Nudging in education

Abstract

Can we nudge children, adolescents and their parents to make better decisions on education? And can we nudge teachers to support and encourage better decision making? Education decisions are taken at young ages and involve immediate costs and potential, future benefits. In such settings behavioural barriers (e.g. lack of selfcontrol, limited attention and social norms) likely influence choices and this may motivate the use of low cost 'nudges' to gently push behaviour in the desired direction. Our review of nudging interventions shows that while nudging often has positive effects, the greatest effects often arise for individuals affected most by the behavioural barrier targeted by the intervention. Hence understanding underlying behavioural mechanisms is crucial. Negative effects may arise in situations where nudges potentially crowd-out intrinsic motivation, if nudges pressurise individuals, or in situations where the choice architect has an insufficient understanding of behavioural mechanisms.[P]eople will need nudges for decisions that are difficult and rare, for which they do not get prompt feedback, and when they have trouble translating aspects of the situation into terms that they can easily understand.

The benefits and caveats of using clickstream data to understand student self-regulatory behaviors: opening the black box of learning processes

“…Finally, the nuanced information on individual learning processes that clickstream data can uncover is useful in understanding how and why an SRL intervention influences student learning outcomes. Indeed, scholars (e.g., Damgaard and Nielsen, 2018) have recently argued that examining the mechanisms that various behavioral interventions affect is "crucial," as interventions can have unintended negative consequences if the likely affected behavioral pathways are not well understood (Damgaard and Nielsen, 2018, p. 313).…”

Early Intervention of Undergraduate Tutorial System and Improvement of Students' Performance: An Empirical Study based on Nudges Theory

“…The impact of intervention on the individual was different, Damgaard and Nielsen (2018) [18] systematically reviewed the literature of educational nudge, and concluded that the "There are few interventions that have a positive impact on everyone, some of which may even have a negative impact". A number of British universities provide last term test feedback (Bandiera et al, 2015) [19] before the students prepare for the next test, finding that almost all of the students' scores are positively affected by the feedback information.…”

“…Subsequently, the usual scores and final exam scores will match the personal characteristics of all students in the economics department, including place of origin, gender and math scores of the college entrance examination (such as [28] . Microeconomics is a compulsory course for all freshmen in business school, but because of the different hours required by the syllabus for different majors, only the teaching progress of the three classes in the economics department is synchronous, and only the demographic information of the registered students in the economics department, so the preliminary analysis is limited to the students in the economics department (such as Damgaard et al, 2018) [18] . However, the subsequent inclusion of business school students in an analysis without covariables was also robust.…”

“…In view of the literature in section 2, it has been shown that the nudge may have a heterogeneous effect and that a group subject to certain behavior is more likely to benefit from the nudge intervention (Damgaard et al, 2018) [18] . In this study, 34 students of the intermittent sample were divided into two groups which were higher than the average (20) and below the average (14) according to the math scores of college entrance examination, and the effect of the teaching intervention on the students were also investigated.…”

Grit, growth mindset and participation in competitive policy debate: Evidence from the Chicago Debate League

“…For education researchers and practitioners, growth mindset and grit are conceptualized as modifiable determinants of achievement (Brady et al, 2017;Damgaard and Nielsen, 2018;Wilson and Buttrick, 2016). These NCS represent strategies that can be developed through practice and sustained effort, akin to muscular strength that can grow from training, but also atrophy from lack of use.…”