Teacher High Expectations (Positive Estimate of Student Achievement)

Teacher High Expectations

(Positive Estimate of Student Achievement)

DEFINITION 

Teacher High Expectations: The estimates of student achievement made by teachers. These teacher judgments: can help set expectations; be used to benchmark past understanding; are involved in setting the next challenges, identify those who may have early signs of difficulties; inform placement and intervention choices; and influence instructional choices. These judgments come from questioning, observing, written work presentations, how the student reacts to increased challenge, and assignments and tests. link

Simply put, high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area and low expectations lead to worse. Students internalize their positive labels and succeed accordingly; a similar process works in the opposite direction in the case of low expectations. This is often called the Pygmalion Effect. Rosenthal (1992) argues that biased expectations affect reality and create self-fulfilling prophecies. Students can “read” and are hyper-aware of the verbal and non-verbal cues teachers offer. Rosenthal (1992)

Raising teachers’ expectations for students leads to both greater performance and increased self-expectations (self-efficacy) for students. When teachers have positive relationships and expectations with their students and understand their needs, students are more likely to achieve at higher levels. Positive teacher-student relationships can lead to increased effort, persistence, risk-taking, and resilience. From the teacher’s perspective, accurate estimates of student achievement enable them to tailor instruction to meet individual student needs effectively.

This requires teachers to understand that they are the greatest influence on student achievement; that they remove the many “labels” and categories we place on students; that they use a growth mindset that if a child does not understand it “is the teachers fault” not the students – they just have not yet figured out how to help the student achieve. Teachers also need to “remove from their thinking” loaded language like confused, unmotivated, behavior problem…Instead creating a classroom culture where errors are productive and opportunities to learn. Finally, teachers engage in motivating teaching practices (project based learning, student choice, jigsaw method, cooperative learning etc.) and focus on students strengths as the “doorway-in” to teach and facilitate change.  Brophy (1983), Hattie (2023), Rosenthal (1992)

DATA

• 4 Meta Analysis reviews

• 151 Research studies

• 38,000 Students in research studies

• 4 Confidence level.  Hattie (2023) p. 217

QUOTES

To get students to believe it, we have to act as if we [their teachers] believe it ourselves in all the daily interactions of class instruction and class business that make up the emotional environment. And we have to create structures and routines that would exist only if we believe our students could be successful at a proficient level.  Saphier (2017).

“If it’s not working, it’s not the students fault…it’s my fault. I’ve just not identified what to do yet.”

The major aim of schooling should be to mess with the predictability of who succeeds and who fails. History, zip code, and IQ tests should not be a determination of success.  Indeed the essence of equity involves removing the predictability of success or failure. Hattie (2023) 

It is important for teachers to maintain a degree of uncertainty and extensively seek and process information about students before making judgements.  Sudkamp (2012)

The question is not ‘do teachers have expectations but, do they have false or misleading expectations’? Children know when they are treated differently by teachers due to expectations, and are quite accurate in their assessments on how teachers view them. Hettleman (2019)

The love of labels needs to be checked, as lower expectations often have devastating consequences…ability grouping and tracking is an insidious form of lower expectations. These lower expectations lead to questions that blame the students: why they cannot learn, engage and be successful. It is much easier to view the students as the cause than the teacher or educational system. Fischbach (2013)

Expecting every teacher to have the competency to judge underlying intellectual potential is unrealistic. They make wrong assumptions where they believe in the ‘halo’ effect: where strength  or weakness in one area is generalized to all areas. It is important for teachers to maintain a degree of uncertainty and extensively seek and process information about students before passing judgements. Johnston (2019).

Principals and teachers have a role in eliminating ‘deficit thinking.’  Deficit thinking pathologies the students and their backgrounds as the problem relieving educators of self-scrutiny.  All students can learn, but can we as educators learn to identify students strengths and utilize evidence-based practices to teach them? Sudkamp (2012)

Most teachers unfortunately, believe that student learning is primarily dependent on students’ ability and effort — this is wrong. Dufor (2016) p. 25

There is a tendency in education to teach the vast proportion of students, the outlook of limitations and failure rather than success. The data indicates that approximately 25% of students in a school have been determined (based on grades) to be a success, while 75% have learned that their ability is limited…they focus on what they cannot do, not what they can do. Wagner (2020) p.70

In 1965 Robert Rosenthal designed a social science experiment with profound consequences. He worked in a California elementary school and offered to test the students with the newly developed “Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition”  (bogus) which he told them could accurately tell which students would excel academically in the coming year.  He identified   randomly 20% of the 1st and 2nd grade students as having the potential to excel and shared this information with the teachers.   Ten years later he examined the performance of these students.  He discovered they had 27% higher IQ scores than control group; they were described by teachers as more curious, happier, better adjusted and more likely to experience success.  Teachers were observed to be warmer, more attentive, provided more input on learning, and provided more feedback.  Rosenthal discover the self-fulling prophecy and the ‘virtuous spiral.’ Coyle (2018) p. 185

It is so much easier to blame it on them…it is depressing to think it might be us. If it was them, then it was not my fault. If it was us, well I’m one of us. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of them. No one ever thinks of himself as one of them. We are always one of us. It is them that do the bad things. Terry Pratchett (1997) p. 206

The opposite of the Pygmalion Effect is also a measurable phenomenon. This is where the educator has lower expectations of a student, and as a result that student’s performance drops. This is called the ‘Golem Effect’. This might also be called a self-fulfilling prophecy, that goes like this: An educator has a lower expectation of a student, which is then reflected in the teacher’s behavior;  The student’s performance/behavior adjusts in response to the educator’s lower expectations; The educator sees this lower performance (or increased problematic behavior) and concludes it proves they were right to have lower expectations. Inclusive School Communities Link