Education and Occupational Aspirations of Low-Income Children and Mothers: Examining Their Operationalization of Hope through Homework Practice

This paper enriches the understanding of low-income mothers’ and children’s education aspirations by considering them as agentic beings in relation to homework practice. It examines the priorities they accord to homework and the parent-child dynamics that influence homework practice. 17child-mother dyads from intact families and 17 child-mother dyads from single-mother families in Singapore were sampled through semi-structured interviews and vignettes discussions. The findings show that low-income children and their mothers harbour aspirations and consider everyday homework a critical gauge of children’s potential as it is a more visible and immediate indicator for fulfilling school requirements. However, their hope remains vague and remote due to children’s poor knowledge of education and occupation pathways, and children’s reliance on the mother as an academic guide. Low-income children’s and mothers’ agency can hence be strengthened and their hope operationalized through redesigning educational resources, more coaching on diverse pathways, and strengthening partnership between schools and families.