Social Inclusion and the Political Economy of Education: Building Social Capital in Ethnic Diversity

Project Information

INCLUSION

Grant agreement ID: 101018401

DOI

10.3030/101018401

EC signature date 27 September 2021

Start date 1 October 2021

End date 30 September 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 350 000,00

EU contribution

€ 2 350 000,00

Coordinated by

BILKENT UNIVERSITESI VAKIF
Türkiye

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - INCLUSION (Social Inclusion and the Political Economy of Education: Building Social Capital in Ethnic Diversity)

Reporting period: 2024-06-01 to 2025-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The challenges hindering refugee integration policies in Turkey abound. Ethnic tensions and conflicts are on the rise in many primary and post-primary schools, threatening the quality of education for all and making the host communities uneasy about the rapid changes they observe in their neighborhood schools. Refugee children are particularly vulnerable to rising tensions and are at risk of dropping out of school. Given the importance of public education in devising an inclusive and tolerant society, schools can be targeted to instill civic virtues in our children and build our social capital. The project INCLUSION aims to offer evidence-based educational actions to build social cohesion in regions where ethnic conflict, segregation, and polarization are becoming pressing policy challenges.
The project has two studies, the Mitigation Study and the Prevention Study. Both studies involve implementing specifically designed educational programs via randomized controlled trials to improve the social and cognitive outcomes of both host and refugee students with the aim of building social cohesion. Both studies are implemented in Southeast Turkey, where a significant number of Syrian refugees live.

Mitigation Study: The Mitigation Study tests an innovative behavioral approach to empower adolescents with the aim of establishing a cohesive and peaceful school environment for all, including refugees and other marginalized groups. The study indirectly targets senior students in middle schools (grades 7 and 8).

Prevention Study: The Prevention Study aims to develop primary school children's foundational cognitive and socio-cognitive skills. As in the Mitigation Study, the main focus is socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhood schools with large numbers of refugee children in Southeast Turkey. The study targets elementary schools (grades 1 to 4) via teacher training.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Mitigation Study: We launched the Mitigation Study in the 2021-2022 academic year, covering over 20,000 students from 65 middle schools in Diyarbakir, Turkey. We conducted our first baseline in October 2021 by visiting each school in person and collecting data from students via tablets. This intensive data collection required spending an entire school day in a school by 3 to 4 field team members, assisted by 6 to 8 locally recruited field assistants. After baseline and selecting “student-teachers” based on their network connections and emotional intelligence scores, we randomly assigned 32 schools to treatment and 33 to control. Among the 33 control schools, we randomly assigned 16 to placebo control and 17 to pure control. After training student teachers in November 2021, we closely monitored the implementation of the intervention via our recruited interns (well-being teacher candidates) throughout the 2021-2022 academic year.

We conducted our first endline in April-May 2022, again visiting all participating schools in person. In October 2022 (the beginning of the 2022-2023 academic year), we visited all schools again, collected baseline data from newly arrived 5th graders, and conducted a new network elicitation for the entire 7th-grade population. The latter was in 6th grade in the previous academic year. We chose new student-teachers among these 7th graders using the same 3-input algorithm and assigned them to the new 5th graders. The idea of this design is that when scaled up, it would rotate every year so that a once-junior student can have a chance to become a student-teacher when she is in the 7th grade. We conducted the second endline in April-May 2023 and completed the trial for the Mitigation Study.

Prevention Study: We launched the Prevention Study in May 2023, covering over 15,000 students from 160 primary schools in Sirnak, Gaziantep, and Adana, Turkey. We collected our baseline data in May 2023 in Gaziantep and Adana and in September 2023 in Sirnak. The program rollout (teacher training activities) took place from September to October 2023. We are currently in the middle of endline data collection and plan to complete our first endline in May 2024. There will be another program rollout (teacher training) in September 2024, as the program we test is a two-year program.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Mitigation Study: In this study, we test the effectiveness of a behavioral approach to making schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods a better social environment for adolescents. For this, we indirectly target intellectually bright, socially influential, yet challenging adolescents by entrusting them with the task of transforming their schools and immediate surroundings. The approach was shaped through in-depth qualitative work involving repeated interactions with senior middle school students in Turkey. Our qualitative inquiry resulted in insights that show that interventions targeting adolescents tend to fail when they do not align with adolescents’ desire to feel respected and be granted social status. Drawing from these insights, we developed an empowerment program.
The program required first selecting a number of emotionally intelligent and socially influential senior students using baseline data. Labeling them as ``student-teachers,'' we gave them the responsibility of delivering a specifically designed empowerment curriculum to their junior peers. The curriculum, coined ``Our Future-Our Dream,” is structured around nine topics to be delivered within an academic year in 15 to 20 weekly sessions. Topics include envisioning the ideal school and ideal human relationships, embracing differences, tolerance, and perils of violence. In each session, student-teachers gave a presentation and administered in-class activities/games. We expected that targeting disadvantaged adolescents by tapping into their desire for autonomy and leveraging the power of self-persuasion would enhance their socio-emotional well-being and create a tolerant and peaceful school environment. We find that the program is highly effective in improving school climate and targeted individual outcomes. Treated students are 70.7% less likely to be involved in disciplinary issues. Consistent with this finding, perceived behavioral norms significantly improved in treated schools. Finally, we find that the program significantly reduced ethnic bias and intolerance toward refugee students. These positive results are now discussed in a working paper (CEPR DP: 18735), available online (https://cepr.org/publications/dp18735). See also Vox Column: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/empowering-adolescents-transform-schools-lessons-behavioural-targeting.

Prevention Study: This study, which involves 160 primary schools, is currently in progress. We anticipate our interim results to be available in Summer 2024, marking a significant milestone for the study.