Expected Occupation Status, Math Anxiety and Performance: A Cross-National Multilevel Analysis of PISA 2022

Abstract

Adolescents’ future-oriented occupational aspirations play a pivotal role in shaping educational outcomes, and are related to their educational trajectories and socio-economic achievements. Students who envision high-status careers often exhibit stronger intrinsic motivation to master challenging subjects like math. However, math anxiety may impair working memory capacity and result in diminished in math performance. Cultural context plays a significant role in shaping students’ expected occupational status and math achievement, including performance in math. This study utilized a cross-cultural survey dataset covering 199,018 15-year-old adolescents from 53 countries to explore the relationship between the expected occupation status (BSMJ) of adolescents and their math anxiety as well as math performance. And explored the moderating effect of flexibility-monumentalism (FM) at the national level. The results show that: (1) BSMJ significantly predicts math performance. Importantly, these associations are stronger in higher flexibility countries. (2) BSMJ significantly predicts math anxiety and these associations are stronger in higher monumentalism countries. (3) Math anxiety significantly predicts math performance and these associations are also stronger in higher monumentalism countries. The study has implications for global education policy, particularly in designing systems that better support aspiration-actualization pathways for youth across diverse sociocultural contexts.