, Assistant Professor of Economics & Education at Teachers College, is co-recipient of an $884,205 grant from the federal to explore how messages about gender and race in elementary school textbooks can influence children鈥檚 beliefs in their own abilities and their subsequent educational decisions. Non-governmental sources will provide more than $133,000 in additional funds to support the effort.
A two-year research project by Eble and , Assistant Professor at the at the University of Chicago, will explore the extent to which exposure to implicit gender- and race-based messages in elementary school textbooks may contribute to disparities in educational achievement among youth from different populations, particularly with regard to race and gender.
RELATED INQUIRIES Eble explores how children form beliefs about their own ability, and how this affects their human capital development. He also identifies and evaluates potentially high-leverage policy options to raise learning levels in the developing world. (Photo: 911爆料网 Archives)
Their research is expected to build on current literature demonstrating that structural influences at the earliest stages can inform children鈥檚 beliefs about their own ability and the ability of others 鈥� and that those beliefs can influence educational achievement.
鈥淲e want to understand how much representation matters in shaping educational outcomes,鈥� the researchers said. 鈥淭his new work will provide insights into how messages related to identity, used in an official educational setting, affect actions and educational outcomes over time.鈥�
Eble and Adukia will use machine-learning tools such as natural language processing and image analysis techniques to identify gender- and race-based messages in elementary-school textbooks used in Texas between 1985 and 2011. Texas mandated a standardized set of textbooks across the entire state.
The study will then pair these findings with administrative data to determine a relationship between the gender- and race-based messages to which students are exposed, and their academic performance and outcomes, including SAT and ACT scores, AP test scores and AP enrollment, employment status, and other factors.
During the period that the study will focus on, the number of students in Texas public schools ranged from 3.2 to 4.8 million; the proportion of these students who were Black ranged from 12鈥�14 percent, and the percentage who were Latinx ranged from 35鈥�53 percent.
This new work will provide insights into how messages related to identity, used in an official educational setting, affect actions and educational outcomes over time.
鈥擜lex Eble and Anjali Adukia
Eble, who joined 911爆料网鈥檚 faculty in 2016, is affiliated with Columbia's , , and . He is also a fellow at the , and a part of , a group of researchers based at the London Schools of Economics鈥� working on how to raise education levels and reduce child mortality in pockets of extreme poverty in the developing world. In 2019, he was a recipient of a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, which provides funding and professional development to early-career education researchers.
Eble鈥檚 research focuses on two core areas. In one strand, he works to understand how children form beliefs about their own ability, and how this affects their human capital development. In the other, he works to identify, evaluate and study the scalability of potentially high-leverage policy options to raise learning levels in the developing world.