Context matters: Diagnosing and targeting local barriers to success at school

Abstract

We trialed a novel method aimed at reducing educational inequalities in any given school by tailoring an intervention to address the specific local social, cultural, and psychological barriers that contribute to those inequalities. In Study 1 (N = 2070), we validated measures in a student survey of barriers experienced by students ages 11–16 years in two schools in England. We used a pilot version of these measures to identify two barriers that appeared to be contributing in both schools to poorer attendance and behavioral records of Black versus Asian students and of lower socioeconomic status (SES) students versus higher SES students. These barriers consisted of perceptions that (a) the schools were biased against certain groups of students and that there were negative stereotypes about certain groups of students, and (b) teachers and students did not come from similar backgrounds. In Study 2, which was pre-registered, we administered a brief tailored intervention to target these barriers in students ages 11–14 years in the same two schools the following year (N = 1070). The intervention, which aimed to induce values affirmation and reveal hidden teacher-student similarities, improved the attendance of low-SES students by 0.20 SD (p = .009) and reduced the gap with their peers by 60%. Exploratory analyses indicated that the improvement in attendance was larger for students who reported perceiving greater levels of bias and poorer teacher-student relationships at baseline. The impact of the intervention on the behavioral records of Black students (p = .089) and low-SES students (p = .293) was not significant. These qualified but encouraging findings provide a basis for developing practical ways for individual schools to improve outcomes for their historically disadvantaged students.