Two results in Education - computers and primary education and comparative outcomes on social actions in Brazilian universities

• Grant number: 15/19288-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: January 17, 2016
• End date: July 16, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education
• Principal Investigator: Jacques Wainer
• Grantee: Jacques Wainer
• Host Investigator: Tatiana Melguizo
• Host Institution: Instituto de Computação (IC). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Southern California (USC), United States

Abstract

I will develop two lines of research, both using large datasets on education outcomes, in particular the PISA exam (for primary education) dataset and the Brazilian ENADE exam (for higher education) dataset. The first project is to evaluate an hypothesis I raised in the paper Wainer,Vieira & Melguizo 2015 that at as time passes (or systems become better or society learns how to use computers in primary education) the negative effect of having computers at home for children of low socioeconomic status (SES) families decreases and ends up being as positive as it is for children of higher socioeconomic status families. That paper showed that there is a positive effect size of around 0.2 standard deviation for having computer at home for children of all socioeconomic status but that result contradicts a previous paper Wainer et al 2008 (which I co-authored) that showed a positive effect only for children of higher socioeconomic status and a negative effect for children of lower status. Since the first paper refer to a 2001 data, while the second result refer to the 2007 to2011 period, the hypothesis is that ``time'' was the ``cause'' of the improvement of the effect of owning a computer at home for the lower SES students. We will use the PISA data for one country across many years and comparing different countries to test this hypothesis. The second project will analyze the outcome in the ENADE exams of students that received some social action benefit for higher education, in particular two social actions towards inclusion entrance through affirmative action (cotas) or student scholarships (Prouni). I will work with Professor Tatiana Melguizo, an Associate Professor in the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, with whom I co-authorëd the paper Wainer, Viera & Melguizo 2015 that raised the hypothesis of the improvement of the effect of owning computers at home, and a paper on value added of higher education in Brazil Melguizo & Wainer (submitted) (the paper is still under evaluation). I believe that the interaction with Professor Melguizo will allow me understand in more details the specificities of field of Education, in particular to better interpret the results ofstatistical analysis on large educational outcome datasets.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

JACQUES WAINER; TATIANA MELGUIZO. Políticas de inclusão no ensino superior: avaliação do desempenho dos alunos baseado no Enade de 2012 a 2014. Educ. Pesqui., v. 44, 2017-01-12. (15/19288-0)

JACQUES WAINER; TATIANA MELGUIZO. Políticas de inclusão no ensino superior: avaliação do desempenho dos alunos baseado no Enade de 2012 a 2014. Educ. Pesqui., n. ahead, p. 0-0, 2017. (15/19288-0)