関 麻衣

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated school closures exacerbated the global learning crisis, especially for children in developing countries. Teaching at the right level is gaining greater importance in the policy arena to recover the learning loss. However, the focus on the noncognitive abilities of students influencing their ability to bridge learning gaps is still very limited. We investigate the long-term effects of the "self-learning at the right level" program, which is found to be effective in the short run in improving the cognitive and non-cognitive abilities of disadvantaged students in Bangladesh. We revisit these students almost 6 years after the intervention to find that its effects on non-cognitive abilities remain perceptible, whereas those on cognitive abilities might have been attenuated. This study is among the few to examine the long-term effects of experimental educational interventions and shows that such interventions can effectively sustain students’ non-cognitive abilities amid academic disruptions.

This study examines whether leaders’ unethical behaviours discourage people from participating in activities initiated by community-based programmes, and whether the impact of unethical leadership is moderated by the genders of leaders and community members. We conducted a vignette experiment with 1,421 respondents in rural Sri Lanka. We find that village residents perceive: (1) leaders’ unethical conduct discourages residents’ intention to engage in community activities and (2) leaders’ unethical conduct reduces female residents’ engagement more than male residents’, regardless of leaders’ gender. The findings underscore the importance of addressing the low motivation issue, particularly among women, to engage in community activities.