IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v17y2025i22p10121-d1793173.html

Aligning Parental and Student Educational Expectations: Implications for Sustainable Development of Education and Social and Emotional Skills

Author

Listed:
  • Zihan Wang

    (School of Education Science, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Haoran Cui

    (School of Education Science, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Kejun Zhang

    (School of Education Science, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China)

  • Yihe Ji

    (School of Education Science, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China)

  • Zhen Gao

    (School of Education and Human Development, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China)

  • Jingcheng Tian

    (Department of Management, Weifang Vocational College of Food Science and Technology, Weifang 262000, China)

  • Cixian Lv

    (School of Education Science, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China)

Abstract

Parent–child discrepancies on educational expectations have a significant impact on the holistic development of children, which is crucial for building sustainable educational ecosystems. Based on 7080 samples from the 2019 OECD Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES) conducted in a Chinese city, this study uses the ordinary least squares model and propensity score matching to estimate the causal effect of parent–child discrepancies on educational expectations on children’s social and emotional skills—core competencies for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)—and further employs the bootstrap method to test its mechanism. The results show that parent–child discrepancies on educational expectations have a significant negative impact on children’s social and emotional skills, with stronger effects observed among boys and 15-year-olds. The parent–child relationship and test anxiety play a chain mediating role in this relationship. The results suggest that to advance the goals of sustainable education, parents should set reasonable educational expectations and pay attention to nurturing their children’s social and emotional skills to foster holistic development within supportive family microsystems.

Suggested Citation

  • Zihan Wang & Haoran Cui & Kejun Zhang & Yihe Ji & Zhen Gao & Jingcheng Tian & Cixian Lv, 2025. "Aligning Parental and Student Educational Expectations: Implications for Sustainable Development of Education and Social and Emotional Skills," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(22), pages 1-21, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:22:p:10121-:d:1793173
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/22/10121/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/22/10121/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:22:p:10121-:d:1793173. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MDPI Indexing Manager to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.