Parents’ expectations for the educational attainment of their children: A cross-national study using PIRLS 2011

This study comparatively examines variation among the expectations of parents worldwide for the educational attainment of their children. The data are from the 2011 Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS). A two-level hierarchical linear model (HLM) was used to estimate multilevel and multi-contextual effects on such expectations. The results reveal that parents in the Middle East had the highest expectations for the educational attainment of their children, followed by parents in East Asia and the Pacific region. Parents in European regions expressed the lowest expectations; however, they expressed significantly higher expectations for their daughters’ educational attainment than for their sons’. In European countries, immigrant parents had significantly higher expectations for the educational attainment of their children than did nonimmigrant parents, but the opposite was true in the Middle East, East Asia, and the Pacific. These results suggest that although parents who belong to different nations and different cultures share norms and values regarding educational attainment, regional differences persist as the result of social, cultural, and economic differences.