Young people are growing up in an increasingly unpredictable world, while simultaneously reporting greater concerns about various aspects of their personal and societal future. Concerns about the future are associated with lower well-being and can hinder the completion of already challenging developmental tasks of adolescence, which include shaping of their academic and professional identities and expectations. We were thus interested in the relationship between concerns about the future of society, optimism about personal future, and educational expectations. We used national data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS 2022), covering a representative sample of responses from 4,958 eighth-grade students in Slovenia. The results show that greater concern about European future is associated with lower optimism about one‘s own future, while greater concern about global threats is associated with slightly higher optimism. The results of the ordinal logistic regression revealed that higher concern about future negative social outcomes at European and global levels predicts lower expectations about students‘ educational outcomes when controlling for family socio-economic status and civic knowledge, which contribute positively to educational expectations. The effect of negative future social outlooks on students‘ expected educational outcomes is partly mediated through optimism about one‘s future, with more optimistic students reporting higher educational expectations. The findings suggest a protective role of a supportive family environment and optimism in coping with social uncertainty. In addition, public education can play an important role in supporting students from lower socio-economic backgrounds by improving students‘ civic knowledge and self-efficacy, empowering them to develop high learning expectations and to participate effectively in the society.
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