Teacher Expectations

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Teacher Expectations

• The Pygmalion Theory

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• In ancient Greek mythology, a king of Cyprus,
  Pygmalion made a statue of a woman with all the
  feminine ideals and eventually fell in love with
  it and treated as if it was living.

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• Everyday Pygmalion begged Aphrodite to bring his
  statue to life. Aphrodite took pity on him and
  breathed life into the statue. It was the way in
  which Pygmalion treated the statue that resulted
  in it coming to life.

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Pygmalion effect is

• Simply put, the Pygmalion effect is the idea that
  expecting something to happen can in fact make it
  occur
• It is a self-fulfilling prophesy, a belief that
  becomes a positive reality

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• The term self-fulfilling prophesy, coined by
  sociologist Robert Merton means that erroneous
  beliefs about people bring about the realization
  of those beliefs. For example, teachers maybe
  have notions about a students ability that have
  no basis in fact. If a teacher says to a student
  that they do or do not have the ability to do
  something, the student will eventually start to
  behave as the teacher expects.

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Examples

• A teacher counted the number of times that
  children told tales in a day
• She tells 5 of her colleagues and her husband
  that one day 16 children and 15 of them were of a
  certain gender (Tripp, 1993)
• Which gender was it?

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• They all assumed that the 15 children were girls
  when it was in fact the opposite
• The adults perceptions were gender biased this
  type of misconception has long term
  self-fulfilling effects
• This leads to judgments of adults, such as women
  gossip and men discuss
• Girls are taught to perform according to gender
  bias on the part of adults, including teachers

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Views on the Pygmalion Effect

• There are contradicting views on the effect of
  the self-fulfilling prophesy
• Brophy (1983) concluded that the majority of
  teachers do not have a significant effect on the
  students
• In general, he found that teacher assessments of
  students abilities were accurate and overall,
  teachers didnt show favouritism or bias towards
  students

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• Contrary to Brophy, Emerling (1991) conducted an
  experiment on handwriting that showed that the
  majority of people could tell which gender a
  writer was from looking at a sample and Eames and
  Lowenthal (1990) showed that teachers often gave
  a better mark to students with good handwriting

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• Sloan and McGinnis (1982) claimed that
  handwriting led to an inconsistence in grading
  based solely on presentation
• In some experiments, students received as much as
  3 letter grades lower than others due to poor
  penmanship even though the content was identical,
  thus supporting the Pygmalion effect
• A teachers attitude towards a students work as
  being good or poor based on biased values like
  form over content may discourage that student.

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Teachers attitudes towards low- and
high-achievers

• Teachers attitudes may vary greatly
• Low achievers may be perceived as being less
  motivated, autonomous, attentive and less willing
  to engage in risk-taking than high-achievers
• This may cause the teacher to fear and limit
  interaction with them and to be unsure when
  interactions do occur

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• Teachers seem to plan and prepare better for
  high-achiever classes
• Low-achiever classes tend to stress more basic
  skills rather than higher order thinking
  activities
• Such students ma be perceived as more likely to
  cheat and copy notes and this affects teacher
  behaviour
• A teachers expectations would likely change
  according to the observed attitudes and
  behaviours or and individual, small group or class

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Other Factors

• A teachers pedagogical beliefs, philosophies or
  methodologies may also influence expectations
• A teacher more into a holistic approach to
  teaching which emphasizes group work and
  cooperative learning might limit the negative
  effects of teacher expectation self-fulfilling
  prophesies

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Other Factors

• Children who feel secure in their relationship
  with their teachers often feel happier while
  students who feel more insecure with their
  teachers may feel more anxious and depressed
• A teachers orientation may have a large Pygmalion
  effect
• A french immersion teacher may not have any
  university courses in some of the subjects that
  he teachers. His lack of interest in a subject
  such as math may result in that subject receiving
  less attention and students not achieving and
  learning as much as they might from a teacher
  trained in that area

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• All of these factors have to do with the
  Pygmalion effect because the way that a teacher
  behaves does influence his or her students ad
  their subsequent behavior and learning.

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• Discussion Reflect on how the Pygmalion Theory
  Teacher Expectations will influence your
  teaching practices.