Gender Gaps in Socioemotional Skills: Evidence from the Classroom (with Caterina Calsamiglia)
Abstract: Using repeated classroom assessments of socioemotional skills for more than 1,100 adolescents in 40 secondary schools, this paper documents significant gender differences in self- and peer evaluations. Conditional on teacher and peer ratings, female students systematically underrate themselves in socioemotional domains culturally stereotyped as masculine—specifically Emotional Management and Thinking Abilities. Conversely, peer evaluations reveal a robust and novel female–female premium: female students consistently assign significantly higher ratings (0.21–0.37 SD) to their female classmates across all socioemotional domains. These patterns replicate when teacher scores are replaced by external observers, in a lab-in-the-field setting, and under a validated survey-based measure of socioemotional skills. Whereas prior literature extensively documents gender gaps in self- and peer-assessments of cognitive skills, this study provides novel evidence of similar asymmetries in adolescents’ assessments of socioemotional competencies. These findings expand the scope of gendered evaluation dynamics in formative educational environments and highlight early adolescence as a policy-relevant window for targeted interventions addressing gender gaps in self and peer perceptions.
The Impact of Formative Assessment of Behavior-Based Socioemotional Skills on Students' Outcomes in the Short and Long Run (with Caterina Calsamiglia, Giacomo De Giorgo, Andrea Salvati, and Laia Navarro-Sola)
Draft available upon request.
Abstract: Schools shape skills that matter beyond academic achievement. Teachers are central to this process, yet whether these effects arise from fixed teacher attributes or from malleable instructional practices remains unclear. We investigate this question through a randomized intervention in Spanish secondary schools. The program equips treated teachers with tools to observe students' socio-emotional skills and provide structured feedback during routine instruction, thus generating exogenous variation in instructional practices. We combine external observations of student behavior with independent measures of teaching practices, survey measures of socio-emotional skills, and administrative records of grades and absences. The intervention improves students' socio-emotional behaviors in an externally assessed group activity and increases academic achievement, with particularly pronounced academic gains among students with lower baseline performance. These improvements translate into a substantial reduction in the probability of failing at least one subject. In contrast, we find no average improvement in socio-emotional behaviors observed during regular classroom instruction, although there is suggestive evidence of larger behavioral gains among students with weaker baseline socio-emotional skills and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. We also find evidence of changes in classroom interactions and instructional practices, which may contribute to the observed academic improvements. Together, these findings indicate that malleable teaching practices can improve academic outcomes and the expression of socio-emotional competencies, while highlighting that behavioral responses depend on the context in which they are measured, as well as students' initial characteristics.
Closing the Gender Gap in Self-Assessment: A Field Experiment in Secondary Schools (with Ana Lleó-Bono and Caterina Calsamiglia)
Design stage.
Abstract: Socioemotional skills such as managing emotions, cooperating and reasoning are rewarded in the labour market, and schools increasingly measure and teach them. How adolescents judge their own skills may matter as much as the skills themselves, since self-assessments shape later decisions about applying, speaking up and negotiating. Girls tend to rate their own skills lower than others rate them, yet most evidence on feedback and gender gaps in self-assessment comes from cognitive skills and adult samples, and little is known about whether feedback changes how adolescents see their socioemotional skills. This project tests whether showing students the distance between their self-ratings and others' ratings changes how they rate themselves. We will run a field experiment in Spanish secondary schools with students aged 12 to 16. Students complete an in-class task, rate themselves and are rated on tablets, receive an individualized report, and repeat the task. We will compare the report with a classroom discussion of gender stereotypes about skills, and follow students up a month later to test persistence. The findings will inform how schools give feedback on socioemotional skills and whether that feedback narrows gender gaps in self-assessment before students reach the labour market.
Clean Technology to Fuel Improved Living Standards: Uganda Energy Access Scale-up Project: Behavioral Diagnostics Note eMBeD brief Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group, 2021 (with Jonathan d'Entremont Coony, Samantha De Martino, Joana Isabel Sousa Lourenco)
Abstract: Households in refugee settlements in Uganda continue to rely on kerosene, dry cell battery torches, and firewood to meet their lighting and other energy needs despite the availability of solar home system options in the market. Multiple barriers contribute to low rates of uptake and sustained use of solar home systems in refugee settlements. Today, Uganda is the country hosting the highest number of refugees in Africa and the third highest in the world. Nearly 150,000 refugees are hosted in the Kyangwali settlement in Western Uganda, and 83,000 in the Rhino Camp in Northern Uganda, which fall under the catchment area of this study. While such an open refugee policy has been lauded by international organizations and other countries, it has also created stress on the limited resources available in the country especially its natural resources in the form of a fast depleting forest cover. This diagnostic note examines the behavioral barriers to uptake and sustained use of Solar Home Systems (SHS) in refugee settlements in Uganda.