WK7 Reading Social Issues Policy

• Some groups of students—typically those who have suffered because of historical inequality in society—disproportionately experience psychological barriers to educational success
• These psychological barriers—feelings of threat to their social identity and the sense that their identity is incompatible with educational success—make substantial contributions to inequalities in educational outcomes between groups, even beyond economic, historical, and structural inequalities

  
• A range of wise psychological interventions can help remove these barriers by targeting students' subjective interpretation of their local educational context
• Identities in Context model of educational inequalities

  Proposes that interactions between students' social identities and features of the local educational context—expectations about a group's academic performance, a group's representation in positions associated with academic success, and a group's orientation towards education—can trigger social identity threat and identity incompatibility in ways that vary considerably across contexts

  
• Implementation process based on the Identities in Context model

  Academic researchers, policymakers, and practitioners can follow to help them choose and tailor wise interventions that are effective in reducing educational inequalities in their local context

  
• Educational practices can be altered to help remove psychological barriers for underperforming groups of students and so reduce educational inequalities
• Some groups of students—such as some ethnic minorities or those from lower class backgrounds—on average achieve much lower academic grades and are much less likely to progress within the education system than other groups
• In both the United States and England, the attainment of high-school students from low-income households lags behind that of their counterparts from higher income households by the equivalent of more than two and a half years of schooling
• There is a similarly large attainment gap between Black and White high-school students in the United States
• Extensive efforts to close such gaps, such as the £2.4 billion per annum Pupil Premium initiative in England, have been a major focus of educational policy but have met with only limited success
• Education


  Key predictor of life outcomes including physical health, mental health, subjective well-being, life expectancy, trust, and income
• Those with higher qualifications are also more engaged in politics and are more likely to vote, giving them a louder political voice
• Structural barriers, such as differences in access to high-quality schools, together with institutional biases against certain groups of students, are the most fundamental drivers of educational inequalities and must be tackled if we want to reduce inequalities in educational outcomes
• There are also psychological barriers to educational success that solely or disproportionately affect some groups of students and thus contribute to educational inequalities
• Psychological barriers


  Consequences of cues within local educational contexts that signal to some groups—usually those with low status that have suffered from inequality in wider society—that they are not valued in educational institutions, are likely to fail at their studies, and are unlikely to reap any benefits from pursuing an education
• These psychological barriers can cause members of those groups to feel alienated, uncomfortable, discouraged, and demotivated, impeding their engagement, persistence, progress, and performance within education
• These psychological barriers can account for a substantial proportion of the differences in educational attainment between groups
• Social psychological interventions can be incredibly effective at helping remove those psychological barriers and so narrowing educational inequalities, especially attainment gaps
• Such interventions must be used with care since they can be ineffective or even counterproductive to some groups
• It is critical to intervene only in contexts in which psychological factors contribute to educational inequalities, and in which social psychological interventions are likely to be effective, sustained, and unlikely to create unintended negative consequences
• The groups that tend to have poor educational outcomes vary across contexts, implying that context plays a role in determining the extent and focus of educational inequalities between groups
• Attainment gaps also vary considerably in size and even direction across smaller geographical areas within countries, suggesting local contexts can color students' educational experiences as well
• Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) national exams in a range of subjects taken at age 16
• The mean Attainment 8 score in 2019 was 46.7 with a standard deviation of 20.3
• Although there is a small average attainment gap between Black and White students in England, the size of the gaps at local levels vary significantly, from −25 to +20, a range of more than two standard deviations
• Attainment gaps between immigrants and nonimmigrants also vary drastically across contexts
• On average, across countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), nonimmigrant students tend to have slightly better PISA scores than second-generation immigrant students, who in turn have slightly better scores than first-generation immigrant students
• These gaps vary considerably by nation, with particularly marked differences in some (e.g., the Nordic countries, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Iceland, China, and Mexico) and much smaller—or even reversed—differences in others (e.g., the United States, United Kingdom, Chile, New Zealand, Israel, and Ireland)
• The psychological experiences of immigrants and nonimmigrants in education may, then, be quite different
• The experience and thus performance of different groups of students also depends on the subject that they are studying
• There are shortfalls of skilled labor in the workforce in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects
• These shortfalls are exacerbated by particularly low representation of women, some ethnic groups and low-SES individuals in many STEM fields, most notably the physical sciences, engineering, maths, and computing
• In the United States, Blacks make up 13% of the population and receive 10% of bachelor's degrees but only 4% of engineering bachelor's degrees
• In the United States, first-generation students are somewhat less likely than continuing-generation students to complete college with a degree in any subject (57% vs. 65%), the effect is significantly more pronounced with STEM degrees (9% vs. 15%)
• In the United Kingdom, compared to 58% of graduates in all subjects, only 15% of graduates in engineering, technology, and computer science, and only 12% of those working in engineering occupations are women
• Structural barriers are the most fundamental drivers of educational inequalities
• Differences in access to high-quality schools, adequate housing, private tuition, and healthy nutrition all contribute substantially to attainment gaps and other educational inequalities
• Institutional biases that discriminate against certain groups of students also contribute to inequalities in educational outcomes, most notably through biases that manifest in academic tracking allocations, academic assessment and disciplinary practices, and expectations about the behavior and academic performance of different groups
• Psychological factors can also contribute to inequalities in educational outcomes between groups
• Social identity threat


  A fear or feeling that their social identity is devalued, undermined, or stigmatized