Cristine Pinto, São Paulo School of Economics – FGV

“Teachers’ beliefs and human capital formation technology”

Coautoreado con Gabriela Fonseca y Vladimir Ponczek (São Paulo School of Economics – FGV)

Abstract: Our goal is to understand the role of teacher’s beliefs towards cognitive/non-cognitive skills on their task allocation and to also understand the impact of task allocation on students’ outcomes. We collected data on 84 municipal schools in Rio de Janeiro, 168 3rd and 4th-grade teachers and 3,500 students. We created an instrument to measure teacher’s teaching task allocation and their beliefs on the importance of cognitive/non-cognitive skills. We conducted a randomized control trial in which half of teachers received text messages about the importance of socioemotional skills. We are able to show that this intervention had a positive and significant effect on teacher’s belief, which lead teacher to increase their socioemotional investments in about 6%, in comparison to control teachers. Also, treatment had a direct positive impact on students’ socio-emotional skills.