Teacher-StudentInteractionandAttributionTheory.docVIP

Teacher Expectation and Student Performance Soc 545 Social Psychology Dr. Jerald Schutte Ai-Ju Ella Wu Fall, 2005 Problem Statement—The Counterintuitive Situation A student of a composition class talks to the administrator who in charge listening to these kind of appeals in a school about her failure in the class and believes that her teacher “didn’t like me”. While the administrator looks over the student’s portfolio, she sees improvement on her works and believes that her teacher, who is experienced, should recognize that her work did not match up the “fail” category. When the administrator talks to her teacher, the teacher gives comment on the student’s work and says that it is “shallow”. However, the “shallow” work has no much difference from the work of another student in the teacher’s class who has passed. Therefore, where dose the difference comes from? Proposition Drawing from the previous statement, I propose that teacher’s expectation on students does not necessary come from the student’s performance but usually from the student’s other characteristics and teacher’s previous experience of the student. We can say that teachers have antecedent expectations on different types of students. Analysis Teacher Expectation: The Pygmalion effect The Pygmalion effect refers to the idea that one’s expectations about a person can lead that person to behave and achieve in ways that accord to those expectations (Brehm and Kassin, 1996). Originally from the play “Pygmalion”, author George Bernard Shaw states that “…the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated…”. If one has judgments such as “troublemaker”, “looks smart”, “self-centered” on a person, he/she is forming certain expectations on this person and mostly by his/ her prophecies. This effect especially happens common in the classroom; teachers sometimes tend to judge the performance of students due to incorrect hypothesis, or expectations. Such anteceden