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Does the identity of role models matter for high school children?
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Many children, particularly poor children, may not pursue higher paying jobs, because they lack exposure to role models. A recent study from SIEFβs nimble window published in Nature Human Behavior tested the impacts of exposing more than 29,000 high school students in Ecuador to sets of different role models who had either pursued STEM careers or became entrepreneurs. Exposure to multiple role models decreased the likelihood that girls chose a STEM major in university and increased the likelihood they chose a business major. The role model intervention also pushed boys out of STEM, but this time into other majors, such as agricultures and arts and humanities. The authors found that the role model videos reinforced stereotypes about STEM careersβ being more challenging, particularly for women, and students rated those role models as having less charisma and passion than the entrepreneurial role models.
Increasing infant-directed speech
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In the first years of life, childrenβs brains develop rapidly, and the verbal interactions they have with their parents play a critical role in shaping their language skills and cognitive development. Yet talking to babies in an intentional way is much less common in disadvantaged populations around the globe. SIEF recently published an Evidence to Policy note summarizing the results of another evaluation in its nimble window that tested an intervention to encourage mothers to talk to their babies in Northern Ghana. Researchers designed a βlight-touchβ intervention delivered when expectant or new mothers visited antenatal clinics: a three-minute animated video explaining the benefits of talking to babies, paired with a wall calendar that served as a daily visual reminder. Six to eight months later, mothers who received the intervention reported stronger beliefs in the benefits of conversing with infants, more frequent verbal engagement with their babies, and more advanced infant language and gestural communication skills. While survey enumerators could observe more babbling, there was no improvement in their direct observations of childrenβs early skills or in the amount of speech mothers directed towards the child or in childrenβs vocalizations when measured through a wearable device that could track all sounds produced around a child.
