Abstract
A conscious educational choice requires to be accompanied by an effective school guidance, a key factor for the success of students' educational paths and for the effectiveness and equity of the entire school system.
Teachers may significantly influence the school choices of students and their families, but previous research showed that their advice may be biased and could contribute to the reproduction of educational inequalities (more precsierly the ones' due to students' social originis, migratory background and gender).
I Italy a guidance advice is provide by teachers to all students at the end of lower secondary school.
In this experiment, we provide to teachers' the opportunity to attend a professional development course focused on school guidance and providing them both awareness about related social inequalities and tips regarding how to reduce their potential biases.
The intervention is delivered though a dedicated web platform, where each teacher can follow a light touch training, lasting about 5 hours and delivered before their formulation of guidance advices in s.y. 2021/22.
The project involves 189 lower secondary scools in Italy (self-selected into the project): Each school enrolled teachers wotking with oth grade strudents and the ones in charge of guidance at the organizational level.
We randomize the schools participating in the project: 98 schools are assigned to the first shift in the school year 2021/22; the other 91 schools are temporarily assigned to the condition of control group and their accesso to the training is postponed to the school year 2022/23.
At the end beginning of school year 2022/23, we will be able to assess the impact of our proferssional development on the primary outcome, namely the net association (meaning after controlling for students' performance) between students' social background (parental education and social class, mirgatory condition and gender) and the advice provided them by their teachers.
In addition, we will be able to follow up students along thier education career in the next school years, to assess whethere the advice will be followed and with which results in tems of education performance.
Before the intervention, to all the enrolled teachers we administered a questionnaire, collecting information and engagint them in a simulation case of guidance advice formulation. We hope to be able to collect the follow up questionnaire both on treatment and control group teachers, in order to assess the intervention impacts also at teachers level.