Ksenia Tenisheva Has Defended PhD Thesis

This Friday in Moscow, Ksenia defended her Ph.D. thesis “The influence of the social environment on the academic success and vocational plans of students (based on schools in St. Petersburg and the Moscow region)”

Read the full text of the PhD thesis and reviews on the HSE web site.
This thesis presents the results of a comprehensive study of the effect of the social environment on the academic success and vocational plans of the 9th grade students from schools in St. Petersburg and the Moscow region. It has been shown that the social origin of the students still remains the key factor in the formation of success and vocational plans of students, but the social environment can either strengthen this effect, or it can change it. The thesis describes how the academic success and vocational plans of students get affected by the status of their families, by the achievements and aspirations of the student’s friends (for example, by their extracurricular activities), as well as by student’s motivation and self-confidence. The distinction between the model of the migrant status and the model of an ethnic minority made it possible to discover the effect of “optimism of immigrants”, while the ethnic status hasn’t shown any effect on the academic performance. She found that there is a clear difference in the paths of influence of the family status and the social environment on the vocational plans of students. She also has shown that the desire of the students to be like their friends can lead, among other things, to their plans of getting a lower level of education than that of their parents.