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

Project Information

EMANCIPATE

Grant agreement ID: 101040822

DOI

10.3030/101040822

EC signature date 11 February 2022

Start date 1 March 2022

End date 29 February 2028

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 455 750,00

EU contribution

€ 1 455 750,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITE PARIS DAUPHINE
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EMANCIPATE (Understanding and fighting inequity in education: breaking the cycle between socioeconomic disadvantage, low confidence, and resignation.)

Reporting period: 2022-03-01 to 2024-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Equity in education is a central and long-standing concern of countries around the world. Despite significant amounts of public resources invested, the relationship between education outcomes and personal circumstances remains persistently strong. The objectives of my project EMANCIPATE is to make progress in our understanding of why there is such persistent social inequity in education. I will explore a new channel: beliefs resulting from social stereotypes leading to low confidence, lack of hope, and discouragement. 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 as external factors such as class size or teacher salaries. Self-perceptions and anticipations may thus be one way social disadvantage perpetuates itself.

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

Since the beginning of the project, I have performed activities on four sub-projects.

The first sub-project is called INSPIRE. I started the activities on this sub-project in 2022 in collaboration with psychologist Coralie Chevallier (ENS) and economists Youssed Souidi and Laïla Souali (Université Paris Dauphine), as well as the ARTICLE 1 team who implement the program INSPIRE. We succeeded at recruiting 58 high schools all over France. In each high school, 3 classes participate in the study in 2023-2024, 3 other classes in 2024-2025, and 3 other classes in 2025-2026. In total, 540 classes of 25 students each participate in the study, hence 13,500 students (initial proposal: 100 high schools, 600 classes, 15,000 students). The following steps have been accomplished:
- Recruitment of 58 voluntary high schools (March 2023-September 2023)
- Randomization of cohorts into treatment and control groups (September 2023)
- Implementation of the intervention since October 2023 (to be continued in the next two school years 2024-2025 and 2025-2026)
- Follow-up survey in May-June 2024 (field assistants have been recruited, IRB application submitted, field work will start in mid-May)

The second sub-project is called 123CP. I started the activities on this sub-project in 2021 in collaboration with economist Nina Guyon (ENS), sociologist Carlo Barone (Sciences Po), and psychologists Grégoire Borst and Mélanie Pinheiro Maximino (Université Paris Cité). The project aims at helping parents to develop high levels of self-confidence, self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, and learning autonomy in their children. We have developed the 123CP program which consists of 16 short videos with scientific content and practical tools. The sample includes 55 schools, 177 classes, and 1195 children (initial proposal: 60 schools, 120 classes, 1200 children). The following steps have been accomplished:
- Design and development of the 123CP program (September 2021 – December 2022)
- Recruitment of participating schools and teachers (June 2022 – September 2022)
- Baseline survey for parents, children and teachers (September 2022 – October 2022)
- Randomization of classes into treatment and control (November 2022)
- Implementation of the treatment in the treated classes in December 2022 – April 2023
- Follow-up survey in May-June 2023
- Endline survey in May-June 2024 (field assistants recruited, IRB certificate obtained, field work will start soon)
So far, the main research ouput was the development of the 123CP program consisting in 16 short videos to foster parental attitudes and activities that develop children’ motivation, growth mindset, feeling of competence, sense of belonging, self-control, executive functions, and metacognition.

The third sub-project is called MOTIVACTION. I started the activities in this sub-project in 2021 in collaboration with economist Yann Algan (HEC) and psychologists Coralie Chevallier (ENS), Céline Buchs (Geneva University), Céline Darnon (Université Clermont Auvergne), Pascal Haag (Université Nanterre), and Marlène Martin (Université de Rouen). It aims at fostering teachers’ adoption of pedagogical practices to develop high levels of self-confidence, self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, and self-esteem in young students. The following steps have been accomplished:
- Design and development of the teacher training (January 2021 – August 2021)
- Recruitment of 435 voluntary teachers in the districts of Paris and Versailles (January 2021 – March 2022)
- Randomization of teachers into treatment and control groups from March 2021 to April 2022
- Implementation of the intervention (September 2021 – December 2022)
- Follow-up survey in May-June 2022 for the first wave of teachers (included in 2021)
- Follow-up survey in May-June 2023 for the second wave of teachers (included in 2022)

The fourth sub-project is called ENERGIE JEUNES. It aims at measuring the long-term impact of a program that changed the mindset of adolescent students on their educational attainment and labour outcomes. The experiment was implemented in 97 disadvantaged middle schools. Our sample consists of nearly a thousand classes and 23,000 students, which confers a high degree of external validity to this experiment. The scientific paper has just been accepted at The Economic Journal (conditional acceptance with minor modifications). We find that the program has made students more optimistic about the possibility of improving their intelligence and academic abilities through effort and has led them to attribute more weight to effort relative to innate talent or external constraints. This change in perceptions resulted in better behaviour at school as observed by teachers and school staff. Finally, academic performance (GPA) increased by 0.05 standard deviation, and ninth graders in the treatment group are more likely to aspire to academic high school (rather than technical high school) and to more skilled job. Next, I will start working on the tracking the students in high school and higher education up to their final educational attainment and entry in the labour market.

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)

The scientific publication “The role of mindset in education: evidence from a large-scale field experiment in disadvantaged schools” in The Economic Journal advances the research field of economics of education beyond the state-of-the-art. The paper examines whether repeated exposure to small and low-cost mindset interventions has any chance of generating an economically significant change in student performance.

After the scientific evaluation of the impact of the 123CP program on parental attitudes and practices and on children’ behaviour and academic achievement, the program may be made publicly available to all primary schools in France to foster academic learning of all students and reduce social inequalities in education.

After the scientific evaluation of the impact of the MOTIVACTION program on teacher attitudes and practices and on children’ behaviour and academic achievement, the program may be made publicly available to all primary schools in France to foster academic learning of all students and reduce social inequalities in education.

After the scientific evaluation of the impact of the INSPIRE program on the mindset of disadvantaged students (knowledge about higher education and occupations, aspirations, ambition, self-confidence and self-efficacy) and their actual choices in higher education, the program may be included in the regular curriculum in high school to make students' choices in higher education both more efficient and more equitable.