This paper investigates whether changing the seating arrangement in a classroom can facilitate positive spillovers from top-performing students to others,using a field experiment conducted in a Chinese high school.Amo...This paper investigates whether changing the seating arrangement in a classroom can facilitate positive spillovers from top-performing students to others,using a field experiment conducted in a Chinese high school.Among study groups with balanced abilities,the treatment altered the spatial distribution by assigning the two top students to seats in the spatial center of each group.In the reference groups where students were allowed to choose their own seating arrangements,the lowest performing were significantly less likely to sit next to a top student than they would be under a random assignment.The results suggest that,in the treated groups,there could be enhanced academic spillovers from the top students.The treatment especially benefited the two lowest performing students in science subjects.In contrast,the treatment exerted negative effects on the test scores of the two middle-performing students,due to a disruption mechanism.The results suggest that the spatial layout of a peer network can have a significant impact on learning outcomes.展开更多
基金support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.72203039,72273004,and 72003036)the National Social Science Foundation of China(No.20CJL030)support from the Key Laboratory of Mathematical Economics and Quantitative Finance,Ministry of Education and Peking University,China(RCT ID:AEARCTR-0007880).
文摘This paper investigates whether changing the seating arrangement in a classroom can facilitate positive spillovers from top-performing students to others,using a field experiment conducted in a Chinese high school.Among study groups with balanced abilities,the treatment altered the spatial distribution by assigning the two top students to seats in the spatial center of each group.In the reference groups where students were allowed to choose their own seating arrangements,the lowest performing were significantly less likely to sit next to a top student than they would be under a random assignment.The results suggest that,in the treated groups,there could be enhanced academic spillovers from the top students.The treatment especially benefited the two lowest performing students in science subjects.In contrast,the treatment exerted negative effects on the test scores of the two middle-performing students,due to a disruption mechanism.The results suggest that the spatial layout of a peer network can have a significant impact on learning outcomes.
