Primarily using data from the 2010 European Social Survey, we analyze intergenerational educational persistence in 20 European countries, studying cross-country and cross-cluster differences in intergenerational mobility; the role of gender in determining educational persistence across generations; and changes in the degree of intergenerational persistence over time. We find that persistence is highest in the Southern and Eastern European countries, and lowest in the Nordic countries. While intergenerational persistence in the Nordic and Southern countries has declined over time, it has remained relatively steady in the rest of Europe. Further, we find evidence of differences in intergenerational persistence by gender, with mothers' education being a stronger determinant of daughters' (instead of sons') education and fathers' education a stronger determinant of the education of their sons. Finally we see that for most clusters differences over time are largely driven by increasing mobility for younger women. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Despite increased diversity noted in undergraduate education in recent years (Antonio, 2003), students from non-majority groups continue to be underrepresented in graduate school. Many research studies (Perna, 2000, 2004; Perna & Titus, 2005; Rowan-Kenyon, 2007; Walpole, 2003, 2007b) have used measures of cultural and social capital to increase the explanatory power of the traditional econometric framework in college choice models, but have not used these sociological variables as a primary focus. The purpose of this correlational study was to explore the influence of cultural capital and social capital on the decision of bachelor’s degree completers to enter graduate school and ultimately to degree achievement. The study is an extension of Perna’s 2004 work, which examined similar relationships of cultural and social capital variables via use of the Baccalaureate & Beyond: 93/97 study. Based on Walpole’s findings (2003), variables related to socioeconomic status (SES) were also included in my analysis. The data used to answer the research questions were collected as part of a longitudinal study, the Baccalaureate & Beyond: 93/03. Participants in the Baccalaureate & Beyond: 93/03 study were students in the U.S. who earned a bachelor’s degree during the 1992-1993 academic year, representing a population of 1.2 million individuals (Choy, Bradburn, & Carroll, 2008). My findings revealed that measures of cultural and social capital have a significant influence on graduate school enrollment and degree completion. Among low SES students (as designated by family income) cultural and social capital variables substantially increased the likelihood of graduate degree attainment.

This paper proposes a method to study the relationship between voters' attitudes towards immigration and the educational attainment of immigrants and their children, and applies it to Austrian data. We measure attitudes towards immigration using data on political parties' positions regarding immigration and the share of votes that each party received at the regional level. We then study the educational attainment and intergenerational educational mobility of immigrants who grew up in the regions whose political environment we observe. Preliminary results for Austria suggest that, surprisingly, better attitudes towards migration are associated with lower educational attainment for immigrants. However, immigrants are more likely than their native peers to obtain more education than their parents. Here, the returns to more positive attitudes towards immigration play a large role in explaining the mobility gap across migration background. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

<div>The first chapter quantitatively examines the impact of exporting countries' reputations for product quality on aggregate trade flows. I introduce a novel data set in which recall incidences retrieved from the Consumer Product Safety Commission are matched to U.S. import data from 1990-2009. Using a model of learning I construct a measure for exporter reputation where consumers internalize product recalls as bad signals. Structural estimation of the model finds that reputation is important and especially impactful for products used by children. The market share elasticity of exporter's reputation is around 1.49 across products, similar in magnitude to the average price elasticity, which is around 1.51. Improving reputation can increase export value, but reputation is sluggish: increasing reputation by 10\% can take decades for most exporters. Counterfactual exercises confirm that quality inspection institutions are welfare improving, and quality inspection is especially important for consumers of toys. </div><div> </div><div> The second chapter summarizes the correlation between export decisions of Chinese firms and product recalls for Chinese products. I use a new data set where I link recall data scraped from CPSC to monthly Chinese Customs Data. I found that recalls from previous months correlates negatively with the decision of export participation, but not with export value. </div><div> </div><div><br></div><div> The third chapter, coauthored with Kendall Kennedy and Xuan Jiang, analyzes how China's industrialization and the immediate export growth due to the Open Door Policy change Chinese teenagers' education decisions, which explains the education decline. We find that, middle school completion rates increased and high school completion rates decreased in response to export growth. This suggests a tradeoff between education and labor market opportunities in China. These education effects are more prominent for cohorts who were younger when China's Open Door Policy began, even though these teenagers also faced a stronger education system compared to the earlier cohorts. </div>

Thesis advisor: Jacqueline Lerner / Americans are more educated than ever, and high educational attainment has long been associated with positive outcomes for individuals and society as a whole. However, one-third of high school students do not enroll in post-secondary education immediately after graduation, thereby reducing potential benefits. A thorough understanding of college enrollment patterns is needed to develop and enhance interventions that will effectively promote immediate college enrollment. Extant literature on college access focuses largely on contextual factors that influence college enrollment, such as families, schools, and classrooms. Given that context is only one component of development, additional research on the role of the individual may be especially useful for understanding more fully the transition from high school to college. For this dissertation, theoretical approaches from higher education and developmental psychology were combined to provide a new framework for exploring immediate college enrollment. The variables of interest included indicators of college readiness (e.g., academic preparedness and sources of college information) and three internal assets: self-regulation, school engagement, and expectations for academic success. College enrollment patterns were examined using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, which surveyed students nationwide in 2002 (Grade 10), 2004 (Grade 12), 2006, and 2012. A series of multinomial regression equations revealed significant main effects and indirect effects of internal assets on college enrollment through college readiness variables, but no interaction effects between internal assets and college readiness variables. Analyses also provided support for previous findings related to racial/ethnic and socio-economic group differences, as well as school-level contextual factors. The findings from this study have valuable implications for college access programs: internal assets appear to be driving college readiness, not merely bolstering it, and should be a focus for interventional efforts. Additional research across applied settings for youth is needed to replicate and extend the findings from the current study, to evaluate applicable measurement standards, and to propose reform in practice and policy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

Research into ‘ethnic’ attainment differences in British higher education tends to depict students from minority ethnic backgrounds as disadvantaged, marginalised, discriminated against and excluded. This shapes the current theoretical perspective adopted by university policies and informs practice. However, the consequences of this perspective for students, their educational attainment and university education as a whole are largely unexamined. This study explored the teaching and learning experiences of students, alongside their views concerning how these experiences may have impacted on their attainment. To arrive at a more unbiased and better informed understanding of ethnic attainment differences, the student narratives in this study were analysed from a realist philosophical position. The experiences students related included student interactions, participatory and intellectual engagement, (un)equal treatment and academic study and support. The richness and variety of the individual narratives defied simple analysis and required further discussion of perceptions, interpretations, meaning, understanding and categorisation. Some students talked of social interaction in terms of race, colour, ethnicity, nationality, culture, class and age, while others thought such social grouping unproblematic. Engagement was seen either as participatory engagement in the learning process or as intellectual engagement with the subject. There were perceptions of unequal treatment due to race or ethnicity which contrasted with suggestions of straightforward unprofessional practices. Attitudes to academic study ranged from descriptions of struggling with the academic workload to feeling the lack of intellectual challenge. The analysis and discussion revealed a process of minoritisation that resulted from the current approaches to ethnic attainment. The continued use of group-based social differentiation inadvertently fosters the idea that ethnic and social attributes matter and creates a divisive subtext which loses any sense of our common humanity. Group-based social differentiation can undermine the resilience and human agency of students because it suggests that educational attainment is predominantly determined by ethnic and social attributes, downplaying the students’ capacity to act in pursuit of educational goals. As a result, university policies and practice perpetuate rather than ameliorate the status of minority ethnic higher education students.

Despite the burgeoning literature documenting the effects of breast-feeding on cognition and educational attainment over the past several decades, there remains important gaps in our knowledge regarding whether this relationship is dictated by sociodemographic factors. The current investigations, which examined the literature on the effects of breast-feeding on cognition and educational attainment in children, adolescents, and older adults addressed these gaps. Chapter 2 was an up-to-date global systematic review of population studies in individuals ≤ 25 years and ≥ 25 years of age. Results indicate that the majority of published studies conducted by researchers demonstrated a positive relationship between the effect of breast-feeding on cognitive outcomes and educational attainment. Additionally, findings highlighted the importance of possible confounders and how adjusting for them can change the relationship between breast-feeding and cognition and educational attainment. Chapter 3 investigated the breast-feeding-cognition/educational attainment relationship across race, as well as whether mother-child stimulation might mediate this relationship. The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) was used to examine the effect of being breast-fed or not, and duration on cognitive outcomes and grade point average (GPA). Results indicate that individuals who were breast-fed had slightly higher GPAs and performance on both a vocabulary test and a number recall test compared to adolescents who were not breast-fed. There was an effect for race, but no interaction between race and breast-feeding. Mother-child stimulation had a limited effect on the relationship between breast-feeding and cognitive outcomes and GPA. Chapter 4 explored whether the effect observed in adolescence persists into older adulthood. The Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Cohort was used to examine this relationship in adults age ≥ 45 years. The covariates included sex of adolescent, race (Black or White), maternal education, paternal education, maternal smoking history, number of other children mother has, resident location (urban/not-urban), and a financial adversity index. This was a composite score consisting of yes or no responses to (1) do you have health insurance, (2) have you been employed within the past 12 months, (3) are you on public assistance, and (4) do you have enough money to pay your bills? Results show that self-report history of being breast-fed did not current predict performance on cognitive tests. Additionally, neither race nor sex moderated this relationship between breast-feeding and cognition. Overall, evidence from the review and two studies highlight the important of assessing the effect of breast-feeding on cognition and educational attainment in populations with varying confounding factors, however, while some of the results are inconsistent with our hypothesis, replication is clearly essential to further explore the possible underlying mechanism.

Girls' relationship with mathematics has been an extensive and contested area of investigation during the last 40 years, mainly in developed countries. This contrasts with the small amount of research from developing countries, where the topic has been largely neglected but may present different challenges. In Chile, such lack of empirical evidence is surprising, particularly because of several national reports describing attainment differences in the national assessment test (SIMCE), where girls are consistently outperformed by boys. Currently, there are no studies which systematically explore gender differences in attainment in Chile. In addition, only a small number of studies have tried to explain why these differences, as well as others in engagement, attitudes and enrolment in mathematics, arise in this country. The main goal of this thesis is to critically examine these issues by investigating how girls relate to mathematics during early adolescence in Chile, and how such relationships are influenced/mediated by certain social variables (e.g. social class, classroom cultures and peer group identities).In order to do this, this thesis has adopted a mixed methods approach, thus linking analysis and results from studies that use both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Firstly, I investigate the size and distribution of the gender attainment gap in Mathematics in Chile using a Multilevel approach to analyse data from the national census of educational quality (SIMCE). Here, I analyse the naturalization of gender differences based on results, and conclude that differences found in attainment between boys and girls are small and dependent on socioeconomic status. I then explore how girls' subjective relationships with mathematics are constructed, and how different social influences mediate this process. Using the concept of Mathematical Identities [MIs] as a main tool I explore the influence of social variables on the construction of girls' MIs in Chilean classrooms and I also consider how teaching practices and peer social relations in the classroom mediate these identities. A key finding here is the positive relationship between students' perceptions of their teaching as student-centred and more positive MI, which is in fact the same for girls and boys. A second key finding is that both representational and enacted aspects of girls' MI are mediated by their relationship with peers and peer groups. This mediation process can be described as a negotiation of different forms of belonging to social groups, which involved also the negotiation of different MIs inside the classroom. The main conclusion of this thesis is that in order to understand the role of gender in mediating girls' relationships with mathematics, we need to acknowledge the profoundly situated nature of this relationship in the cultural practices of the classroom, including mathematical practices, but also peer group practices. This argues against discourses that essentialise and naturalize 'gendered relationships with mathematics' which appear to be pre-dominant in the collation of national assessment data (like SIMCE) where categories such as gender, class, ethnicity etc. are viewed as causal or explanatory rather than produced 'in practice'.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Science, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, University of the Witwatersrand. Johannesburg, 22 August 2017. / Attainment in problem solving in mathematics is one of the cognitive levels that is used to guide the assessments in South Africa. Unfortunately, it is one of the levels in which most students do not perform well. This research investigates whether the approach taken in an intervention focused on discussing problem solving shows potential for improving individual learning outcomes? A pre-test and post-test on problem solving questions was administered to two Grade 8 classes from a private school in a Northern suburb of Johannesburg. The intervention 1 class wrote a pre-test and thereafter the class was taught how to deal with mathematical problems and later the class wrote a post-test. The intervention 2 class only wrote the pre-test and the post-test, with the usual kind of teaching. Not only did the intervention 1 class average improve by 10% from 38% on the pre-test to 48% on the post-test but also the class improved in terms of using models to solve problems. On the other hand, the intervention 2 class improved by 14% from 24% to 38%. However, while the intervention 2 class had an improvement in terms of using models to solve problems, the improvement was not substantial. The results also show that mathematical problem solving involving ratios remain a challenge for the grade 8 students in my school and that more work needs to be done to ensure success in mathematical problems involving ratios. Keywords: Problem-solving; intervention 2 class; intervention 1 class, cognitive levels / LG2018

Approximately 30 million graduate students enrolled in programs in Fall 2016 (National Center for Educational Statistics, NCES, 2017). Based on current trends this number is expected to continue to rise due to many reasons (NCES, 2017). Simultaneously, the supply of postsecondary graduates continues to rise to meet the labor demand. Furthermore, employment in the U.S. has drastically shifted from a manufacturing economy to a service and technology economy, both of which call for postsecondary education. Parents influence the future of their children’s lives. Parents’ involvement in their child’s education often reflects their expectations. Although, much of the parent expectation research pertains to parent-child relationships this research may also contextual the parent-adult child/ parent-graduate student relationship. What is less clear is an understanding of why graduate students are up to the challenge of pursuing a postsecondary education (i.e. graduate school). It would be helpful to know if parental influence can also help children to continue their education into graduate studies. Thus, providing the supply of highly educated professionals in the workplace that will meet our economy’s demand. Therefore, the purpose of this practitioner research study (using qualitative methods) was to explore the meaning of the relationship between parent expectations and graduate student educational attainment with graduate students at a research-intensive university in the U.S. Undergirded by the Family Systems Theory (Broderick, 1993) and Self-Efficacy Theory (Bandura, 1997), I conducted a small pilot focus group which fits the nature of my research objective. Participants included (N = 1; 2 African Americans, 1 European American; 100% female; age range 26-29 years old) 2nd year graduate students enrolled in a Marriage and Family Therapy doctoral program at a Southeastern university in the U.S. The data collection site was my university office because the layout worked well for group discussion and required key access. Data collection instruments included informed consent, basic information survey, and a focus group interview guide. An example question from the interview guided included, “How did you come to understand your parent expectations?”. Participants were solicited using purposive sampling via. Data instruments and confidentiality were reviewed before audio-recording. The 30-minute pilot focus group interview was recorded on a protected device. I utilized Microsoft Word and a play-back device for transcription (see Figure 1). Using a phenomenological and thematic approach to code the interview, codes were compared back to my research purpose to ensure a recursive data reduction process. Member checks improved study validity. I found three main themes and two sub-themes (see Figure 2). Themes included: 1) Parent used direct communication, 2) Parent used indirect communication, 3) Parent used blend of communication, s1) Communication can be verbal or non-verbal, and s2) Graduate students interpreted their experience. Overall, findings provide insight into the meaning-making process that graduate students use to understand their parents’ expectations. Implications include far-reaching impact parent expectations have on influencing their children to pursue postsecondary education. Family researchers and educators should remind parents they are vital in shaping the future of their children’s academic future and the families of tomorrow.