In the course of their child?s school years, a group of parents were asked to assess their child?s mathematical competence and indicate whether they endorsed the gender stereotype pertaining to it. Once the child had entered upper primary school, the consistent stereotypic parents tended to rate their boys? mathematical competence higher than the parents of girls did. Additionally, the parents whose attitude turned into an anti?stereotypical one perceived their girls? mathematical competencies as higher than those of the boys, which was (...) related to their perception that the boys? competencies were getting worse while the girls? competencies were getting better. (shrink)

Though not categorically opposed to the idea, Finnish parents tended to resist rather than endorse the view of parents as tax payers who can make demands for the efficacy of schooling and expected teacher performance. However, parents with vocational training tended to resist this view less than parents from higher educational groups. Additionally, dissatisfaction with a child?s primary schooling and support for a selective educational policy were both associated with a tendency to view this role in a relatively positive light.

This study sets out to examine Finnish and Russian children?s representations of intellectual competence as contextualised in the hierarchies of abilities, age and gender. Finnish and Russian pupils, aged 11?12?years, were asked to draw pictures of an intelligent person and an ordinary person. It was found that gender appearance of intelligent men and women was less heterosexual than that of ordinary men and women. In Russian pictures, the intelligent characters, especially women, were widely separated from the ordinary ones in terms (...) of cognitive-mental features. In Finnish depictions, the differentiation between the intelligent and ordinary characters, especially women, was not so categorical and was primarily based on status. It appears that Russian children are apt to relate their representations of intellectual ability to the institutionalised systems of cognitive competence, education and science, whereas Finnish children associate intelligence to social success as well. Further, cultural and gender-related hierarchies of age seemed to reflect in the children?s images. (shrink)

This longitudinal study set out to examine, in the light of the parents’ education and gender and the child’s gender, the changes that occurred in the course of five years in parents’ satisfaction with the functioning of their child’s school. Academically and vocationally educated mothers and fathers were asked to indicate their satisfaction with different aspects of their child’s school at the end of the first, third and fifth school year. It was found that the level of parental satisfaction was (...) fairly high at the start, and despite a decreasing trend, it remained high; parental satisfaction was widely shared, and the number of dissatisfied parents remained small and stable. The academic parents displayed more satisfaction with their child’s school success and the fairness of the treatment than the vocational parents did. The results are discussed in terms of educational policy. (shrink)

This paper examines the contribution of parents? education and children?s gender on parental expectations of their children?s future education and the role of parental perceptions of their child?s competencies in the formation of their expectations. A group of university and vocationally educated parents (N = 418) were asked to estimate the probability of their child entering gymnasium (high school) or vocational education and assess the child?s competencies, first in preschool, and then at the end of the third school year. It (...) was found that the education and gender?bound differences in the parental expectations were established before the child entered school, and by the end of the third school year the relationships between expectations and competence assessments strengthened and were more uniform among the parents. The findings suggested that the parental assessments of their child?s abilities can be regarded as a potentially important social?psychological process through which social differences are transformed into the individualized interpretations of the child?s educational prospects. (shrink)