Nudging Teachers, in a Large Field Study, Marginally Boosted Student Math Performance

A large field study devised by more than two dozen academics (including Ilana Brody, Hengchen Dai, Hal E. Hershfield, Angela Duckworth, and Katherine Milkman) set out to explore whether 15 carefully built nudges —reminders to complete a task — delivered via weekly emails to elementary school teachers might translate into better math progress for their students. 

The study harnessed the vast network of teachers and students with access to Zearn Math, a nonprofit, online math learning platform used in about 25% of U.S. elementary schools.

The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest the nudge-the-teacher route, at least as attempted here, produced statistically significant but modest increases in student math progress. “Notably, the impact of behaviorally informed reminders in our mega study was surprisingly small,” the researchers write.

The most effective email exhortation to teachers resulted in a 5.1% improvement in students’ math progress, but after adjusting for the mechanics of simultaneously testing multiple factors (which can overestimate the actual impact of the most effective factor), the researchers estimate the actual improvement was 3.3%.