Differing characteristics of the educational systems in England and the U.S. lead to the hypothesis that educational expectations should become earlier in adolescence in England than in the U.S. Several definitions of realistic are used in the analysis of data obtained from thirteen-year-old boys in both countries. The hypothesis is generally supported, but the English boys are found to overestimate the significance of ability in the process of educational attainment. This overestimate is also found for older English boys, while older American boys report the most realistic expectations of any of the samples studied. These findings are interpreted as indicating different effects of the institutional characteristics of the two educational systems.
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Alan C. Kerckhoff (1977) studied this question.