Achievement is an important issue during adolescence because society typically designates adolescence as a time of preparation for adult work roles, because individuals now can understand the long-term implications of their educational and career decisions, and because during adolescence, schools begin making distinctions among individuals that potentially have profound effects on their long-term occupational development.
Because educational and occupational achievement are cumulative, during adolescence the "rich" tend to get richer, while the "poor" tend to get poorer.
ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVES AND BELIEFS
The Motive to Achieve: Early theories of the development of achievement stressed individual differences in achievement motivation - some individuals were believed to have a stronger "need for achievement" than others.
An adolescent's need for achievement and his or her fear of failure work together simultaneously to pull the individual toward, and repel the individual from, achievement situations. For example, many students who have trouble persisting at tasks and who fear failure become underachievers - students' whose grades are far lower than one would expect based on their intellectual ability.
The Importance of Beliefs: Contemporary theories, however, stress the interaction of motives, beliefs, achievementattributions, and goals as influencing adolescents' achievement orientation. Adolescents who believe that ability is malleable, who are motivated by intrinsic (rather than extrinsic) rewards, who are confident about their abilities, (e.g., who have a strong sense of self-efficacy), and who attribute their successes and failures to effort (rather than to ability or luck) achieve more in school than their peers.
Students who are led to believe that their efforts do not make a difference develop the belief that failure is inevitable, also known as learned helplessness.
ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES ON ACHIEVEMENT
Some writers have examined differences in adolescents' opportunities for success and the roles of significant adults and peers in influencing achievement goals and behaviors. Rather than attributing differences in achievement to psychological factors, these writers note that access to educational and occupational opportunities varies across socioeconomic and racial groups, and that actual achievement is influenced by a number of environmental and situational factors as well as by psychological ones.
The Influence of the Home Environment: A good deal of research indicates that adolescents perform better and are more engaged in school when they come from authoritative homes in which their parents are highly involved in their education or families that are high in social capital. A number of researchers have also shown the extent to which the adolescent's parents provide the youngster with cultural capital - by exposing the adolescent to art, music, literature, and so forth - exerts a positive impact on achievement.
The Influence of Friends: In addition, adolescents whose friends support academic achievement perform better in school than do peers whose friends disparage academic achievements.
Educational Achievement: Educational achievement is usually defined in one of three ways: school performance, academic achievement, or educational attainment. Educational and occupational achievement are highly interconnected. Doing well in school generally leads to higher levels of educational attainment, which, in turn, leads to more prestigious and better-paying employment. In general, there are strong socioeconomic and ethnic differences in educational and occupational attainment.
The Importance of Socioeconomic Status: Socioeconomic status is an extremely important influence on educational achievement. Generally, adolescents from high social classes perform better in school and complete more years of schooling than do their less advantaged counterparts. One reason for this difference is that the home environment of more affluent adolescents is more supportive of school success: Middle-class adolescents are better nourished, more consistently encouraged, and less exposed to stress than are their less affluent peers.
Ethnic Differences in Educational Achievement: Recent studies indicate that there are ethnic differences in educational achievement above and beyond those attributable to socioeconomic status. In general, Asian-American adolescents outperform Anglo-American students, who in turn do better in school than African-American or Hispanic-American students. One reason for the superior performance of Asian-students is that they are more likely to hold beliefs about achievement that are predictive of success in school. In contrast, parents and teachers in African-American and Hispanic-American communities are more likely to communicate the message that, although education is important, there is little that minority individuals can do to succeed within a discriminatory society. These different messages may lead students from different backgrounds to devote different degrees of effort to their studies.
Changes in Educational Achievement over Time: The low level of educational achievement among American youth has been a national concern for some time now. Although some gains in scores on standardized tests of achievement were reported during the mid-1980s, test scores have not improved since that time, and the ground that was lost in the late 1960s and early 1970s has not been recovered. Among the reasons given for this pattern are that teachers are not spending enough time on basic instruction, that students are not taking advanced courses when they are offered, that parents are not encouraging academic pursuits at home, that adolescents are not spending sufficient time on their studies outside of school, and they know that can earn good grades without working very hard.
Dropping Out of High School: Dropping out of high school is associated with an array of individual and social costs. Adolescents who drop out of high school are more likely than their peers to come from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds and to have had a history of poor school performance, low school involvement, and poor performance on standardized tests of achievement and intelligence. In addition, there are wide ethnic and regional differences in dropout rates and dropping out of school is an especially serious problem among Hispanic youth. Studies also suggest that the schools from which students drop out are larger, more disorderly, and less focused on academics than other schools. About 25 percent of adolescents leave high school before graduating, although a fair number return to school in young adulthood to earn their diploma. Dropping out is not so much a decision that is made during adolescence as it is the culmination of a long process that begins early on.
OCCUPATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT
The Development of Occupational Plans: As suggested by Donald Super, occupational plans do not begin to crystallize until middle adolescence. Following this period is the need to specify the adolescent's vocational interest. Even so, the process of choosing a career is a long one for most individuals, one that may last well through the final years of college. Occupational plans are influenced by a complex array of personality (as suggested by Holland's Self-Directed Search), individual, and environmental factors.
Influences on Occupational Choices: Theorists interested in patterns of occupational choice have examined personality factors, the influences of parents and peers, and the impact of the broader social and economic context. As is the case with educational achievement, occupational attainment is strongly influenced by socioeconomic status.
