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In this theoretical article we present our hypothesis on the incompatibility of the inclusive education policy toward students with special educational needs with the meritocratic principle of education. If considering and recognizing the needs of these students is necessary to achieve a successful inclusive environment, we propose that this goal cannot be achieved within current educational systems driven by a meritocratic ideology. We base our rationale on social psychology theories such as system justification and backlash to argue that such incompatibility is particularly visible during the evaluation process. Finally, if we provide some incentives toward greater inclusion while considering the diverse contradictions such inclusivity generates, we also invite researchers to further empirically examine these contradictions in order to guide policy makers within their choices.

Background: We investigated the link between the endorsement of self-enhancement values (e.g., ambition, influence, authority and social power) and school achievement (i.e., grades). Aim: Adopting an intersectional framework, we argued that the link may be qualified by both students' gender and their parents' education level. We hypothesized that depending on students' different experiences in the school system as a function of their gender and their parents' level of educational attainment, the endorsement of self-enhancement values might be either beneficial or detrimental to their academic achievement. Samples: We conducted two studies: a pilot study (N = 191) and a preregistered main study (N = 652). Method: High-school students reported their endorsement of self-enhancement values, their gender and their parents' education level. The school administration provided students' grade average. Results and Conclusions: In the pilot study, we found an interaction effect between the endorsement of self-enhancement values, gender and parental level of education on grades: For male students, the endorsement of self-enhancement values was associated with lower grades when their parents had a lower education level, but there was no such association for male students whose parents had a higher education level. No such effect was found for female students. With an improved methodology, the main study found an interaction effect between the endorsement of self-enhancement values and gender on grades. Independent of parental education level, the endorsement of self-enhancement values had a positive effect on grades among male students. No effect of self-enhancement values on grades was found among female students.

The number of PhD candidates who experience psychological problems has risen significantly over the past few years. Poor mental health can have numerous negative consequences for PhD candidates and their supervisors, as it may adversely affect their quality of life, attrition, and academic productivity. Despite these well-documented challenges, few studies have looked at how the supervisor-supervisee relationship can influence the emotional well-being of male and female doctoral candidates. The current work examined the role of the supervisor's support in emotions and intended doctoral persistence among men (n = 411) and women (n = 514), in all disciplines at two large universities in Belgium. Results indicate that emotional well-being was low for all doctoral candidates but women experienced even more negative emotions (anxiety, stress, discouragement, demoralization, sadness and depression) and fewer positive emotions (confidence, optimism, happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction and content) than men. Interestingly, we also found that perceived structure and autonomy, two dimensions of supervisor support, have a positive effect on emotional well-being and intention of pursuing a PhD trajectory for both men and women. This paper makes a contribution to the higher education and research supervision literature by offering new directions for research and by providing guidelines for the training of research supervisors.

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Research on the backlash effect has long studied the social sanctions that individuals impose on those who do not conform to stereotypical expectations. Specifically, research has focused on reactions to gender stereotype violations. Studies have shown that adults, adolescents, and even children will sanction others when they fail to conform to gender stereotypes. The present pre-registered research (https://tinyurl.com/4epypv3a) studied this gender backlash among adolescents in French middle and high-schools. For this study, we were also interested in exploring the moderating role of participants' socioeconomic status in their expression of backlash. We created four profiles of adolescents presenting their candidacy for a school representative role. The profiles varied in the personality traits and behaviors they contained (stereotypically feminine vs. masculine) and the gender of the target (boy vs. girl). A sample of 840 participants between the ages of 13 and 18 rated the target adolescent on measures intended to capture backlash, as well as gender stereotypicality items. Using multilevel models to analyze our data, we did not find evidence of backlash as hypothesized. However, unexpectedly, on a measure of perception of arrogance, we found that participants judged a counter-stereotypical target more positively than a stereotypical target. Furthermore, we also found evidence that, compared to stereotypical targets, counter-stereotypical targets were judged more competent, mostly by high SES adolescents. Possible methodological and theoretical explanations for these results are discussed, as well as implications for future research on the backlash effect, particularly among adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines the poor fit between the idea of school meritocracy and the successful inclusion of students with special educational needs (SEN). Because students with SEN are assigned negative stereotypes related to suffering, failure, and difficulty regarding their school achievement, we argue that, if they succeed at levels comparable to those of regular students, they may experience backlash, a sanction for challenging the status quo. The results of two studies show that backlash can manifest itself in the form of lower assigned competence to students with special educational needs who succeed. More precisely, across a pilot and a main study, our findings indicate that while performing as well as students without special educational needs, the perceived competence of students with special educational needs was evaluated as lower by participants (pre- and in-service teachers), particularly when these students benefitted from an accommodation perceived as "unfair". Due to its potential role in justifying inequities within educational contexts, the backlash effect is discussed as an ideological barrier to the inclusion of students with special educational needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although approach forms of achievement goals (mastery and performance goals) have been shown to predict academic achievement in college, recent research underscores that these associations are rather weak and not consistently observed. The present study tests students' social class (in the present research, generational status) as a moderator of the relationships between both mastery-approach goals and performance-approach goals and final grade. One hundred students (45 first-generation students and 55 continuing-generation students, M[subscript age] = 18.9, SD = 1.52) answered an achievement goal scale related to one of their classes at the beginning of the year. Their final grade for this class was obtained three months later. As expected, performance-approach goals positively predicted final grade only for upper-class students, while mastery-approach goals tend to do so for lower-class students, supporting the idea that different kinds of motivation could predict students' achievement depending on their social class.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced universities to move towards distance learning, requiring increased use of digital tools and more independent learning from students. In this context, the present study examined two previously documented barriers that contribute to social-class disparities in universities: the digital divide and the experience of cultural mismatch. Cultural mismatch refers to the disconnect between the highly independent cultural norms of universities and the interdependent cultural norms common among working-class students. Our goals are to (1) replicate the findings related to these barriers in a European context (2) provide pandemic-specific data related to these barriers, and (3) examine how the digital divide and cultural mismatch relate to psychological factors and learning behaviors necessary for academic success. Two thousand two hundred and seventy-five students in France answered questions about their digital access/use, self-construal, psychological factors (i.e., sense of belonging, self-efficacy, intentions to drop-out from the university), and learning behaviors (e.g., attending class, asking questions). Results showed that working-class students have less digital access and value interdependence more than their middle/upper-class peers, suggesting they are more likely to experience a cultural mismatch. Structural equation modeling revealed that both the digital divide and the experience of cultural mismatch undermines working-class students' psychological experience (e.g., belonging), which, in turn, hinders their learning behavior. The distance learning required by the pandemic led to increased needs for digital access and independence, and therefore more negatively affected working-class students, which could fuel and widen the social-class achievement gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on glass cliff political candidacies shows that compared to men, women are more likely to run for office in districts where they are likely to lose. We examined if party differences in whether female candidates face these worse conditions in the United States could account for persistent and growing party and state variation in women's representation. Using election data from 2011 to 2016, we compared Republican versus Democratic candidacies at the state legislative level. We found that women in both parties faced glass cliffs in House races, but not in the Senate. For Republican women, glass cliff conditions accounted for worse election outcomes, but Democratic women were more likely to win when these conditions were considered. Variation in party by state measures of glass cliff effects were also found to explain state variation in women's office holding. We found that for Democrats, more women win when more women run, but for Republicans, more women win only when the seats they face are more winnable. These results point to the role of polarized traditional versus progressive political ideologies in structuring the motives which underlie glass cliff conditions for women in politics, suggesting that practical solutions be tailored to party. To overcome the growing gap in women's representation, current efforts to increase the quantity of women running would be complemented by a focus on improving the quality of contests they face, with Republican women most likely to benefit. Further research attending to the multiple sources of variation which impact gendered election outcomes can inform more targeted solutions for advancing equality. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684321992046 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The glass cliff suggests that women are more likely to access leadership positions when organizations are facing a crisis. Although this phenomenon is well established, it is still largely unknown how variations in types of crises influence the strength of the think crisis-think female association, and whether female leaders and leaders with communal gendered traits are both affected by this association. We hypothesized that selection of stereotypically feminine traits (communal leaders) is specific to a relational crisis because of a fit between leader traits and traits required by the situation. We further expected that the selection of women also extends to other crisis situations because other factors such as their signaling change potential may play a role. We investigated the associations that participants made with candidates who varied across gendered traits and gender and between two crisis situations involving problems with either stereotypically feminine (e.g., an internal disharmony) or masculine (e.g., a financial problem) components, and a no crisis situation control. Results from three experimental studies (Ns = 319, 384, 385) supported our hypotheses by showing that communal leaders were most strongly associated with a relational crisis and least with a financial crisis, with the no crisis context situated in-between. This pattern was explained by higher relevance ratings for communal leadership behavior in the relational crisis versus financial crisis context, with the no crisis context situated in-between. In contrast, female leaders were most strongly associated with the relational crisis and least with the no crisis context, with the financial crisis situated in-between. Specific explanatory mechanisms related to the female-crisis association are explored and discussed. Our findings suggest that implicit motivations for valuing feminine/communal leadership and atypical leaders in crisis situations need further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although overall women are better represented in higher education than men, women's psychological experience in various academic contexts is qualified by a decreased sense of belonging and academic self-efficacy, including in fields where they are not targeted by a negative stereotype. To clarify this phenomenon, we develop the hypothesis of a mismatch between female students' values and the values associated with success in the increasingly selective realm of higher education. We argue that, whatever the fields of study, these values are self-enhancement values (competitiveness, self-affirmation, dominance). Three studies showed that when success was depicted in terms of self-enhancement values, women – but not men – expressed a lower sense of belonging, had lower self-efficacy and were less likely to pursue a given academic opportunity both in STEM and non-STEM fields of study. These effects did not appear in an academic context depicting success as being rooted in self-transcendence values (helpfulness, cooperation, benevolence). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low socioeconomic status (SES) students have a lower sense of belonging to college than high-SES students. Due to the importance of sense of belonging in the college pathway, understanding the reason for this relation is particularly important. Here, we argue that in addition to having less access to resources, low-SES students in the college context also perceive themselves as having lower prestige than their high-SES counterparts. Thus, in the present research, we tested perceived prestige as a mediator of the link between subjective SES and sense of belonging to college. We conducted 3 studies in 2 different countries (USA and China), and these investigations provided evidence that the lower students' subjective SES, the lower their self-attributed prestige, and that prestige mediated the relation between students' subjective SES and their sense of belonging to college. The implications of these findings for understanding the collegiate experience of low-SES students are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to gender socialization, girls are more likely to endorse self-transcendence values (e.g., helping people) compared to boys, whereas boys are more likely to endorse self-enhancement values (e.g., wanting to be in charge) compared to girls. In two studies, we investigated teachers’ judgment regarding the display of these values in school and students’ endorsement of the self-transcendence and self-enhancement values in two contexts: home and school. In Study 1 (N = 240), teachers evaluated a student perceived as strongly endorsing the self-transcendence values more positively compared to a student perceived as strongly endorsing the self-enhancement values, regardless of the student’s gender. In Study 2 (N = 151), boys endorsed the self-enhancement values more than the self-transcendence values at home, whereas the opposite occurred in the school context. Girls did not vary across contexts, endorsing the self-transcendence values more than the self-enhancement values in both contexts. Possible consequences on boys’ school-related outcomes are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic decline of the Great Recession has increased the need for a university degree, which can enhance individuals' prospects of obtaining employment in a competitive, globalized market. Research in the social sciences has consistently demonstrated that students with low socioeconomic status (SES) have fewer opportunities to succeed in university contexts compared to students with high SES. The present article reviews the psychological barriers faced by low-SES students in higher education compared to high-SES students. Accordingly, we first review the psychological barriers faced by low-SES students in university contexts (in terms of emotional experiences, identity management, self-perception, and motivation). Second, we highlight the role that university contexts play in producing and reproducing these psychological barriers, as well as the performance gap observed between low- and high-SES students. Finally, we present three examples of psychological interventions that can potentially increase both the academic achievement and the quality of low-SES students' experience and thus may be considered as methods for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present studies aim to compare the cultural values promoted by the French educational system and the Turkish families living in France to their youngsters. Because of their collectivist background Turkish immigrants may convey less individualistic values to their children compared to French parents and teachers. However, Turkish students may become more individualistic as they are socialized in the school system. In study 1 (N = 119), French school teachers, French parents, and Turkish-origin parents had to resolve six dilemmas by choosing either an individualistic or a collectivistic response-option. As expected, French teachers emphasized individualism more than Turkish parents, but not more than French parents. In Study 2 (N = 159), similar dilemmas were presented to French and Turkish-origin pupils. In elementary school, Turkish children were less individualistic than French-born children, but this gap was reduced in high school., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.