1. Introduction -- 2. Positive Self-Concept Images within a Mutually Reinforcing Framework of Images -- 3. Anticipatory Career Images -- 4. Images of Better, More Financially Secure Life -- 5. The Image of Education and College as the Pathway to a Better Life -- 6. Bringing Anticipatory Images to Reality -- 7. The Anticipatory Competent Student.

This book features ten high academically achieving, low-income, inner city students from Newark, New Jersey, who graduated from public high schools at or near the top of their class and continued to excel in college. Using a qualitative research design, the author interviewed the ten students and the person who most influenced their educational progress about what motivated them to achieve at such high levels. Three mutually reinforcing anticipatory images emerged as a common element of their stories. In their own voices, the students describe the anticipatory images they framed, how they developed them, and how they used them to their advantage. Davy advances a theoretical model of the Anticipatory Competent student who continually progresses in the directions of the images projected ahead.