Behavioral Influence Channels in Education: Conceptualization and Practical Potential

The purpose of the article is to identify and substantiate the behavioral influence channels on the population’s adoption of educational decisions, which will allow to specify the directions and content of behavioral interventions in the formation of policies and practices in education at the stage of post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. The relevance of the work is due to the increasing impact of uncertainty on educational decisions and population behavior in the conditions of a prolonged war. The methodological basis of the study is a combination of interdisciplinary, systemic, and behavioral intervention-oriented approaches; general scientific and special methods were used, including structural-logical generalization, desk-based content analysis, and system analysis. The generalization of interdisciplinary sources of recent decades has made it possible to: outline the main advantages of the behavioral approach as a general methodological framework for taking into account the patterns of human behavior; highlight the most recognized models of behavior change in international practice; identify factors and features of human behavior that should be taken into account when determining behavioral influence channels; substantiate these channels from the standpoint of classical and behavioral economics, as well as other behavioral sciences; select examples of international practices and cases that have the potential for implementation in Ukraine within the framework of the relevant behavioral influence channels in the field of education. The novelty of the work lies in the identification of five behavioral influence channels, i.e. areas of educational behavior of the population and related educational decisions, which can be targeted by behavioral interventions: 1. Educational and professional choice (more balanced choice of educational institution, future profession, etc.); 2. Behavior in the learning process (supporting motivation, orientation towards academic success); 3. Participation in education and educational trajectory (main stages of participation in education and educational transitions); 4. Acquisition and updating of skills, competencies (formation of readiness for lifelong learning and other aspects); 5. Gender perceptions in educational and professional orientation (modernization of ideas about educational, professional and career opportunities, overcoming gender stereotypes and related self-limitations of educational and professional choice). The use of such an approach makes it possible to take into account behavioral-activity, motivational-cognitive, value-worldview and competence-adaptive aspects of educational behavior and related decisions. A logical scheme of the relationship of behavioral influence with the stages of the behavioral process is also proposed.