Does Education Really Change Us? The Impact of School Based Social Processes on the Person

Abstract

A critical question is whether education per se contributes to these outcomes or whether educated people have other characteristics that confer these advantages. It may be that those who are more educated begin life with biologically determined abilities, family-based assets, and/or knowledge and habits that foster success in a school context. These are complex variables to fully disentangle. The approach in education and social psychology is to investigate contextual factors of interest using longitudinal (assessing the same person across time) or experimental (with random assignment to an intervention and control group) research designs. In this way, it is possible to control for ability and demographic characteristics such as parental education and socioeconomic status. Evidence that interventions, for example, that vary teacher expectations of student ability (high vs. low) or students’ own beliefs about intellectual ability’s (fixed or malleable), impact on academic achievement is used to support the idea that the educational setting, under certain conditions, can transform behavior. Show more