Teacher Expectancy Effects

• General expectations include teachers' beliefs about:– changeability versus the rigidity of students'

abilities, – students' potential to benefit from instruction, – appropriate difficulty of material for the class,

and – whether the class should be taught as a group or

individually

The Pygmalion Effect

• Self-fulfilling prophecy

• Teacher expectancy effect

• “Professor Henry Higgins instructs Liza Doolittle”

Teacher expectancy effect:

• Teacher expects a specific behavior from specific student

• Because of these expectations, teacher behaves differently toward student

• This treatment tells student what behavior teacher expects from them

• If the treatment is consistent, it will shape the student’s behavior over time

• Students’ behavior will conform more and more closely to teacher’s expectation of them

Robert Rosenthal & Lenore Jacobson

Pygmalion in the classroom: Teachers’ expectation and students’

intellectual development (1968)

Robert Merton (1948)

• Self-fulfilling prophecy:– Belief– Prophecy– Prophecy fulfilled

Pygmalion study:

"the change in the teachers' expectations regarding the

intellectual performance of these allegedly 'special' children had led

to an actual change in the intellectual performance of these

randomly selected children"