How Teachers' Expectations Can Influence Students
What do you expect? A teacher’s high or low expectations can wield a profound influence on students.
What is the first thing that happens on the first day of school when your new students take their seats? Usually it’s the first impressions that come into your mind as you eye-up each student that walks into your classroom: “This girl looks happy to be in school, she must be really bright”. This boy is daydreaming already, he’s going to be difficult to deal with”. Or what about the teacher conversations that happen in the teachers’ lounge? For example, “her last year math teacher mentioned that she was a troublemaker”. It is in our human nature to make positive and negative judgements. Some factors that can influence how we see a child may include: A child’s appearance, socioeconomic status, language capacity, past performance, etc. What we as teachers don’t always realize, is that these early assumptions can often predict the future. Labeling our students is easy. The students we label “gifted” may succeed, while the students labeled “mischief” or “under-achiever” may not. The question is, how much influence do we as teachers have on these outcomes? Researchers Rosenthal and Jacobson wanted to answer this very question. In 1968 they launched a study known as, “Pygmalion in the Classroom”, that would have a huge impact in field of education. In the study, Rosenthal and Jacobson told teachers that they would be working with students targeted for their tremendous intellectual capacity. However, the reality was that these students were actually chosen randomly. The targeted students performed at a higher level than other students of equivalent ability. The study concluded that “the teachers’ high expectations significantly influenced student performance”. This further concluded that, setting high expectations for all students is a goal worth obtaining. The Pygmalion study helps us to understand, that by setting high expectations, teachers
What is the first thing that happens on the first day of school when your new students take their seats? Usually it’s the first impressions that come into your mind as you eye-up each student that walks into your classroom: “This girl looks happy to be in school, she must be really bright”. This boy is daydreaming already, he’s going to be difficult to deal with”. Or what about the teacher conversations that happen in the teachers’ lounge? For example, “her last year math teacher mentioned that she was a troublemaker”. It is in our human nature to make positive and negative judgements. Some factors that can influence how we see a child may include: A child’s appearance, socioeconomic status, language capacity, past performance, etc. What we as teachers don’t always realize, is that these early assumptions can often predict the future. Labeling our students is easy. The students we label “gifted” may succeed, while the students labeled “mischief” or “under-achiever” may not. The question is, how much influence do we as teachers have on these outcomes? Researchers Rosenthal and Jacobson wanted to answer this very question. In 1968 they launched a study known as, “Pygmalion in the Classroom”, that would have a huge impact in field of education. In the study, Rosenthal and Jacobson told teachers that they would be working with students targeted for their tremendous intellectual capacity. However, the reality was that these students were actually chosen randomly. The targeted students performed at a higher level than other students of equivalent ability. The study concluded that “the teachers’ high expectations significantly influenced student performance”. This further concluded that, setting high expectations for all students is a goal worth obtaining. The Pygmalion study helps us to understand, that by setting high expectations, teachers