Classrooms: Laboratories for Decision-making!

We need to stop overlooking that educators make dozens of second-by-second decisions during every minute of classroom instruction! Students themselves in one classroom make hundreds, if not thousands, of decisions involving self-regulation, socialization and learning as they navigate each school day. How do we help educators and students alike understand their decisions and behaviors?

One tool that schools can employ is applying research in behavioral insights to our educational context. This should become a focus for behavioral science in the next decade as schools are natural decision-making laboratories. This is true of schools around the globe, and our schools as laboratories can allow us to explore cognitive biases and behaviors in real world settings. Real world decisions don't adhere to the rational model of decision making with cost-benefit analyses, or return-on-investment calculations. Rather emotional state, cognitive shortcuts or rules of thumb, and habit are all more predictive in determining how individuals and groups make real world decisions that happen every day in our schools.

Educational training programs should begin teaching prospective teachers to think as choice architects and to plan lessons around nudging students towards desired behaviors and attitudes. Likewise, school systems can analyze students’ behaviors and correlate in-school and out-of-school activities, patterns, and data, including students’ social media and subsequent social connections, to create behavioral interventions and individualized educational programs for all students. Teachers should be developed professionally to frame choices, and prime students to think creatively, while recognizing that emotions often influence students' decisions, students' thinking and academic achievement.

Schools are filled with choices and decisions that are social, related to learning, operational and logistical, and are natural laboratories to explore decision making in the real world.