https://www.educationnext.org/nudging-shoving-students-toward-success-what-research-shows-promise-limitations-behavioral-science-education/

We all make bad decisions sometimes. The role of behavioral scientists is to understand why we make these poor choices and develop policies to help us make better ones.

With a Nobel Prize for Richard Thaler’s work on individual decision-making and runaway bestseller status for books like Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, behavioral science has garnered wide and growing attention. More than 200 government teams around the world now work on applying behavioral science to develop, test, and scale new interventions. The work of these “Nudge Units” demonstrates that even small, inexpensive changes in how information is conveyed can induce large changes in behavior.

The current evidence suggests that our brains are susceptible to overreacting to present temptations. Making it easier or more attractive to choose actions associated with longer-term benefits can help realize those benefits. Another behavioral barrier is that our brains tend to rely too much on routine or on what’s top of mind. Having access to wise advice or salient alternative options can also help. Stress, uncertainty, complexity, and social influences exacerbate the biases that lead to bad choices.

Education was one of the last areas of public policy to receive attention from behavioral scientists. That is surprising given youth’s predisposition to instant gratification, in tension with the important long-term impacts of their education-related decisions.

The first behavioral experiment in education may have been conducted by Justine Hastings and Jeff Weinstein. They examined the impact of mailing families in North Carolina a list of possible schools children could attend along with corresponding test-score performance information. They compared that to allowing the families to access the information independently by internet. The simplified and more salient information led to a significant increase in the number of families who applied to schools outside their catchment area and an increase in test scores among children who moved.

Around the same time, Susan Dynarski and Judith Scott-Clayton pointed out the complexity of the U.S. Free Application for Federal Student Aid and suggested that the many hurdles required to complete the application may significantly slow the application process, or even prevent some from applying at all. Eric Bettinger, Bridget Long, Lisa Sanbonmatsu, and I put this theory to the test by teaming up with H&R Block, a large tax preparation company. After helping low-income clients complete their annual returns, tax professionals invited those who were potentially interested in college to remain for a few minutes to participate in a study (and receive $20). One group received a general informational brochure about college, a second group received a personalized report of eligible federal grant and loan aid against tuition costs of nearby colleges, and a third group received the brochure and the report, plus assistance in completing the FAFSA for themselves or for their children about to graduate from high school. Much of the data needed to complete the form was already collected from completing the tax return, so the process to complete the FAFSA took only about an additional 10 minutes. While the information treatment had no impact, the personalized assistance increased FAFSA filing and college enrollment the following year. For the high school sample, enrollment increased by 8 percentage points, to 42 percent from 34 percent.

Another notable early nudging success was achieved by Benjamin Castleman and Lindsay Page, who showed that simply sending a series of text message reminders of key tasks to complete over the summer to recent high school graduates and their parents can help keep college-accepted youth on track to begin their program in the fall. College enrollment was 4 to 7 percentage points higher for students who received the text messages, relative to a randomized control group who did not.

The field of behavioral science applied to education has since exploded, with efforts to improve not only college application rates, enrollment, and completion, but many other outcomes such as class attendance, field of study, school breakfast, school choice (choosing two-year versus four-year colleges, for example, or more selective schools), scholarship receipt, on-time graduation, grade point average, study effort, study time, student attendance at faculty office-hours or take-up of other services, loan repayment, and earlier childhood outcomes such as literacy, numeracy, and executive functioning. However, the results have not always been encouraging. Many recent studies of nudges with large samples that stick to a pre-analysis plan or attempt to scale earlier interventions find tiny or no effects. Some areas of focus, such as nudging parents, show more promise, whereas others, like trying to improve test scores or adopt better learning habits, show less.

This article takes stock of where the field of behavioral science applied to education policy seems to be at, which avenues seem promising and which ones seem like dead ends. I present below a curated set of studies rather than an exhaustive literature review, categorizing interventions by whether they “nudge” (keep options intact) or “shove” (restrict choice), and whether they apply a “high touch” or a “low touch” (whether they use face-to-face interaction or not). I argue that we should continue to make administrative processes in education easier, information more salient, and communication more friendly. The cost for many low-touch nudges, such as changing the content of a letter or sending an email reminder, are small enough to merit doing even if the impact might be zero. In cases where financial and nuisance costs matter more, replication studies and iterating over what works best (a process sometimes referred to as “A/B testing”) can further help decide what interventions are worth scaling. But we should not expect this kind of tinkering to serve as a panacea for education policy’s key challenges. The current evidence suggests that we could make better progress by adding more choice-limiting scaffolding to a youth’s routine, like restricted screen time and mandated tutoring, and by focusing on children at younger ages, when preferences and behavioral traits are more malleable.

Nudging and Shoving, High-Touch and Low-Touch

It helps to think about behavioral interventions based on whether they nudge or shove and whether they use a high touch or a low touch.

A nudge is a subtle adjustment to an individual’s environment to steer the person towards a more desirable outcome while not meaningfully altering options or costs. The underlying principle for nudging is to “make it easy.” Defaults—automatically selecting individuals into one choice option if no action is taken—are among the most influential ways to nudge. For example, opting individuals into organ donation programs and employer retirement savings programs, with the option to opt out, has been shown to dramatically increase take-up. Changing the default, however, is not always possible or practical for the outcome of interest. For example, defaulting high school seniors into being enrolled in college would be administratively complex, require guessing which school and program would be best, and offer no guarantee that the students would show up to campus. More common nudges use marketing techniques, such as simplifying take-up procedures, sending reminders, or providing information through text, email, signs, or phone calls.

Unlike a nudge, a shove restricts an individual’s set of options to steer the person towards more desirable outcomes. Requiring workers to participate in a government retirement benefits program by taxing them is a type of shove because no opt-out option exists. Banning large containers of soda is a shove. Requiring students to attend school is also a shove. Restricting choice can occur more indirectly from deciding how to structure an individual’s schedule—especially a child’s schedule. For example, I consider the act of parents planning their child’s weekend a shove. Teachers who decide what and how to teach also restrict how students spend their time.

How can parents, teachers, and policymakers know which behaviors are more desirable? They cannot. It is impossible to know for sure whether an individual’s own inclination stems from a behavioral mistake or from carefully weighing long-term costs and benefits. At least with nudges, individuals are still free to choose, an argument originally made by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. Nevertheless, nudges and shoves both aim to alter behavior. The choice architect must explicitly or implicitly decide in which direction to steer to try to make individuals better off. The consequences of steering in the wrong direction, and how many people might fall into this category, should be taken into account.

Take the case of going to college: we can’t be sure everyone benefits. Indeed, many who drop out probably don’t. On the other hand, we think some high school students, especially those from more disadvantaged backgrounds who receive less support from parents and schools, miss out on college and its benefits because of application barriers. Evidence suggests that making the application process easier can cause more people to attend. Should we support a scale-up of this effort, or deliberately maintain the status quo? It’s a normative question, because neither situation makes everyone better off. A starting point might be to estimate completion effects or predict even longer-term effects. Shoving by making college compulsory does not seem prudent, since it would likely result in many students being unable to complete even their first year. The H&R Block FAFSA nudge found an 8-percentage-point increase in both first- and second-year college enrollment for a sample of high school seniors. A follow-up study, however, estimated that the treatment increased degree completion by only about 4 percentage points, suggesting about half of those nudged into college finished, but half didn’t. The dropout rate was the same compared to the control group, reminding us it may be unrealistic to expect that everyone who is nudged will go on to graduate. Still, a tradeoff exists, and we should be aware of our implicit assumptions about who we’re helping and who we’re not when nudging or shoving.

Behavioral interventions also differ importantly by whether they are high-touch or low-touch. Researchers sometimes distinguish these two cases based on cost. A more useful, but related, distinction is whether the intervention involves in-person interaction or not. Texting students to remind them to complete the FAFSA is a low-touch nudge. Meeting with them to provide more direct assistance is a high-touch nudge. Encouragement is often more effective if delivered in person than through signage, text, or email. Someone trying to steer another person towards a particular action can express empathy, respond to questions, and use body language or facial expressions. A person can even be the intervention by providing guidance or advice (as a coach, caseworker, or parent, for example). High-touch nudges make it easier to receive in-person interaction. High-touch shoves make them mandatory. Requiring students to meet with a guidance counselor is an example of a high-touch shove. These kinds of interventions are expensive, and their success likely depends on the quality and frequency of the in-person interaction. Not all researchers would consider these more intensive programs nudges, though I think they should, because, as with low-touch nudges, the programs also aim to lower behavioral barriers and influence individuals towards more desirable behavior.

Low-Touch Nudges