的影响

摘要在大多数学生都渴望上大学但不一定全部都获得大学的时代，教育期望仍然重要吗？很高的自我期望会影响未来的教育成就，但研究通常集中在单个时间点的期望上。因此，这项研究询问稳定，不稳定和以后的期望如何预测学生的教育水平。使用2002年美国10年级学生的纵向数据集（n = 15,244），研究发现，不断提高的期望值和稳定的期望值会增加进入大学和毕业的可能性。但是，对于那些期望值不断下降且波动性较低的人而言，情况恰恰相反，因为期望值对预测大学入学的影响很小，但对防止毕业的影响更大。