Discovering  Behavioral Economics

One of the criteria that will resurface over and over during any professional practice doctoral student’s studies is the importance of connecting theory to practice. After all, this was the reason I decided to pursue this degree in the first place - to be able to use proven and research based practices in my current profession. A topic that has surfaced in my recent readings and is highly applicable to my professional practice is behavioral economics (Thaler, Benartzi). Thaler’s recent publication of “Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics” provides an interesting account on the topic, and is described as “bringing the academic discipline (of studying humans as central agents in economy) back to earth”. This is a timely topic as we recently walked away from a parental advisory committee meeting learning that our students’ parents would like to change the way of communication - they would like to get school information on their phones in the form of a text message. While I did not know what to think of that request at the time (or how to go about it), I am recognizing the validity of their request after having a subtle understanding of the behavioral economics. Thaler’s blog http://www.misbehavingbook.org/blog/ for his recent publication provides an example of the text based feedback used by one of the blood donation centers in Sweden where participants receive a text message when their blood is used. While there is not enough research available at this time to discuss the effects of this  phenomenon on the numbers of people donating blood - one must agree that it is a really neat idea! Without further research, one can assume that if people know that their blood was used to make a difference, they are more likely to donate blood again.

Why not use this analogy at schools? I know from personal experiences that e-mail and voice message are not effective, text message however may be the next “big thing”. Giving feedback in a form that is timely, easily accessible (our smart phones have become wearable technologies), and specific, can only aid in parent-school relationships. Of course, since we are talking about a public entity as well as data that may be confidential or otherwise sensitive, proper planning must go into developing a system as well as guidelines for making this happen at schools.