Uso de ‘Nudges’ para encorajar o envolvimento e melhorar o desempenho acadêmico de alunos

Behavioral Economics, through the sending of nudges, has become a means increasingly used as a tool to promote improvement in the provision of public policies. In the educational sphere, the literature shows that simple behavioral interventions can contribute to the improvement of educational indices that impact the efficiency of public policy. The present scientific study aims to analyze whether the application of nudges, by sending messages, conditions an improvement in the school performance of technical education students. An experiment was conducted, with an intervention in the Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) format. 159 students voluntarily participated in the experiment, aged between 15 and 19 years old, who were enrolled in high school/technical education at a federal educational institution. The students were initially separated into 9 blocks, represented by the year and course of the students and, later, they were randomly separated into 3 treatment groups: Experimental Group 1 in which the students received reminders in a "softer language"; Experimental Group 2 in which students received reminders in a "harder language"; and Control Group without exposure to nudges. The experimental intervention took place throughout the 3rd school quarter of 2022 and the results showed that the treatments have the same effect for the average of the students' grades, with no statistically relevant difference between the tested treatments and school performance.