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Fostering Patience in the Classroom: Results from Randomized Educational Intervention

We evaluate the impact of a randomized educational intervention on children’s intertemporal choices. The intervention aims to improve the ability to imagine future selves, and encourages forward-looking behavior using a structured curriculum delivered by children’s own trained teachers. We find that treated students make more patient intertemporal decisions in incentivized experimental tasks. The results persist almost 3 years after the intervention, replicate well in a different sample, and are robust across different experimental elicitation methods. The effects also extend beyond experimental outcomes: we find that treated students are significantly less likely to receive a low “behavior grade”.

Keywords
noncognitive skills; patience; randomized interventions; education; experiments
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/gddk-bt39

EdWorkingPaper suggested citation:

Alan, Sule, and Seda Ertac . (). Fostering Patience in the Classroom: Results from Randomized Educational Intervention. (EdWorkingPaper: 19-163). Retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/gddk-bt39

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