'People like me don't do well at school': The roles of identity compatibility and school context in explaining the socioeconomic attainment gap.

BACKGROUND: School students who are eligible for reduced or free school meals (FSM) - an indicator of economic disadvantage - have lower academic attainment than their peers. AIMS: We investigated whether identity compatibility - the perceived compatibility between one's social identities and the stereotype of a high-achieving student - contributes to this socioeconomic attainment gap, and whether the association between socioeconomic status and identity compatibility is moderated by school context. SAMPLE: Our sample was 4,629 students aged 15-16 years old across 29 schools in England. METHOD: We assessed students' perceptions of identity compatibility via self-report questionnaires 8 months prior to them taking national, standardized exams. RESULTS: Multilevel regression analyses revealed a negative indirect effect from eligibility for FSM to exam results via identity compatibility. These effects existed even while accounting for students' gender and language status, other psychological variables known to predict academic attainment, and their previous exam results. Furthermore, school context moderated the relationship between FSM eligibility and identity compatibility. In line with the identities in context model of educational inequalities, there was a significant negative association between FSM and identity compatibility only for students attending schools in which there was previously a relatively large socioeconomic attainment gap. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate the importance of social psychological variables in explaining educational inequalities, and of the local educational context in determining the educational experience of students from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds.

Self-affirmation reduces the socioeconomic attainment gap in schools in England.

BACKGROUND: Studies in the United States show that school students from some ethnic backgrounds are susceptible to stereotype threat, that this undermines their academic performance, and that a series of virtually zero-cost self-affirmation writing exercises can reduce these adverse effects. In England, however, socioeconomic status (SES) is a much stronger predictor of academic success than is ethnic background. AIMS: This study investigates whether self-affirmation writing exercises can help close the SES attainment gap in England by increasing the academic performance of low-SES (but not higher-SES) school students. SAMPLE: Our sample consisted of students aged 11-14 in a secondary school in southern England (N = 562); of these, 128 were eligible for free school meals, a proxy for low SES. METHODS: Students completed three short writing exercises throughout one academic year: those randomly assigned to an affirmed condition wrote about values that were important to them, and those assigned to a control condition wrote about a neutral topic. RESULTS: On average, the low-SES students had lower academic performance and reported experiencing more stereotype threat than their higher-SES peers. The self-affirmation raised the academic performance of the low-SES students by 0.38 standard deviations but did not significantly affect the performance of the higher-SES students, thus reducing the SES performance gap by 62%. The self-affirmation also reduced the level of stress reported by the low-SES students. CONCLUSIONS: The benefits of this virtually zero-cost intervention compare favourably with those of other interventions targeting the SES academic attainment gap.

The relative benefits of green versus lean office space: three field experiments.

Principles of lean office management increasingly call for space to be stripped of extraneous decorations so that it can flexibly accommodate changing numbers of people and different office functions within the same area. Yet this practice is at odds with evidence that office workers' quality of life can be enriched by office landscaping that involves the use of plants that have no formal work-related function. To examine the impact of these competing approaches, 3 field experiments were conducted in large commercial offices in The Netherlands and the U.K. These examined the impact of lean and "green" offices on subjective perceptions of air quality, concentration, and workplace satisfaction as well as objective measures of productivity. Two studies were longitudinal, examining effects of interventions over subsequent weeks and months. In all 3 experiments enhanced outcomes were observed when offices were enriched by plants. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.