Direct and indirect influences of familial socioeconomic status on students’ science achievement

ABSTRACT

The present study challenges the assumption that equipping students with positive learning attitudes and beliefs can compensate for socioeconomic status (SES) effects on students’ academic achievement. It unravels the association between SES and students’ achievement by examining direct and indirect SES influences (via students’ science attitudes and beliefs such as science epistemological beliefs, interest, and self-efficacy) on students’ science achievement using an analysis of secondary data involving 5,355 15-year-old students (from 138 schools) and their parents from Hong Kong who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015. Two-level structural equation modelling (SEM) results showed that (a) the total standardised SES effect (direct and indirect) on students’ science achievement was 42.46% more when compared to the case where only direct SES effects were accounted for; and (b) the total standardised effect of science classroom variables was much smaller than that associated with SES. These results suggest that the strength of the association between SES and students’ achievement is understated if we focus only on direct effects. Relatedly, students’ attitudes and beliefs are not insulated from familial SES influences, so they are not as efficacious in circumventing social structures as they are sometimes portrayed in the literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Science achievement
• science capital
• SES
• socioeconomic status

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Although multiple imputation is commonly used to address the problem of missing values in studies of international large-scale assessment, we acknowledge that researchers differ with regards to the appropriateness of using multiple imputation and effectiveness of different approaches in multiple imputation (Kaplan & Su, 2018).

2. The SEM results are depicted in two (instead of one) figures to maximise clarity of representation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cheng Yong Tan

Cheng Yong Tan is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. His research program unravels home and school factors that influence student achievement and comprises socioeconomic inequality in student achievement and school leadership. It is premised on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory that argues for the need to understand human development in multiple contexts such as the home and school.