Search Results (3)

The changes in adolescents’ visions for the future are important to adolescents’ developmental trajectories, motivation, and educational outcomes, yet understudied. This study examined the change in possible selves and its association with grit during school closure and life interruption during COVID-19. We conducted a school-based longitudinal survey among 1577 students (Mage = 13.05, SD = 0.86) from 12 secondary schools at the start and end of an academic year prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic with a 9-month interval. Demographic, grit, socioeconomic status (SES), self-control, and possible selves were measured. Paired t-tests indicated a significant decrease in academic possible selves and strategies. Hierarchical regression analysis results show that participants with higher grit scores reported higher academic and life possible selves; in particular, the effect of grit–perseverance was stronger than grit–passion after controlling self-control. SES moderated the effect of grit–passion on academic possible selves. The current longitudinal study provides important implications for education and youth social work practice for young people growing up with the influence of the pandemic. Full article

Academic possible selves (PSs) are defined as future self-representations about education and academic outcomes, recognized for their motivational power, especially in challenging situations. This study aimed to (i) explore the salience of academic PSs among senior high school students, considering sociodemographic factors; (ii) investigate the relationships among perceived contextual factors, PS constructs, difficulty mindsets, and academic outcomes; and (iii) examine differences between general and vocational school students across these variables and their relationships. A sample of 598 10th graders (i) reported their two most important hoped-for and feared PSs as well as their strategies to achieve/avoid them and (ii) completed scales measuring demographics, perceptions about parents’ and teachers’ beliefs, perceived efficacy for attaining PSs, perception of school as a path, difficulty mindsets about academic tasks, academic self-regulation, and achievement. The results indicated that academic PSs were salient among adolescents’ hoped-for PSs, with general school students reporting academic PSs more frequently and showing more positive motivational beliefs. Path analysis indicated the role of the study variables in academic self-regulation and achievement, with school type moderating these effects. The findings emphasize the importance of supporting students’ academic PSs and tailoring context-based interventions to foster academic outcomes in diverse school settings. Full article

In today’s postdigital society, the public presence of academics on the Web and the consequent affirmation of a given identity or of a multidimensional identity imply a much more complex and multifaceted management of their image than when we were dealing with a scholar whose identity was affirmed in circumscribed spaces and times. In this work, we seek to analyze the positioning of the subjects about their online identities and the ways in which they express the multiple facets of the construction of their online selves. We adopted a Thematic Analysis approach to qualitative research and used NVivo to analyze the data collected through semi-structured interviews of 13 subjects from a purposive sample of digital scholars. Three major themes were identified: Theme A—Digital-Presence Awareness; Theme B—The Public and the Private Spheres; and Theme C—Offline, Online, and Hybrid Selves. Overall, subjects clearly express the awareness of the need to build a presence on the Web. While there is a general concern to preserve a certain level of authenticity, intimacy, and privacy on the Web, there seems to be some heterogeneity in the experiencing of these processes. For some participants, the distinction between public and private and between personal and professional should be clearly marked, while for others, the necessarily hybrid nature of identity should be assumed, arguing that it is no longer possible to make a clear separation between the offline and the online world. This work, thus, shows different shades in the way academics construct their presence on the Web and how differently they assume several of the constitutive dimensions of their identities. Full article