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"