Parents' perceptions of their child's academic competencies construe their educational reality: Findings from a 9‐year longitudinal study

Academically and vocationally educated parents were asked to assess their child's academic competencies and motivation when the child was in preschool, then every 2 years till the end of the child's comprehensive school. It was found that the initial increasing trend in the parental attributions of competence stabilized and even turned downwards and that the education‐ and gender‐bound differences in the attributions, already manifest at the preschool stage, were still in evidence and had got more varied forms. It is suggested that parental perceptions of competencies are activated in a socially structured field of meanings and that highly educated parents construe their educational reality in terms of the social representation of natural giftedness.