Grading student behavior Schoner, Florian; Mergele, Lukas; Zierow, Larissa
Labour economics,
October 2024, 2024-10-00, Volume:
90
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Numerous countries mandate comportment grades rating students’ social and work behavior in the classroom from teachers, yet their impact on student outcomes remains unclear. We exploit the staggered ...introduction of comportment grading across German federal states to estimate its causal effect on students’ school-to-work transitions, non-cognitive skills, and reading skills. Analyzing two different household surveys and student assessment data, point estimates of causal effects are close to zero for all outcomes. However, while confidence intervals for school-to-work transitions and non-cognitive skills allow us to reject meaningful effect sizes, those for reading skills are wider and need to be interpreted more cautiously. We use additional data sources to investigate potential explanations.
•We estimate the causal effect of comportment grades in school on student outcomes.•Variation across German states gives rise to a difference-in-differences approach.•Comportment grading does not affect students’ skills or school-to-work transition.•Potential explanations for the lack of an effect are discussed.
There has been a tendency to construct the teaching profession through a narrative of ‘crisis’ which places particular emphasis on high rates of attrition and poor wellbeing driven by a demanding ...work culture. Drawing on qualitative data from a mixed-methods study, this paper examines teachers' responses to reforms to English secondary education. It presents evidence that supports a ‘profession in crisis’ narrative with many of the research participants expressing negative attitudes towards the reforms and concerns about staying in teaching. However, the paper also illuminates a counter-narrative that highlights teachers' job satisfaction and their desire to remain in the profession.
•Dominant discourses of a ‘profession in crisis’ in England.•Majority of participants provide evidence of crisis.•A counter-narrative comprise teachers who have positive views of the profession.•Danger that education research reproduces and reinforces the ‘crisis’ narrative.
•This paper examines the impacts of mother's schooling on adolescent development.•We exploit variations in the enforcement of China's compulsory schooling laws.•Mother's education increases ...adolescents’ school enrollment and math test scores.•Mother's education improves adolescent mental health and reduces underweight rates.•Family resources, maternal mental health, and parenting are potential mechanisms.
This paper investigates the causal impact of mother's schooling on various outcomes of adolescent development by exploiting the temporal and geographical variations in the enforcement of compulsory schooling laws in China. Using data from China Family Panel Studies, we find that mother's education increases adolescents’ school enrollment, math test scores, college aspiration, and internal locus of control related to education. Mother's education also improves adolescent mental health status and reduces the incidence of underweight. We also find considerable gender heterogeneity in the effects of mother's education. The results further indicate that mother's education leads to an increase in family resources for children and an improvement in maternal mental health and parenting, which we interpret as potential mechanisms behind our findings.
This study investigates whether adult children's education has a protective effect on parental survival, using data from all waves (2010–2018) of the China Family Panel Studies. We exploited the ...exogenous temporal and geographical variations in the enforcement of the 1986 compulsory schooling laws in China to construct an instrumental variable (IV) for adult children's education. The IV estimates indicated that the law-induced higher education of adult children led to sizeable improvements in the likelihood of paternal survival, although it had no significant effect on maternal survival. The protective effect on paternal survival was mainly driven by better-educated daughters, while sons' education had only a modest positive effect on maternal survival. Further evidence suggested that such heterogeneity by the gender of adult children might mainly come through more informal caregiving from better-educated daughters to older fathers with a limited role played by financial support from adult children.
•This paper studies the effect of adult children's education on parental survival.•We exploited variations in the enforcement of China's compulsory schooling laws.•Adult children's education increased paternal survival, but not maternal survival.•Daughters' better education was the main drive of increased paternal survival.•Gender differences might be explained by greater informal caregiving in daughters.
The aim of this introductory piece is to present the main school reforms in Bulgaria from the 9th to the 21st century. The cornerstones of school reforms during the different periods of Bulgaria’s ...history are analyzed. Various cultural, social and political factors determining the school development are also discussed. The authors present the creation of the Slavic alphabet during the First Bulgarian State and the appearance of the first Bulgarian schools in ‘The Golden Age of Bulgarian Letters and Culture’, the school development during the Second Bulgarian State, the hard blow to the development of education under the Ottoman rule, the school uprising during the Bulgarian National Revival, the main school reforms from the Liberation to the 1940s, the educational development during the Socialist period, and the latest school reforms in Bulgaria since 1989. Special attention is paid to the current school system in Bulgaria.
This paper examines the causal impact of women’s education on fertility by exploiting the cross-regional and cross-time variations in the enforcement of compulsory schooling reform in China. Using ...data from the 2010 Chinese Census, we find that increased women’s education permanently reduces fertility, which is different from the evidence in many countries where women compensate at later ages for the initial loss in births. We also find that increased education has a greater negative effect on the total live births of rural hukou women. When examining the potential channels underlying the relationship, we find that increased women’s education reduces child mortality, delays women entering the marriage market and childbirth, increases the opportunity costs of childrearing, and promotes positive assortative mating. Our research provides an additional explanation for the rapid decline in the total fertility rate in China.
•Exploiting the cross-regional and cross-time variations in the enforcement of compulsory schooling reform in China, we examine the causal effect of women’s education on fertility.•Our IV estimates show that an additional year of female education significantly reduces the number of births by 0.24.•The negative impact of women’s education on fertility operates by reducing the number of children per woman rather than increasing the incidence of childlessness.•We examine the potential channels underlying the relationship, and find that increased women’s education can affect fertility through several channels.
Is it possible to reduce the time students spend in classrooms and schools? Would such a reduction be better for learning and retaining teachers? How should learning be more flexibly enacted in the ...post-pandemic era? This article discusses the possibilities of rethinking school participation and calls for schools to reconsider the necessity and costs/benefits of forcing students and teachers to be physically present in schools for the traditional 5 days a week.
L’objectif de cette étude était d’explorer les processus de coping mis en œuvre par 86 enseignants (19 % d’hommes) d’un canton de suisse romande, et d’évaluer leur association avec l’auto-efficacité ...perçue à enseigner. Deux questionnaires, the Ways of Coping Checklist (WCC) et the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES), ont été complétés entre juin 2016 et février 2017. La recherche de soutien social et la résolution de problème apparaissaient comme les processus de coping les plus fréquemment utilisés. Les enseignantes étaient significativement plus nombreuses à recourir à la recherche de soutien social afin de faire face à un problème. L’auto-efficacité perçue dans la gestion de la classe, l’engagement des élèves et les stratégies d’enseignement étaient négativement associées à l’auto-accusation et à l’évitement. Les résultats soulignent la mise en œuvre de processus de coping pertinents pour faire face aux défis actuels de la profession enseignante, et le caractère protecteur de l’auto-efficacité perçue.
Within the Swiss context of the present study, important on-going school reforms lead to new challenges and constraints for teachers. Thus, it is legitimate to question how teachers can deal with the difficulties inherent to their profession. The aim of the study was to explore the coping responses of 86 teachers (women=70; men=16; mean age=38.9±12.0), and to assess the possible relationships between those responses and teaching self-efficacy. Self-report questionnaires were administered between June 2016 and February 2017, with a return rate of 37.5%. Participants completed two questionnaires: the Ways of Coping Checklist (WCC) assessing five coping responses (solving problem, social support approbation, avoidance, positive reevaluation and self-blamed), and the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) measuring three dimensions of teachers’ self-efficacy (for classroom management, instructional strategies and student engagement). The most frequent coping responses were social support approbation and solving problem. Positive reevaluation seemed to be used as an intermediate coping response for both women and men. Women were more likely to seek social support than men in order to deal with difficulties, whereas men did not report the use of specific process. Participants reported high levels of teaching self-efficacy, without significant difference between women and men. Moreover, teachers with high level of self-efficacy for classroom management and instructional strategies were less likely to use self-blamed and avoidance coping responses. Teachers with high level of self-efficacy for student engagement were also less likely to use self-blamed coping responses. Partial correlations with sex, age and years of experience as control variables were performed, and no variation was found. The findings of the present study demonstrate that social support approbation and solving problem are coping responses commonly used in our sample of teachers. The high levels of teaching self-efficacy and the lack of significant correlation between this variable, social support approbation and solving problem coping responses question us about the protective role of self-efficacy. It could be considered as a coping response, helping to appropriately overcome the difficulties linked to the teaching profession. Due to the important school reforms in Switzerland, pre-service teachers need resources and tools to deal with these new challenges. Further studies are necessary in order to better understand relationships between coping responses and teaching self-efficacy, and their potential protective or damaging effects.
