Topic: Teaching Self-Regulation

Speaker: Daniel Schunk (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)

Time & venue:
Fridays, 10:00 - 12:00 (starting on 27.10.2023); see schedule for seminar venues 

Description:
The Research Seminar in Economics offers a platform for invited speakers to present their current research, thereby promoting the exchange between speakers and faculty members. It covers empirical as well as theoretical contributions across all fields of economics.

More information can be found on the seminar's website.

Abstract: Children’s self-regulation abilities are key predictors of educational success and other life outcomes such as income and health. However, self-regulation is not a school subject, and knowledge about how to generate lasting improvements in self-regulation and academic achievements with easily scalable, low-cost interventions is still limited. Here, we report the results of a randomized controlled field study which integrates a short self-regulation teaching unit based on the concept of mental contrasting with implementation intentions into the school curriculum of first graders. We demonstrate that the treatment increases children’s skills in terms of impulse control and self-regulation while also generating lasting improvements in academic skills like reading and monitoring careless mistakes. Moreover, it has a substantial effect on children’s long-term school career by increasing the likelihood of enrolling in an advanced secondary school track three years later. Thus, self-regulation teaching can be integrated into the regular school curriculum at low cost, is easily scalable and can substantially improve important abilities and children’s educational career path.