Student Mobility and Self-Affirmation Writing: Evidence from a Field Experiment

• In Event: 207 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 24. Disruptions and Discipline

Abstract

When students change schools, their uncertain social standing may induce a “situational” social identity threat, which may in turn influence student well-being and academic performance. In this paper, I produce the first estimates for mobile students of the impact of self-affirmation through expressive writing, which has been found in other applications to mitigate the effects of social identity threats. Using data from a district-wide experimental evaluation of self-affirmation writing conducted with two cohorts of seventh grade students, I find that self-affirmation does little good for students who experienced an unscheduled school change, and, moreover, that it may harm their academic performance. There is suggestive evidence that self-affirmation improved some student sentiments about themselves and school. Additional analyses show that students who wrote primarily about their friends and family did not appear to be impacted by the expressive writing activities, and that students who wrote about other topics suffered the apparent academic declines. For students who have these relationships, their existence and the opportunity to reflect on them may be a form of resilience, even—with respect to GPA—a source of academic improvement. For students who cannot or do not draw on these relationships, however, asking them to reflect on them may do more harm than good. Social relationships are important for all children, but this need appears to be particularly acute for students who change schools.

Author

• Jeffrey Grigg, University of Wisconsin-Madison