IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v99y2024ics0272775724000013.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social identity and learning: Adult literacy program in India

Author

Listed:
  • Bhardwaj, Sakshi
  • Shonchoy, Abu S.

Abstract

The paper examines the effect of social identity on adult learning within a hierarchical social setting— an important yet often understudied issue for effective adult education. We leverage the random matching of students and teachers from a randomized controlled experiment in India, where illiterate adult female learners aged 18–45 were randomly assigned to a literacy program. We find a positive and significant impact of matching an upper caste teacher with a lower caste adult student on literacy scores. We also find suggestive evidence of an increase in students' confidence measures when matched with an upper caste teacher, indicating a plausible impact mechanism. Our findings highlight the need for future research on social identity and its influence on adult learning, particularly in countries with existing deep-rooted hierarchical social constructs.

Suggested Citation

  • Bhardwaj, Sakshi & Shonchoy, Abu S., 2024. "Social identity and learning: Adult literacy program in India," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:99:y:2024:i:c:s0272775724000013
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102507
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775724000013
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102507?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Adult education; Social identity; India; Caste;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:99:y:2024:i:c:s0272775724000013. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.