DOES EDUCATION HAVE A CAUSAL ROLE IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL CAPITAL?

Responsible researcher: Eduarda Miller de Figueiredo

Authors: Sule Alan, Ceren Baysan, Mert Gumren and Elif Kubilay

Intervention Location: Turkey

Sample Size: 6,500 children (222 classrooms)

Sector: Education

Variable of Main Interest: Child's interest

Type of Intervention: Program to create classroom cohesion between refugee and host students

Methodology: OLS

Summary

Education plays an important role in developing social skills, which becomes more important in turbulent socio-political conditions. In Türkiye there has been a change in the ethnic composition of schools due to the large influx of refugee children. To achieve social cohesion within schools, a program was implemented that encouraged students to strive to understand the perspective of any individual, regardless of their identity. The results suggest that in addition to an improvement in social cohesion, there was a reduction in violent events on school premises and a significant improvement in the learning of refugee children.

1. Policy Problem

Public education has demonstrated a critical role in developing social skills, in which it reduces the social distance between individuals in culturally diverse environments. Although humans are best in cohesive environments with high social capital, non-cohesive environments (characterized by violence, intolerance, and identity-based segregation) can emerge in turbulent sociopolitical conditions. Under these conditions, existing social capital can be damaged, impeding economic growth, and rebuilding through educational interventions can become a political imperative (Rodrik, 1999; Fryer and Loury, 2013; Voigtlaender et al., 2020).

In this article, the authors evaluate an educational program designed to develop social skills and build social cohesion at school. However, this program was applied in Turkish primary schools, where the ethnic composition in schools has changed due to a large influx of refugee children. Therefore, in a high-risk context, as ethnic tensions on school premises and in neighboring neighborhoods have increased alarmingly.

The program requires a particular socio-cognitive skill and perspective-taking ability, which is the ability to perceive the moods of others, and understand their goals and intentions. Studies show that perspective taking is associated with less social aggression, greater trust, and greater social cooperation (Galinsky and Ku, 2004). High perspective-taking ability is also related to being able to analyze social situations by weighing the costs and benefits of an action before engaging in the act, which is effective in reducing crime and violent behavior in various contexts (Alan and Ertac, 2018).

2. Implementation and Evaluation Context

            Since the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Turkey has received more than 4 million refugees, and there are currently more than 1 million Syrian children in Turkey. As a result, the Turkish Ministry of Education (MoE) has faced major challenges in placing refugee children in public schools, who need adequate training and guidance to facilitate cohesion between hosts and refugees.

            The program evaluated by the authors was designed, implemented and also had its evaluation carried out within this sociopolitical context.

• Policy/Program Details

Due to the findings demonstrated in the literature about the important impacts brought by the ability to take perspective, the multidisciplinary team designed a program as a set of activities to develop children's ability to understand perspectives [1] . The program has been designed in a way that ensures that the content does not explicitly reference ethnicity, but rather encourages students to strive to understand the perspective of any individual, regardless of their identity. In other words, instead of making any explicit ethnic references, the program encourages tolerance towards others, valuing individual differences.

            It is an educational cohesion program aimed at third and fourth grade elementary school children that aims to provide teachers with an easy-to-follow curriculum to create cohesion in the classroom and ensure a healthy learning environment for all children. The program includes several activities and games to be implemented by the teacher.

4. Assessment Method

The program was implemented as a group randomized controlled trial. With a sample of 222 classrooms from 80 primary schools in two provinces in Türkiye. Therefore, the study covered more than 6,500 third and fourth grade children, with 16% of the children in the sample being refugees.

Baseline data was collected in 2018 and, shortly thereafter, school-level randomization was conducted. 40 schools were assigned to the treatment group and 40 schools to the control group. Training seminars for teachers at the treated schools took place in November 2018. Final data was collected in May 2019.

The authors estimated the effect of the program on cohesion results using an empirical specification whose dependent variable was the outcome of interest for child i in school s . Control variables were added that included age, gender, refugee status, Raven’s [2] and Eyes Test [3] , classroom and school size.

5. Main Results

            The program significantly reduced the number of violent events perpetrated by children. In the control group classrooms, on average, there are 1.88 events recorded in 10 days. The treatment effect is 1.21 fewer events, which implies a significant decline of around 64%. It was also demonstrated through results that the program also significantly reduced the number of incidents that victimized the children served, around 50% less in treatment schools. According to the authors, the results suggest that the program, by keeping children away from conflict, reduced the risk of children becoming victims of conflict.

            The average number of violent episodes in 10 days is 7.83 in the control schools, and the program reduces it by 2.4 episodes. The authors point out that almost half of this overall reduction was from untreated classrooms, therefore suggesting side effects of the program in schools. One of the reasons that may have influenced these side effects, according to the authors, is that the participating classrooms received a lot of visual materials (posters and pamphlets) and, as they are quite visible, they were probably also observed by their classmates. close to the participating rooms. Or it can also be due to the spillover of changes that occur in interactions between students.

            Regarding bullying, although the program had no effect on host children's likelihood of being bullied by a peer, treated refugee children reported a lower likelihood of being bullied than untreated refugee children.

            Therefore, the authors find, through program evaluation, that there is a significant reduction in high-intensity peer violence and victimization on school grounds. A reduction in social exclusion and ethnic segregation in the classroom was also noted. Furthermore, a considerable improvement in the refugee children's language skills of the host country was observed.

6. Public Policy Lessons

The authors emphasize that, even with the difficulty of evaluating the individual and social value of reducing violence, social exclusion and ethnic segregation in schools, the evaluated program continues to be considered a success even if only the children's learning gains are observed. refugees. Although cautious about the external validity of the program, the authors demonstrated the study of this program as a significant step towards understanding the causal role of public education in the construction of social capital.

References

ALAN, Sule et al. Building social cohesion in ethnically mixed schools: An intervention on perspective taking. The Quarterly Journal of Economics , vol. 136, no. 4, p. 2147-2194, 2021.