Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the effect of parental expectations on students’ academic achievement mediated by the students’ academic self-concept. This study was guided by the pragmatist paradigm thus used mixed methods explanatory design having quantitative phase followed by the qualitative part. The sample for the quantitative phase was comprised of 400 male and female secondary school students randomly selected the public and private schools. Sample for the qualitative phase was comprised of 80 parents purposively selected for the study. The researchers adopted the academic self-concept scale for the collection of quantitative data. The researchers developed the second questionnaire to measure students’ perceptions regarding parental academic expectations which consisted of 12 items. The students’ summative evaluation scores were used to measure their academic achievement. Qualitative data regarding parental expectations were collected from parents through a semi-structured interview. The descriptive statistics and Hierarchical regression were used for quantitative data analysis. Whereas, qualitative data were analyzed by thematic analysis. Quantitative analysis revealed that parental expectations and students’ academic self-concept statistically predicted students’ academic achievement Further, the secondary qualitative data validated the primary quantitative findings well that parents have high expectations regarding their children’s academic achievement. Parents are expected to extend high expectations about the academic achievements of their children