Understanding and fighting inequity in education: breaking the cycle between socioeconomic disadvantage, low confidence, and resignation.

Introduction

Equity in education is a central and long-standing concern of countries around the world. Despite significant amounts of public resources invested over several decades towards disadvantaged children, the relationship between education outcomes and personal circumstances remains persistently strong in most countries.

Project Objectives

The objectives of my project EMANCIPATE are to make progress in our understanding of why there is such persistent social inequity in education. I will explore a new channel: perceptions and beliefs resulting from social stereotypes and leading to low confidence, lack of hope, and discouragement.

Importance of Self-Perceptions

I argue that how students perceive their capacity and the likelihood that they will succeed is an important driver of their motivation and effort, which might be just as important for academic performance as external factors such as class size or teacher salaries. Self-perceptions and anticipations may thus be one way social disadvantage perpetuates itself.

Key Questions

The key questions that I will address are:

1. Whether socioeconomic status creates low confidence, lack of hope, and resignation.
2. Whether this affects downstream educational attainment, labour market outcomes, and individual welfare.
3. How this negative feedback loop can be broken.

Research Steps

EMANCIPATE will advance this research in three steps:

1. I will use international assessment tools on nationally representative samples of adolescents to test the accuracy of their self-perceptions and anticipations, and the existence and scope of the resignation mindset.
2. I will use two interventions aimed at reducing the resignation mindset to examine its long-term impacts on educational attainment, labour market outcomes, and individual welfare.
3. I will develop and test two interventions targeting the main actors of the education system: the teachers and the parents, to foster students’ self-confidence, hope, and motivation, and ultimately reduce the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged students.