The role of beliefs and social–emotional skills in shaping educational expectations among Romanian adolescents

Abstract The study used descriptive and multivariate statistics analytical methods to explore relationships between the highest level of education expected by 15‐year‐old Romanian students and factors associated with student background (personal and academic), school characteristics and selected beliefs and social–emotional skills. The study employs PISA 2022 public use microdata and is guided by Bourdieu's theory of capital and habitus, building on Reay's extension of Bourdieu's concept of habitus to include affective and emotional dispositions. The recent interest in students’ social and emotional skills offers an opportunity to enrich the model adopted for educational expectations. Furthermore, the novelty of the educational expectations model is that it operationalises habitus through the social and emotional skills synthesised in the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development Big Five Model. An empirical contribution of the study is to draw attention to the relatively large percentage of students (16%) who avoided answering the question on educational expectations, which may be associated with a sense of uncertainty concerning future educational and career paths. In addition to the expected effect of school achievement and family capital on educational expectations, the study findings reveal that high educational expectations are associated with the growth mindset belief, and curiosity, perseverance and assertiveness social–emotional skills. The negative association between stress resistance and high educational expectations raises concerns about the pressure and mental health issues experienced by higher achievers.