essay about expectation in teacher

How teacher expectations empower student learning

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, niharika gupta and ng niharika gupta project lead - central square foundation sameer sampat ss sameer sampat co-founder - global school leaders @sameerksampat.

July 29, 2021

In primary school, we were both lucky to have teachers who thought we were brilliant: Ms. Darrow believed Sameer was an excellent student despite average grades, and Ms. Lewis made Niharika feel like she could survive anything. Looking back, neither of us knows why they thought this way, but we’re certain that they both truly felt this way, and their feelings made us believe it as well. Our time with these teachers made us believe in our ability to take on academic challenges, building a base of confidence that we would draw on throughout our lives.

We experienced firsthand that what a teacher expects from a student can have a powerful effect. But we also know that there are many students who never have a teacher who believes in them. There is a strong perception among teachers and other stakeholders that students from disadvantaged economic and social backgrounds cannot learn as well. These beliefs adversely impact what teachers do in the classroom and in turn how much students learn and grow. It’s precisely these students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have been hit hardest by COVID-19 and who need the most help. To bridge this growing inequality in learning, we must design support for teachers to nurture the belief that all students can learn.

The problem: The belief that all students can learn is not universal

We recently surveyed school leaders and teachers from India, Kenya, Malaysia, and Indonesia and found that only 48 percent of teachers in our sample believed that all students can learn, regardless of familial background or educational experience. This confirms a comprehensive World Bank survey of 16,000 teachers from eight low- and middle-income Latin American, African, and Asian countries, which found that a substantial portion of teachers believe they can’t help students who start out below grade level or come from troubled homes (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Teacher beliefs on their students’ learning abilities

Teachers underestimate the abilities of their students because of social attitudes and community prejudices. In low-income countries, the high social gap between teachers and students may reduce teacher empathy and motivation to work with their students.

Further, because school leaders and government officials rarely track teaching practices and student progress, teachers don’t internalize their responsibility toward ensuring all students are learning.

All of the above coupled with persistently low levels of prior student performance may reinforce teacher beliefs that not all students can learn.

Why the problem matters: There is a vicious cycle of low expectations

What teachers expect students to learn influences outcomes for their students. In a famous psychology experiment from 65 years ago , Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968) falsely told teachers that selected students were identified by a test to be “late bloomers” and would learn great amounts over the course of the years when in fact the researchers had selected students at random. A year later, the students identified as “late bloomers” had learned more than their peers because the teachers increased their support to these students.

Since this experiment, many other psychology studies have been done to replicate and understand the impact of teacher expectations on student achievement. In a landmark review of more than 30 years of research , Jussim and Harber (2005) find that while the original study may be overstating its results, teacher expectations do impact students, and this can be particularly strong for students from stigmatized groups. Rubie-Davies and colleagues ( 2006 ) found that teacher expectations of Maori students in New Zealand were lower than their peers, and can lead to lower outcomes. Recent research in economics to understand school effectiveness ( here and here ) in the United States find that schools that develop a culture that assumes all students can learn at high levels are best at raising the achievement of students from marginalized backgrounds.

Teacher expectations create a reinforcing cycle. Teacher beliefs about students’ growth potential shape those teachers’ actions, which then, in turn, impacts students’ growth, feeding back into teachers’ beliefs about students. In low- and middle-income countries, decades of underperformance of school systems have created a deeply ingrained belief that not all students can learn, which continues to limit the potential of these school systems to improve what they deliver to students (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The reinforcing cycle of teachers’ beliefs on student outcomes

How we can address the problem: Shift teacher expectations and behavior

Behavioral science has taught us that we must understand the mental models of key actors in a system to shift its outcomes. Sectors like health have extensively relied on learnings from behavioral science to improve health outcomes . In education, we must similarly research, develop, and test behavioral approaches to improving teacher performance. We suggest three broad categories of interventions for school systems to explore.

1. Develop leaders that build a culture of high expectations in the system

In a Global School Leader survey , we find that in schools where leaders do believe that students can learn, 54 percent of teachers also share this belief, compared with 37 percent of teachers that hold high expectations when the school leader does not. This reinforces studies that suggest that school leaders can increase teacher responsibility for student learning through organizational structures and discourse that help challenge existing beliefs . School systems should invest in understanding how they can grow and empower leaders to create an environment where the primary focus is on improving learning outcomes.

2. Explicitly discuss the power of teacher expectations

Pre-service and in-service teacher training must address the power of teacher expectations directly. Teachers can be supported to develop a growth mindset so that they view the problem of low student-learning levels as something they can change. Highlighting positive case studies that illustrate challenges that teachers and students face on a regular basis and ways they can overcome them can encourage teachers to reflect on the link between their classroom practices and the impact on students. Experiential training models can help teachers experience firsthand how their empathy for and expectations of students can drive learning.

3. Improving practices can shift beliefs

Beliefs can be deep rooted and hard to shift, but when teachers succeed in the classroom, that can also shift their beliefs on what students can achieve. Encouraging teachers to adopt classroom tools and effective pedagogical practices could help improve students’ learning levels, which could, in turn, shift teachers’ beliefs on student abilities.

Ensuring that all students have teachers like Ms. Darrow and Ms. Lewis with high expectations for their students’ success will require a totally fresh perception of students’ intelligence and ability. Until current practices address teacher expectations head-on and shift the “soft bigotry of low expectations” into the tangible empowerment of high expectations, students won’t reach their full growth potential.

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‘Believe in me, and I will too’: a study of how teachers’ expectations instilled confidence in Grade 10 students

• Open access
• Published: 20 October 2021
• Volume 24 , pages 1535–1556, ( 2021 )

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• Olivia Johnston   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3314-9031 1 ,
• Helen Wildy 2 &
• Jennifer Shand 2  

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Teacher expectation research has continued to establish an association between what teachers expect of their students and what students accomplish academically. These expectations affect students when they are communicated by teachers through differential treatment in the class, but no qualitative research has sought adolescent students’ points of view about how they experience teacher expectation effects. This paper presents new research findings that explain how Grade 10 students experienced their teachers’ expectations in ways that they reflected impacted their academic outcomes. Classic grounded theory methods were used to develop this new knowledge, which has implications for how teachers are educated for, and practice, interacting with secondary school students. The findings are grounded in data from more than 100 interviews with students and 175 classroom observations in three Western Australian metropolitan public secondary schools. Students’ voices are projected, explaining how their teachers convey high academic expectations through classroom interactions that instil confidence in students. The discussion invokes a connection to Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory and its enduring tenants of self-efficacy beliefs and mastery learning experiences.

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1 Introduction

Teachers’ expectations can have powerful effects on student academic attainment and their educational pathways (Papageorge et al., 2020 ; Wu & Bai, 2015 ). The phrase ‘teacher expectations’ is defined here as the judgements that teachers infer from their knowledge of students about if, when, and what students can achieve academically at school (Good, 1987 ; Rubie-Davies, 2014 ). Despite the relevance of teachers’ expectations for students’ experiences of school, a minority of research in this area has considered students’ points of view. Viewpoints of adults and educators have been privileged in the design of research approaches for the study and conceptualisation of teacher expectations.

A range of research methods have reflected this adult-educator focus in teacher expectation research. For example, some research has measured teacher expectations through teachers’ ability group recommendations (de Boer et al., 2010 ; Timmermans et al., 2016 ), surveying teachers about students’ future prospects (Friedrich et al., 2015 ), or by observations of teachers’ differential treatment (Bohlmann & Weinstein, 2013 ; Weinstein & Middlestadt, 1979 ). Only a small minority of studies about teacher expectations have sought to focus on the students’ points of view about their teachers’ expectations (Weinstein, 2002 ). While several studies have included quantitative surveys of students (Bohlmann & Weinstein, 2013 ; Chen et al., 2011 ; Rubie-Davies & Peterson, 2016 ), the hypotheses tested still originated from an adult-educator viewpoint. Before the research presented in this paper, Weinstein’s ( 2002 ) research was still the only qualitative study that included both interviews and observations about how students experienced their teachers’ expectations of them.

The research findings presented in this paper are from a project that generated new theory about students’ experiences of their teachers’ expectations of them. The participants included 25 secondary school students, who were observed interacting with their various learning area teachers across a week of school. The research contributes new substantive theory that explains how students experience teacher expectation effects, including through classroom interactions that instil confidence in students.

2 Literature about teacher expectations

The influence and formation of teachers’ expectations of their students is a topic with a long history of educational research, beginning even before the infamous Pygmalion study (Merton, 1948 ; Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968 ). Research has continued to show that teacher expectations can be significantly related to academic outcomes (Gentrup et al., 2020 ; Papageorge et al., 2020 ). The effect of teacher expectations is generally accepted to be a significant factor for student learning, with meta-analysis calculating an average effect size of 0.43 (Hattie, 2008 ). Further meta-analyses of the existing research have quantified the effect, showing that teacher expectations can account for anywhere from 3 to 60% of variance in student academic outcomes (Brophy & Good, 1984 ; Jussim & Harber, 2005 ; Jussim et al., 1996 ). The wide variance in teacher expectation effects reflects a broad range of contextual factors that play a role (Weinstein, 2008 ), including differences in student and teacher characteristics.

Differences in student characteristics can influence the expectations that teachers form for their students’ academic achievement. Students from already disadvantaged backgrounds, such as low socio-economic status (SES) (Alvidrez & Weinstein, 1999 ; Rubie-Davies, 2006 ) and minority ethnicities (Tenenbaum & Ruck, 2007 ; van den Bergh et al., 2010 ) are more likely to experience teacher expectation effects than their higher SES and majority ethnic group peers. Furthermore, some teachers have more pronounced expectancy effects on their students than others. Teachers’ differential behaviour between students communicates their expectations through both verbal and non-verbal messages (Babad & Taylor, 1992 ; Rosenthal, 2003 ). Differential behaviours can include preferential treatment, the work and activities offered, questioning of students, use of praise and criticism, ability grouping, behavioural expectations, offering of assistance, and the amount of student autonomy offered (Babad et al., 1982 ; Marshall & Weinstein, 1984 ; Rosenthal, 1994 ). Some teachers are prone to developing more stratified expectations of their students than others (Babad et al., 1982 ; Donohue et al., 2000 ), which can lead to increased differences in how they behave with different students in the class (Joseph et al., 2016 ; Le, 2014 ).

Teachers who use more of these differential behaviours when interacting with students have greater expectation effects on their students than teachers who use fewer differentiating behaviours (Kuklinski & Weinstein, 2001 ; Rubie-Davies, 2007 ). Differential behaviour is to be distinguished from Tomlinson’s ( 2003 ) notion of differentiation, which is a philosophical approach to teaching and learning that provides variety in learning experiences in appreciation of student diversity (Tomlinson, 2003 , 2014 ). Differential behaviour communicates varying expectations for learning to students and sends them messages about their place on the classroom achievement hierarchy (Weinstein, 2002 ), which is contrary to the flexibility integral in Tomlinson’s model of differentiation (Tomlinson, 2014 ).

In addition to varying levels of differential behaviours, some teachers communicate expectations of student achievement that are overall ‘high’ or ‘low’. High expectation teachers tend to use differential behaviours less frequently, communicating high expectations to their students by using a facilitative approach, continually monitoring students’ progress, giving all students the same opportunities to learn, and encouraging student autonomy (Rubie-Davies et al., 2015 ; Weinstein, 2002 ). On the other hand, low expectations teachers ask closed questions, group students inflexibly by ability, use more direct instruction and offer less choice (Rubie-Davies, 2007 ). Surveys of students have confirmed that students associate these behaviours with teachers’ expectations (Rio, 2017 ; Segedin et al., 2012 ) and that these teacher behaviours can influence student academic self-concepts (Bohlmann & Weinstein, 2013 ; Chen et al., 2011 ). However, there is very little research that provides qualitative explanation about how teachers’ expectations are related to student achievement from the students’ point of view.

3 Students’ experiences of their teachers’ expectations

Research has investigated student perspectives of the influence that teachers’ expectations have on student academic outcomes, with both quantitative and qualitative research findings that teacher expectations can influence students’ own beliefs about their capacity to succeed at school (Bohlmann & Weinstein, 2013 ; Rubie-Davies, 2008 ). Students can be astute observers of their teachers’ expectations of them (Wong, 2014 ), even at the primary school level (Le, 2014 ; Weinstein, 2002 ). However, Weinstein’s research is the only study to include deep qualitative exploration of students’ perspectives of their teachers’ differing expectations (Weinstein, 2002 , 2008 ; Weinstein & Worrell, 2016 ). Her work (2002) included observation and interviews of primary school students in the United States, developing new knowledge that students saw their position in the classroom hierarchy as more or less static depending on how much differentiating behaviour the teacher used. Consequentially, students who experienced a lot of differential treatment had little hope that their efforts at school would make a difference to their achievement, while students whose teachers used less differential treatment felt their efforts would positively impact on their learning outcomes.

Since Weinstein’s work, only one small study from India (Chandrasegaran & Padmakumari, 2018 ) has included some qualitative data about students’ perceptions of their teachers’ expectations, but these were pitted against their educators’ perspectives. The students in this study reported a general increase in confidence and feelings of self-worth that resulted in a positive attitude for students, which was attributed to the teachers’ feedback, but the data from the students lacked descriptive depth. Further research from Gillborn et al. ( 2012 ) has considered how Black Caribbean adults in the United Kingdom recollect their experiences of low teachers’ expectations retrospectively and from their current perspectives as parents, reinforcing racialised expectations as a barrier to equity in education. Yet, this research still does not include the perspectives of the students themselves, instead relying on their adult parents to qualify the students’ experiences.

Multiple international studies have found that young people continue to find their teachers’ expectations relevant for their experiences of schooling and their academic achievement (Andrews & Gutwein, 2017 ; Bae et al., 2008 ; Bishop & Berryman, 2006 ; Williams, 2013 ). However, these studies encountered teacher expectations in their findings while aiming to explore students’ experiences at school more generally. Teacher expectations were also found to be relevant in research that set out to study other aspects of students’ educational experiences, such as ability grouping (Hallam & Ireson, 2007 ). Other than Weinstein’s work, no qualitative research has been specifically designed to achieve to research aim of explaining how students experience their teachers’ expectations of them, from their perspectives.

Surveys of students and other quantitative approaches used in educational psychology continue to establish how teachers’ expectations influence students when students adopt self-perceptions that reflect teachers’ expectations (Friedrich et al., 2015 ; Trusz, 2018 ). Researchers initially established a theoretical connection between teachers’ use of differential treatment, which communicated expectations to influence student “self-concepts” or “self-esteem” (Brattesani et al., 1984 ; Weinstein et al., 1982 ). This link between teachers’ communication of expectations through differential behaviour and the impact on students’ self-confidence has been established further in more recent research (Bohlmann & Weinstein, 2013 ; Trusz, 2018 ). Students’ self-beliefs become more congruent with their teachers’ expectations when their teachers’ use more differential behaviours in the classroom, reflecting how students’ perceptions of themselves mediate the teacher expectation effect (Chen et al., 2011 ; Friedrich et al., 2015 ).

Students’ role in the teacher expectation effect is pivotal, yet no qualitative research in this area has sought the views of secondary school students to develop new knowledge about how they experience teacher expectation effects. Adolescents can provide a unique perspective as they find themselves at junctions where their educational decisions are directly associated with their future pathways. They also have distinct learning needs, and their maturity can make them more self-aware and reflective in their experiences of their teachers’ expectations. They interact with a variety of learning-area teachers in a variety of classrooms, so they experience different teacher expectations that they could contrast.

4 Research aim

This study sought to develop substantive grounded theory to explain how students experience their teachers’ expectations of them. The main research question was: How do students experience their teachers’ expectations for their academic achievement?

5 Research approach

To answer the research question, a qualitative research approach based on the theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism was selected as most appropriate. Qualitative research allows research to ‘get at’ the inner happenings of participants to describe the experiences of the participants (Corbin & Strauss, 2008 ; Creswell, 2014 ), so this suited my study’s aim to focus on the meanings constructed by the Grade 10 student participants. The theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism was used to inform the study because teacher expectations are communicated through the symbolic exchanges between teachers and students during classroom interactions (Blumer, 1969 ; Francis & Adams, 2019 ). The study sought to develop new theory about how students experience their teachers’ expectations of them, so a framework that acknowledges the importance of social interaction in creating mutually constructed realities was appropriate (Blumer, 1969 ; Powell, 2014 ).

Grounded theory was selected as the research approach because it is consistent with the philosophical framework of symbolic interactionism and suitable for the research goal of developing new theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2008 ; Handberg et al., 2015 ). Through grounded theory, a ‘web of meaning’ was created to reflect the mutual construction of social reality as well as its complexity and interconnectivity (Aldiabat & Navenec, 2011 ; Ezzy, 2002 ). Grounded theory, symbolic interactionism, and the review of the literature about teacher expectations were drawn upon to develop a conceptual framework for this research, in conjunction with the existing literature about teacher expectations. The conceptual framework was designed as a basis for qualitative exploration of the conditions, actions, strategies and tactics, and consequences of students’ experiences of their teachers’ expectations (Blumer, 1969 ; Corbin & Strauss, 2008 ). Further guiding research questions were developed based on the conceptual framework, which were used to develop conversational semi-structured interview questions.

Ethics approval was obtained from the University of Western Australia Human Research Ethics Committee and the Department of Education System Performance Branch. Student participants were recruited from three secondary schools in a Western Australian Metropolitan area with student populations from mid-low average socio-economic status backgrounds. Students who were invited to participate were those who were identified by their peers, teachers, or through my own observation as students who were influenced by their teachers’ expectations of them—these students obtained As in some classes but Fs in others and were observed by the researcher, their peers, and/or their teacher to have altered behaviour according to class and teacher. Layered consent was gained firstly through the school principal, then the teachers, students, and parents who were progressively recruited.

Each participant student was followed to a variety of their Grade 10 classes over the course of a week of school, with interviews at the end of each day about their experiences of their teachers’ expectations. The classroom observations provided a shared “Appendix A ” context for discussion between the students and I (the researcher) during the interviews. A classroom observation tool is presented in “”, which was developed from observation tools that have been designed in previous research for observation of teacher expectations in the classroom (Bohlmann & Weinstein, 2013 ; Weinstein et al., 1982 ). All observations were conducted by a single field researcher, with students’ confirming instances where expectations had been communicated during the interviews. A total of 100 interviews and 175 classroom observations were conducted across 25 weeks of school with 25 student participants, with 34 different teachers’ classes observed. At each school, some of the Grade 10 teachers allowed multiple student participants in their class to be observed, so for example one English teacher allowed eight of her students to be observed in her class over eight weeks (one student per week was observed, one at a time). Each student was observed interacting with at least two different teachers in two different classes to facilitate comparison. The interview schedule (see “Appendix B ”) included questions that invoked comparison between teachers, which was facilitated by the field researcher observing multiple classes each day.

Interviews were coded separately by the three authors of this paper to establish consistency of the coding and inter-rater reliability. Each interview was transcribed and analysed before returning to the field to collect more data the next day to allow for the grounded theory to develop through theoretical sampling (Corbin & Strauss, 2008 ; Glaser & Strauss, 2017 ). Theoretical sampling is integral to grounded theory research because it allows the theory to be built iteratively. This type of sampling is purposive and involves the intentional recruitment of participants who will maximize opportunities for the theory to be constructed (Corbin & Strauss, 2008 ). By progressively building the theory, the students were involved as we gradually constructed the theory together. A brief example is provided below and a full description of the process used to generate the grounded theory together with the students is available in a separate paper (Authors, 2021).

One example of how the students and I worked together to develop the theory also reflects the data analysis, synthesis, and abstraction process. I was observing and interviewing the second student participant, “Curt.” I asked Curt how he knew that his teacher had high expectations of him, and he explained that high expectations were communicated when his teacher praised him for “good thinking,” by saying “well done.” I asked Curt how he responded to the teachers’ communication of high expectations and he said it made him feel “good, because I got it right. It means I’m on the right track. He (the teacher) said to all the people who got it, he said ‘you guys should do Physics next year” (Curt). Footnote 1 After transcribing the interview with Curt that evening, I coded this data with the open code of “encouragement” in NVivo, which I used to record my data analysis.

After the next day of classroom observations with Curt, I asked him during our interview if the code of “encouragement” was appropriate for what he had described. He confirmed that it was. We used the opportunity to further explore his experience, and he elaborated that the teachers’ encouragement “makes me feel smart…when I feel smart, I’m getting everything correct and I get higher marks in the test” (Curt). I coded this next piece of data under the open code of “feeling smart,” but Curt had pointed me towards a connection between teachers’ encouragement conveying high expectations and his “feeling smart.” Later, I would abstract these two open codes into the theoretical code of “increasing student confidence.”

By the time I was working with the 12th student participant, more than 200 open codes had accumulated and there was a need to abstract the data into provisional theoretical codes. The codes that Curt’s data had developed: “feeling smart” and “encouragement’ were synthesised with the codes of “pride,” and “self-confidence.” The theoretical category of “increasing student confidence” was developed, including negative cases from the open codes of “disappointment” and “embarrassment.” The theoretical code was further explored and refined through theoretical sampling and constant comparison with the next student participants, until saturation of the theory was confirmed with the final 3 participants. In grounded theory, saturation occurs when there are no new properties and dimensions of the theory emerging, only data indicators of elements that have already been discovered (Corbin & Strauss, 2008 ; Giles et al., 2016 ). Thus, the grounded theory was complete.

6 The grounded theory: reconciling with teachers’ expectations

The findings of the research are synthesised in a substantive theory which is a Basic Social Process (BSP) called Reconciling with teachers’ expectations. A BSP is a type of grounded theory that explains a fundamental process that occurs in social environments (Glaser, 1978 ). The BSP of Reconciling with teachers’ expectations explains the four-stage process through which students experience their teachers’ expectations of them.

Firstly, the students go through the step of ‘Appraising’, during which they ascertain their teachers’ expectations of them. These interactions inform students’ ‘Responding’ to their teachers’ expectations during Stage 2. The students’ responses to the teacher expectations inform their ‘Acting’ in Stage 3 in ways that they ‘Reflect’ in Stage 4 are productive or detrimental to their academic outcomes at school. An example of this BSP is explored in the findings below, where students appraise high expectations when teachers convey belief in their capacity to succeed academically. The students respond by feeling encouraged and capable of achieving, which motivates them academically. They give their work effort and experience improved results, which leads to a self-reinforcing cycle of increased achievement.

The next two sections present the research findings according to the four stages. The first two stages and second two stages are reported together since the quotes from students are often illustrative of two stages. Rather than segment the quotes, they are presented together to provide to illustrate the richness of the data in context.

6.1 Appraising and responding

The students appraised whether their teachers had high expectations of them during student–teacher interactions that conveyed belief in their capacity to succeed. Student–teacher interactions conveyed high expectations when teachers encouraged students by expressing pride in them, challenging them, and giving them opportunities to succeed.

Students were asked when their teachers had communicated high expectations during the interviews. Their responses included “teachers that notice us doing good,” (Adam) “encouraging” (Corey) and “she encourages us” (Jaida). Encouragement was appraised by students as conveying high teacher expectations for their academic achievement by conveying pride in students verbally or non-verbally. For example, Rachel appraised high expectations in how her teacher had assigned a project: “He has high expectations, like he’s pretty impressed with all of us. Like I think he is excited to see what we come up with” (Rachel). High expectations were conveyed by teachers that that encouraged students by expressing pride in what they could accomplish.

Other students agreed that their teachers had communicated high teachers’ expectations through encouragement when the students understood that their teachers were proud of them. Araya explained how she responded to high teachers’ expectations that were communicated through praise positively. She was asked when her teachers had communicated high expectations, and she brought up the example of a teachers’ praise when she answered a question correctly in class. She explained that when her teacher…

…was like ‘right! You are right on the money!’ and ‘Wow, you got it in one!’ I’m kind of really proud of myself. I’m like—yeah the teacher’s proud of me, and that makes me feel good about myself. I get more confident and put up my hand. I also just sort of feel like maybe it’s not a sort of hard as it would be before. (Araya)

Araya’s appraisal of high teachers’ expectations, communicated through encouragement, made her feel proud of herself. Furthermore, her self-efficacy beliefs were improved, and she considers herself to be more likely to experience continued success at learning in that class. Sarah echoed that a teacher had communicated high expectations that made her feel more confident when she praised her success:

I explained it to her and she was really happy with the overall idea… she was like Yes YES YES! and thrusting her arms.…when she does stuff like that, it actually makes me feel really proud, because you’re on the right track, you’re going to do good (Sarah).

When Sarah’s teacher communicated high expectations by conveying pride in her, Sarah felt proud too. Other students agreed that verbal praise conveyed high expectations, which they responded to by feeling encouraged to engage in subsequent learning because they considered it likely that the outcome would be positive. When teachers were positive about students’ capacity to succeed, the students were positive in their approach to the learning too, because they were more confident that they would be successful.

The encouragement that conveyed high teacher expectations to students could be associated with praise in having noticed the students’ success, or in terms of encouraging students to engage in challenging learning. Thus, the students appraised high teachers’ expectations when their teachers looked back on their successes with pride, but also when their teachers carried this belief forward to share anticipation that the students could also succeed in the future. Belief that the students could achieve in the future was communicated by encouraging students to give effort. For example, the students described how they had experienced high teachers’ expectations when teachers said things that them feel more confident that they could succeed at future challenges. For example, Libby remembered a teacher who conveyed high expectations when “…he always says that “I really like that, you’re really trying”. He says that to every student. It gives you more confidence” (Libby). Araya elaborated that high expectations were communicated when her teacher challenged her: “…when he says, ‘I’m trying to make you think!’ …we need to think about it, like find the right answer. He’s just like, encouraging us” (Araya). Encouragement to give effort and engage in challenge was experienced by these students as indicative of the teachers’ high expectations that they could accomplish difficult learning.

Students often responded positively when high teacher expectations were communicated by teachers who challenged students to succeed at difficult learning. When the teachers encouraged challenge and conveyed a belief that the students could succeed, the students responded by sharing the teachers’ belief that they could succeed. Furthermore, they became motivated to manifest this belief. Jaida explained that when teachers “encourage us (students), it makes me feel like I can do it. It makes me want to try” (Jaida). The students’ self-efficacy belief towards future learning was in this way improved when teacher communicated high expectations by encouraging and challenging students. Erin explained further when she mentioned that high expectations had been communicated when her teacher challenging her to attempt some “tricky” new work with encouragement, and how she felt when she experienced success:

…it kind of makes you feel good, because I understand it, but it’s tricky and new. It makes me feel happy, and good, because like, oh, I get it now, and it will be easier to do the other questions as well (Erin).

Erin responded to her teachers’ high expectations by feeling encouraged to keep trying and complete further questions when she experienced success. Her initial success was a result of the teachers’ encouragement, which was perceived as praise for being able to accomplish a challenging learning task. Erin’s mastery led to her approaching further questions with confidence that she would be successful. Because her teacher encouraged her, she felt encouraged, too.

Students like Erin responded positively to teachers who communicated high expectations through assigning challenging learning. However, the challenging learning was presented encouragingly in a way that they reflected allowed them to succeed. They appraised this as communicating high expectations through encouragement, but some challenges were not appraised as high expectations or responded to positively. For example, Sarah invoked a comparison between high teacher expectations in her above example with a scenario where the teacher had:

…he showed like a graph of our grades, and none of ours really moved. It was only like the other classes that moved. The grades went up, and ours did not. It was actually kind of confronting, because our class, like, it was BAD (students’ emphasis)… It was kind of, exposing…it was so unfair… whenever the class was doing bad the teacher would be like “oh this is the (highest) class, you’re supposed to be good at this!” It was pretty mean (Sarah).

For student like Sarah, the teacher did not communicate high expectations when they compared them unfavourably to other students. She described this as not communicating high expectations, but as “mean”. Other students like Brad, Zane and Libby used the word ‘mean’ to describe teachers who compared them unfavourably with their peers.

Thus, the students appraised high expectations when their teachers encouraged them in their successes and efforts. High expectations were experienced by students whose teachers assigned them challenging learning tasks without comparing them unfavourably to other students. The students responded positively when high teachers’ expectations were appraised through actions that improved their confidence, encouraging them to persevere in their learning. The students responded by becoming confident that they could succeed, too.

6.2 Acting and reflecting

The students reflected that they would end up doing better in school when their teachers conveyed high expectations that instilled confidence in them. They approached their learning with more positivity and higher self-efficacy beliefs, which they felt improved their academic outcomes. For example, Brad reflected that when his teachers have high expectations:

…I think they just try to push me then, because they know that I can do that, but sometimes I just don’t. Instead of just saying, just say I don’t want to do my work, then they’ll say like “I can see you can do it” and then I end up doing it. I think I do more work when they do that (Brad).

Brad’s reflection summarises the students’ descriptions of their increased motivation when their teachers conveyed high expectations that increased their confidence. When the teachers communicated high expectations by encouraging them and communicating belief in them, they felt like they could do it, so they tried harder and did “more work”.

Other students reflected that they persevered in giving difficult learning effort when their teachers had communicated confidence in their capacity to succeed. After describing her response to her teacher’s high expectations for a “tricky” learning task (above), Erin was asked how this affected her academic achievement. She explained that “…I have not met it (the teachers’ expectation) yet. I probably will soon, but not yet. Just not now” (Erin). Erin was working towards meeting the teacher’s high expectations and described her own confidence that she would eventually get there. She attributed her own confidence to the teachers’ confidence in her. Other students agreed that when teachers believed they would be able to achieve, they felt motivated. Jessica recalled her teacher challenging her:

… he’s like “prove it” and then I have that logic, okay I’ll prove it here, then I’ll think this is going to work, prove it. So I just sort of clarify how I think, like we had to change to this idea, that won’t work, we had to change to this idea, that won’t work, so we had to continuously trial and error (Jessica).

Jessica is prepared to persevere to meet her teachers’ high expectations, like Erin. These examples illustrate how the students’ confidence inspired their motivation to persist when learning was difficult.

Students also described committing more time to their learning when their teachers had instilled confidence in them by communicating high expectations. For example, Jenny described working towards achieving: “…some of them, just like the harder ones, because there’s lots of working out that you have to do, I just have to like, it’s like time“ (Jenny). She explained she “do(es) a lot of work at home” to meet her teachers’ high expectations. Her willingness to devote a lot of time to engaging to challenging learning was accredited to her teachers’ expectation of success: “…he thinks we probably could do it” (Jenny). Further willingness to devote time to study and schoolwork was described by students as a result of their teachers’ high expectations. Ryan described how he would have to do “extra when I get home and stuff” (Ryan) to make sure he understood. The students acted with increased time commitment when their teachers communicated high expectations through confidence.

The students explained that when their teachers communicated high expectations by having belief in their capacity to succeed, they feel confident and “actually try.” This phrase was repeated by several students, including Libby who had described increased confidence from her teachers’ verbal encouragement (above). She went on to explain that “…it gives you more confidence. If a teacher just doesn’t say anything, you just feel like you’re not good enough and you don’t know how to do it. I actually try (in that class)” (Libby). Libby’s negative case of the teacher who does not build confidence emphasises the importance of communicating high expectations to students, who can be susceptible to feeling “not good enough.” When students felt confident that they knew “how to do it,” they gave their learning authentic effort.

Teachers’ high expectations were motivating for students when they adopted their teachers’ beliefs in their capacity to succeed. Corey explained that his teachers’ praise had “encourage(d) me to do more work. I want to do more.” (Corey). When the students were motivated by high teacher expectations, they did more. Sarah added that “I like just work to improve every time” (Sarah).

Nadia explained that his was because of increasing self-efficacy belief:

…he would motivate me to do more, I‘d be like “oh wow!” And I’d realise that I actually could do more. So it means that in like the next assignments he wouldn’t have to tell me, I could just do it, and it would just come naturally, and I wouldn’t have to put that extra effort in, like when he helped me with it. So after that it just starting increasing and my grades just kept getting higher (Nadia).

Nadia’s quote represents how students’ self-efficacy beliefs were improved when their teachers communicated high expectations through confidence, which could lead to a self-perpetuating cycle of continued achievement. For students like Nadia, it was the teachers’ high expectations that initiated academic improvements.

However, students did not always respond positively to teachers’ communication of high expectations for students’ capacity to succeed when it was communicated as disappointment in the students’ not fulfilling expectations. This was the case in the example from Sarah in the above section, when she described the teacher as “mean” for pressuring students to do better by comparing them unfavourably to another group. Sarah described this as communicating high expectations, but by using pressure to succeed rather than instilling confidence. Other students agreed that high teachers’ expectations only instilled confidence when they were encouraging, not negative. For example, when Rachel was asked to explain when her teacher had communicated expectations for her academic achievement that day, she brought up an interaction where a teacher had been disappointed in her.

I know she’s, like, very disappointed. I’m like walk in—didn’t happen! When I feel, like, bad or, like, oh—why am I in this situation that I put myself in—I’m just, like,—don’t think about it. but it probably, like, builds up and then at times I’ll think, oh a big sad, and then it will all, like, come up. I feel, like, yeah I’m living in the, like, yeah I’ll try hard next year, you know what I mean? (Rachel)

Rachel is describing how her teachers’ expectations made her feel as if she didn’t measure up, which had disappointed the teacher and led to Rachel being passive about her learning. Rachel explained that her teachers’ disappointment made her want to avoid future interactions with the teacher. Furthermore, she was passive about her efforts when her teacher expressed disappointment in her.

These findings show that when expectations were communicated in a context of students having not met expectations, students responded negatively and became passive about their learning. On the other hand, teachers’ high expectations that instilled confidence in students were experienced positively by students only when the teachers were encouraging during interactions with students.

Overall, the research findings illustrate how students experienced the influence of their teachers’ expectations through the teachers’ instilling confidence in them. The teachers’ expectations improved the students’ learning outcomes when they effectively instilled a shared belief in the students’ capacity to succeed. The students appraised teachers as having high expectations when the teachers encouraged them and made them feel capable of learning, challenging them to engage in challenging tasks. The students felt that they could succeed and were motivated to persevere when the learning became difficult, which they reflected led to successes in learning. Success empowered the students so that they continued to act in and then acting in ways that they reflected upon as improving academic outcomes. However, when teachers communicated high expectations by emphasising students’ lack of success by contrasting them to peers or dwelling on the students’ failure to meet high expectations, the students became passive about their learning. Such teachers were appraised as “mean” and did not effectively communicate high expectations that positively impacted on student learning.

7 Discussion

The findings of this study explain that students experience high teachers’ expectations as instilling confidence in their ability as learners. This finding can be understood with consideration of enduring educational theory, such as that of student self-efficacy beliefs from Bandura ( 1986 ) and Dweck’s theory of Mindset (Dweck, 2012 ). The findings also show how some of Weinstein’s findings about how primary school students experience their teachers’ expectations are exacerbated in the secondary school setting where student confidence is particularly vulnerable (Weinstein, 2002 ). A discussion of Rubie-Davies’ work ( 2006 ; Rubie-Davies & Peterson, 2016 ) also furthers a situated understanding of the contribution to knowledge and understanding of teachers’ expectations provided by this research.

The connection between teachers’ expectations and students’ self-beliefs about their capacity to succeed at school has been established in previous quantitative research from educational psychology (Tyler & Boelter, 2008 ). The research findings presented in this paper provide a student perspective on how teacher expectation effects occur, emphasising the direct effect on student self-beliefs. The students in the study referred to this as “confidence,” but their descriptions of the role of verbal encouragement and task mastery are most reminiscent of Bandura’s ( 1986 ) theoretical construct of self-efficacy belief. Bandura’s notion of self-efficacy beliefs are the crux of his enduring Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986 ). Student self-efficacy beliefs, in education, are students’ perceptions of their own capacity for the organisation and behaviour they need to achieve a particular effect or outcome in their learning (Bandura, 1986 ; Zimmerman, 2000 ). The students’ self-efficacy about a learning task, for example, will shape their behaviour as they conduct that task.

The findings of the study presented in this paper can be understood through Bandura’s theory, reinforcing that when students have high self-efficacy beliefs, they act by “pushing” themselves and “doing extra work” to achieve challenging learning outcomes. Bandura’s self-efficacy belief is conceptualised as specific to performance on certain tasks. Teachers can influence students’ self-efficacy beliefs positively by providing them with mastery learning experiences, encouragement, and access to other students who model the skills and organisation that lead to success (Schunk & Usher, 2012 ; Sewell & St George, 2009 ). The students in this study experienced teachers who positively influenced their self-efficacy beliefs as communicating high expectations for their learning. This provides an explanation of how students experienced their teachers’ expectations of them in ways that influence their achievement at school: through their self-efficacy beliefs.

The study presented in this paper is unique in that it included data about Grade 10 students’ experiences of their teachers’ expectations across several of their different secondary school classes, explaining how these students were influenced by their teachers’ expectations: through classroom interactions that instilled confidence. When teachers provided challenging, but attainable, opportunities for students to experience mastery learning experiences, students regarded this as a characteristic of high expectation teachers and experienced increased confidence and academic attainment. As illustrated in the above examples of students like Sarah and Rachel, a student could experience confidence in learning in one class, but experience feelings of inadequacy in learning in another class. For these students, this was related to how the teachers’ expectations were communicated during interactions with the teacher.

Previous research has discussed the notion of subject-specific student self-belief (Marsh et al., 2012 ), but this has been associated with the learning area itself rather than the teacher. The research presented in this paper shows that when teachers communicated high expectations with encouragement, pride, and challenge, students reacted by embracing challenging learning, “trying really hard” (Libby). However, when teachers communicated high expectations in a way that was comparative and emphasised students’ previous failure to meet high expectations, the students responded negatively. They appraised teachers that applied academic pressure in this way as “mean” (Sarah, Libby, Brad, Zane) and became passive about their learning. These findings suggest that student self-efficacy beliefs can become differentiated across learning areas based on varying experiences of teacher expectations.

The student experiences that were illustrated in the findings also reflect how students mindsets and concepts about themselves as learners are related to teacher expectations, which is reminiscent of Dweck’s contrasting growth and fixed mindsets about learning (Dweck, 2008 ). Similar to the primary school students in Rhona Weinstein’s ( 2002 ) study who experienced a loss of hope and belief in their capacity to change their position in the classroom hierarchy when their teacher communicated low expectations, the students in the study presented in this paper described their experience of giving up on learning in classes where the teacher was appraised communicating expectations framed by contrasting student achievement against one another. When the students were compared unfavourably to their peers, they became passive in their learning. Rubie-Davies’ research ( 2007 ) affirms that teachers with low expectations group students inflexibly into ability groups. The research presented in this paper suggests that students experience fixed views of ability as detrimental to their confidence.

On the other hand, students felt empowered and confident in their learning with teachers who communicated high expectations. These findings show that Weinstein’s research with primary students is also relevant in the context of adolescent students. Adolescent students are on the cusp of adulthood and are in the process of developing individual identity and aspiration, so the role of teacher expectations in this process is highly relevant. The findings also elaborate on why interactions that communicate teacher expectations are associated with student academic achievement: through student confidence. Rubie-Davies and her colleagues have also established that high expectations teachers are more likely to give students another try at answering questions and ask for more detail, provide more feedback, and encourage student motivation and autonomy (Rubie-Davies et al., 2015 ; Wang et al., 2019 ). These practices communicate high expectations to students, but the research presented in this paper suggests that this is because they communicate a belief in students that students then adopt in their own self-beliefs.

8 Limitations

This paper presents the results of a grounded theory study that was conducted at three Schools in the Perth Metropolitan area. The findings are only representative of the group and students under study, and more research would be needed to ascertain the extent to which the substantive theory could be used to develop a formal theory that is generalisable. It was not within this study’s aims to create a formal theory that represents all human interactions, because the research aim was to generate a substantive theory. Thus, the study is limited in its generalisability and makes no claims to apply to populations beyond those from which the data were collected. Some readers, however, may find the research or some aspects of it transferable to their own contexts.

9 Conclusion

The findings of this study presented in this paper show that students experience teacher expectation effects through the BSP of Reconciling with teachers’ expectations when the teacher communicates expectations in ways that instil confidence in students (or fail to do so). The students’ beliefs about themselves as learners are shaped by the teacher’s communication of expectations for students, so that when the teacher coveys a belief that the student can succeed at school, the student believes it too and acts accordingly.

These findings have implications for teacher education and how teachers prepare for and practice interacting with their students. Teachers who aim to communicate high expectations can adopt the strategies suggested by the students in these findings, including praising and encouraging student success during classroom interactions to instil confidence. Teachers could also adapt these findings to inform how they challenge students to learn in their class, striking the right balance between pressuring students and empowering them. High teacher expectations were only effective in motivating students to act in ways that improved academic outcomes when they were presented without unfavourable comparison. High expectations for all students, not just the top performers, were a contingency of positive teacher expectation effects.

The findings of this study add to knowledge about teacher expectations by explaining how teacher expectations can affect student academic outcomes through student confidence. High expectations were communicated when the teachers supported students’ accomplishment in challenging learning tasks by questioning them and encouraging their efforts and perseverance, expressing belief that they would succeed. Continued research in education emphasises that mastery experiences and verbal encouragement can shape student self-efficacy beliefs (Hendricks, 2016 ; Schunk, 2003 ; Wilson et al., 2014 ) and that self-efficacy beliefs are associated with improved student outcomes (Honicke & Broadbent, 2016 ). The research adds to this knowledge by explaining how teacher expectations influenced student self-beliefs and why this affected their educational outcomes. Interactions where students appraised high teacher expectations improved their self-belief, which led them to act in ways that they reflected promoted academic attainment.

Random pseudonyms are used for the 14 participants whose quotes are used in this manuscript so that readers can differentiate between their voices.

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Appendix A: Observation tool

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" Appendix A ".

Appendix B: Interview schedule

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Johnston, O., Wildy, H. & Shand, J. ‘Believe in me, and I will too’: a study of how teachers’ expectations instilled confidence in Grade 10 students. Soc Psychol Educ 24 , 1535–1556 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-021-09668-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-021-09668-1

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Teachers' Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform

Alix Spiegel

Teachers interact differently with students expected to succeed. But they can be trained to change those classroom behaviors. iStockphoto.com hide caption

Teachers interact differently with students expected to succeed. But they can be trained to change those classroom behaviors.

In my Morning Edition story today, I look at expectations — specifically, how teacher expectations can affect the performance of the children they teach.

The first psychologist to systematically study this was a Harvard professor named Robert Rosenthal , who in 1964 did a wonderful experiment at an elementary school south of San Francisco.

The idea was to figure out what would happen if teachers were told that certain kids in their class were destined to succeed, so Rosenthal took a normal IQ test and dressed it up as a different test.

"It was a standardized IQ test, Flanagan's Test of General Ability," he says. "But the cover we put on it, we had printed on every test booklet, said 'Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition.' "

Rosenthal told the teachers that this very special test from Harvard had the very special ability to predict which kids were about to be very special — that is, which kids were about to experience a dramatic growth in their IQ.

After the kids took the test, he then chose from every class several children totally at random. There was nothing at all to distinguish these kids from the other kids, but he told their teachers that the test predicted the kids were on the verge of an intense intellectual bloom.

As he followed the children over the next two years, Rosenthal discovered that the teachers' expectations of these kids really did affect the students. "If teachers had been led to expect greater gains in IQ, then increasingly, those kids gained more IQ," he says.

But just how do expectations influence IQ?

As Rosenthal did more research, he found that expectations affect teachers' moment-to-moment interactions with the children they teach in a thousand almost invisible ways. Teachers give the students that they expect to succeed more time to answer questions, more specific feedback, and more approval: They consistently touch, nod and smile at those kids more.

7 Ways Teachers Can Change Their Expectations

Researcher Robert Pianta offered these suggestions for teachers who want to change their behavior toward problem students:

• Watch how each student interacts. How do they prefer to engage? What do they seem to like to do? Observe so you can understand all they are capable of.
• Listen. Try to understand what motivates them, what their goals are and how they view you, their classmates and the activities you assign them.
• Engage. Talk with students about their individual interests. Don't offer advice or opinions – just listen.
• Experiment: Change how you react to challenging behaviors. Rather than responding quickly in the moment, take a breath. Realize that their behavior might just be a way of reaching out to you.
• Meet: Each week, spend time with students outside of your role as "teacher." Let the students choose a game or other nonacademic activity they'd like to do with you. Your job is to NOT teach but watch, listen and narrate what you see, focusing on students' interests and what they do well. This type of activity is really important for students with whom you often feel in conflict or who you avoid.
• Reach out: Know what your students like to do outside of school. Make it a project for them to tell you about it using some medium in which they feel comfortable: music, video, writing, etc. Find both individual and group time for them to share this with you. Watch and listen to how skilled, motivated and interested they can be. Now think about school through their eyes.
• Reflect: Think back on your own best and worst teachers, bosses or supervisors. List five words for each that describe how you felt in your interactions with them. How did the best and the worst make you feel? What specifically did they do or say that made you feel that way? Now think about how your students would describe you. Jot down how they might describe you and why. How do your expectations or beliefs shape how they look at you? Are there parallels in your beliefs and their responses to you?

"It's not magic, it's not mental telepathy," Rosenthal says. "It's very likely these thousands of different ways of treating people in small ways every day."

So since expectations can change the performance of kids, how do we get teachers to have the right expectations? Is it possible to change bad expectations? That was the question that brought me to the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, where I met Robert Pianta.

Pianta, dean of the Curry School, has studied teachers for years, and one of the first things he told me when we sat down together was that it is truly hard for teachers to control their expectations.

"It's really tough for anybody to police their own beliefs," he said. "But think about being in a classroom with 25 kids. The demands on their thinking are so great."

Still, people have tried. The traditional way, Pianta says, has been to sit teachers down and try to change their expectations through talking to them.

"For the most part, we've tried to convince them that the beliefs they have are wrong," he says. "And we've done most of that convincing using information."

But Pianta has a different idea of how to go about changing teachers' expectations. He says it's not effective to try to change their thoughts; the key is to train teachers in an entirely new set of behaviors.

For years, Pianta and his colleagues at the Curry School have been collecting videotapes of teachers teaching. By analyzing these videos in minute ways, they've developed a good idea of which teaching behaviors are most effective. They can also see, Pianta tells me, how teacher expectations affect both their behaviors and classroom dynamics.

Pianta gives one very specific example: the belief that boys are disruptive and need to be managed.

"Say I'm a teacher and I ask a question in class, and a boy jumps up, sort of vociferously ... 'I know the answer! I know the answer! I know the answer!' " Pianta says.

"If I believe boys are disruptive and my job is control the classroom, then I'm going to respond with, 'Johnny! You're out of line here! We need you to sit down right now.' "

This, Pianta says, will likely make the boy frustrated and emotionally disengaged. He will then be likely to escalate his behavior, which will simply confirm the teacher's beliefs about him, and the teacher and kid are stuck in an unproductive loop.

But if the teacher doesn't carry those beliefs into the classroom, then the teacher is unlikely to see that behavior as threatening.

Instead it's: " 'Johnny, tell me more about what you think is going on ... But also, I want you to sit down quietly now as you tell that to me,' " Pianta says.

"Those two responses," he says, "are dictated almost entirely by two different interpretations of the same behavior that are driven by two different sets of beliefs."

To see if teachers' beliefs would be changed by giving them a new set of teaching behaviors, Pianta and his colleagues recently did a study.

They took a group of teachers, assessed their beliefs about children, then gave a portion of them a standard pedagogy course, which included information about appropriate beliefs and expectations. Another portion got intense behavioral training, which taught them a whole new set of skills based on those appropriate beliefs and expectations.

For this training, the teachers videotaped their classes over a period of months and worked with personal coaches who watched those videos, then gave them recommendations about different behaviors to try.

After that intensive training, Pianta and his colleagues analyzed the beliefs of the teachers again. What he found was that the beliefs of the trained teachers had shifted way more than the beliefs of teachers given a standard informational course.

This is why Pianta thinks that to change beliefs, the best thing to do is change behaviors.

"It's far more powerful to work from the outside in than the inside out if you want to change expectations," he says.

In other words, if you want to change a mind, simply talking to it might not be enough.

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How Students and Teachers Can Develop Clear Expectations for Learning

Simply sharing what teachers hope kids will learn may not be enough—constructing expectations together helps guide students to understanding.

Ensuring that students are clear on the expectations of learning is one of the most effective ways to impact student achievement . Yet, I have found, through trial and lots of error, that establishing clarity is not a straightforward process for students or teachers.

There was an assumption on my part that if “I do” the sharing of expectations with kids, they will learn. I thought if I shared the learning expectations verbally, stated the goals clearly on the board, provided easy-to-read rubrics, and gave students time to write down the learning expectations, they would develop clarity. That didn’t seem to do the trick for most kids. Akin to hearing a lecture without checks for understanding, students watched me teach but didn’t take an active approach to ensuring that they understood the expectations of learning.

Next, I tried the “you do” approach by having students review an outline, preview a passage, or review a previously taught lesson to determine what we might be learning in the future. Again, the whole class came up short on what we were learning. Without my guidance, students strayed from finding the purpose of the learning.

After a time, I found that the best way for students to develop clarity of expectations was through a “we do” process, using activities where both students and I engaged with one another to build clarity of what we were learning together. Research calls this co-construction . I found that this process not only provided students with a better understanding of what we were learning but also gave me a better understanding of what students knew when we began a unit or lesson.

3 Popular Co-construction Strategies

1. Silent protocol: One of the most efficient and effective ways to co-construct expectations of learning is to show students the exact steps to successfully accomplish the learning goals you want them to meet. For example, simply show students an example of how to solve a math problem, but do so without talking. See if they can do the following:

• Write down the specific steps that you have taken
• Share the specific steps with their friends and create consensus
• Revise their steps after viewing multiple examples from you

Here are a few examples:

• The teacher solves several addition of fraction problems with unlike denominators and asks students to write down the steps that they took to solve the problem.
• The teacher writes three paragraphs of an essay in front of students and asks the students to write down the key steps that they took to write the essay.

2. Error analysis: Having students detect errors from others (either the teacher or their peers) is highly engaging and allows students to develop an awareness of common misconceptions. For example, in one class, students were told that they would be assisting the teacher in developing success criteria toward a goal (i.e., counting objects). The teacher began counting and making a number of errors, including repeat counting of the same object, skip counting objects, and repeating the same number in their counting. Each time the students stopped the teacher, the teacher asked these questions:

• What was the error?
• Why was that an error?
• How do we rectify the error?

After the discussion, students shared the steps they took and how to use those in the future. The next day, the teacher presented a rubric to support them in counting. The students thought the teacher should have the rubric up on the wall so that she wouldn’t forget how to count!

• Present students with multiple drafts of a scientific lab report, and have students serve as a senior editor to determine what criteria other editors should be using when assessing the lab report.
• Present students with drafts of paintings that have a myriad of errors, and have them determine the criteria needed to prevent such errors in the future.

3. Evaluating examples: One of the most powerful ways to ensure that students have clarity of learning expectations is to provide work samples. For example, imagine that a second-grade teacher was expecting students to write a personal narrative. He or she presents an example of mastery to students and asks each student to independently write down what they think makes the personal narrative successful.

Next, the teacher asks the students to discuss their criteria with a partner and then asks the class to create consensus on one list. The teacher then asks students to use their list to evaluate other work samples. In this last step, students debate and reference the mastery example when making claims. 

• Provide students with a recording of students reading a passage, and ask them to point out what they’re doing successfully to read and interpret the passage.
• Show students examples of successful art pieces, and ask students to identify the criteria for success.
• Show students worked math examples, and have them identify what success looks like.

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My Expectations as a Teacher

Updated 12 December 2023

Subject Learning

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Category Education

Topic Teacher

There are rewards and problems that often form part and parcel of the teaching profession. They can be classed as either intrinsic or extrinsic depending on their effect on a teacher. The former classification refers to those effects directly experienced by the teacher while the latter is external. My expected rewards will include improved status in the community, desire to interact with students, and flexible work schedule while challenges entail meeting parents’ and students’ long-term aims, multidimensional classroom issues, and simultaneous class events.

The desire to work with students is an automatic reward that I expect to reap from my role as a teacher. As a teacher, I will have the ability to share with learners directly everything about life and study materials. I love it when I change the lives of others. As a teacher, I expect to change the way the students think and alter the pessimistic ones to view life in a more optimistic manner. In my viewpoint, I often believe that if a person could change one life of a person, it is equivalent to changing lives of a thousand more persons. It is because that one person can have an effect on others and the chain continues. One of my principles is that everyone is equal before God and no student is better than the other. Therefore, everyone has the capacity to reap the benefits of education.  

My status will change as a teacher since the community will entrust me with their children. In fact, I don’t expect, but it is something that will just come naturally if I do my work diligently. It is true that teachers spend the most time with students as opposed to parents. Therefore, as a teacher, the community entrusts teachers with the mandate to show their children the right way (Ryan, Cooper, " Bolic, 2016, p.5). It is something that I am prepared to do to the best of my ability. Therefore, the respect that a teacher reaps from the community is often immense and I expect to deliver the best ethics to students so that they can be responsible members of the society to earn equivalent respect among the school community.

As a teacher, the flexible work schedule is one of the most important rewards of teaching. I will have the capacity to control my lessons, determine which topics to tackle and at what time, and the ability to govern my lessons. Flexibility and self-control give the teacher to impact students’ lives positively (Ryan, Cooper, " Bolic, 2016, p. 6).  Also, being able to share the lessons and work schedule with my friends and siblings at home will foster my status as a teacher.

Meeting the students achieve the long-term goals is one of the toughest challenges that I expect to get as a teacher. Students have lots of things going on in their lives and maintaining the focus is often quite difficult. However, I will keep communicating with my students constantly to keep them on the right track. Undoubtedly, some students cannot visualize the benefits they may get out of education in future, and this makes it hard to convince them to stay focused in class.  The same case applies to parents. They often expect a lot from their children; therefore, they would expect instructors to achieve whatever they perceive.

Simultaneous class events may disrupt class activities. For example, a student may require special care while the lessons are ongoing, which may disrupt the class progress. I expect such things to occur, and some may even be more challenging to the best of my ability. In my years as a student, we had a student who was epileptic. Sometimes he would fall down when sick and this interrupted the lessons. Some students would switch off immediately while some would resume to normalcy after the incident. Also, I will be organizing students to work in groups in class, which is sometimes difficult to concurrently monitor. Therefore, such occurrences are natural, but they significantly upset class progress.

The multidimensional classroom is another challenge that I will expect; some students do need special attention to grasp concepts, some are nagging and are distractors, and any other associated issue. I will not need special skills to understand that students are diverse in terms of needs, study capacity, and concentration capability. There is no doubt that this is the most daunting problem that every teacher may face in a teaching profession (Ryan, Cooper, " Bolic, 2016). The concentration of other learners would still be jeopardized even if an instructor would try to solve them. Note that some scholars may even switch off completely in the presence of distraction in class while others may operate normally as before. It depends on the ability of a learner.  

As much as I prepare for the teaching job as a profession, the rewards and challenges are conditions I anticipate. Apart from salaries and benefits, there are other merits that are fundamental. As a teacher, I will gain a noble status consigned by the community, desire to interact with students and change lives, and lastly, flexibility in work schedule. Besides mentioning advantages, I expect to encounter challenges while disseminating mu duties in class. They may include living up to students’ and parents’ expectations and goals, simultaneous class occurrences, and multi-dimensional classroom situation. Regardless of demerits associated with teaching as a profession, it is one of the most respectable jobs that one would find on the earth surface.

 Ryan, K., Cooper, J., " Bolic, C.M. (2016). Those who can, teach (14th ed.). Boston, MA; Cengage.

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Teacher Expectations

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A new study from the Center for American Progress concludes that teachers’ expectations for their students are strongly correlated with students’ graduation rates .

Conversely, the study also says that teachers don’t necessarily have high expectations for all their students, especially poorer students and those of color.

The study focuses on the Pygmalion effect, the theory holding that higher expectations of a person leads to higher performance. The opposite can also be true: If low expectations are placed on someone, they’re more likely to perform poorly.

Drawing on the results of a long-term study by the National Center for Education Statistics, the CAP analysis finds that students whose high school teachers had high expectations of them graduated from college at three times the rate of those whose teachers had low expectations.

Teacher expectations, according to the study, turned out to be more predictive of students’ futures than student motivation or effort. Teachers, the study found, were also able to predict a student’s college success with greater accuracy than parents or even the students themselves.

However, the study also reports that secondary teachers viewed high-poverty students as 53 percent less likely to graduate from college than their classmates from wealthier backgrounds. Black and Hispanic students were also deemed 47 percent and 42 percent less likely, respectively, to graduate than white students.

A version of this article appeared in the October 15, 2014 edition of Education Week as Teacher Expectations

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Expectations for Student Teaching, Essay Example

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In my student teaching I attempt to emphasize knowledge gained by feeling. Feelings stir the intellect, provoke reflection, and inspire authentic inquiry. Through dialogue and independent and collaborative work, I develop my skills of imagination and reflection and put them to the purpose of understanding learning – to unveil what has been tacit and to make explicit my thought processes and the impact of my life experiences to my behaviors in classroom.

I believe each student comes into the classroom experience with different readiness, experiences, motivations, and perceptions and will therefore have somespecialwants from me as a teacher. While a lot of time spent on organizing, reading, and preparing, I do so with less anxiety and nervousness to be ‘perfect’. In reassessing my role as a student teacher, I realized my responsibility to improve my students’ proficiency fulfilled only part part of my responsibility to them. I had an equal responsibility to improve their learning. I needed to reflect on the implications of this new responsibility. I had always seen my role in terms of providing language support for my students until they were capable of assuming that role for themselves. I believeI will work diligently to further my skills.

Clear, measurable, and realistic – that is how I evaluate the efficacy of students process. A change in the quality of being, growth in the quality of consciousness, evolution of spirit: these are the results I am talking about. It is about who I am, not what I know. It is about why I do what I do, not what I say, or what I do. I teach students their roles and my expectations. As a student teacher, I work to identify readiness-to-learn moments. For example, I identifyrequired vocabulary and write them on the chalkboard, or I conclude a quick role-play activity to focus attention on the correct words or phrases to use. I conduct ongoing needs analysis so as to effectively prepare for whole-class and more individualized instruction.

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Academic Performance — A Research on the Relationship Between Teacher Expectation and Academic Performance of Students in Schools

A Research on The Relationship Between Teacher Expectation and Academic Performance of Students in Schools

• Categories: Academic Performance

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Pages: 10 |

23 min read

Published: Jun 5, 2019

Words: 4519 | Pages: 10 | 23 min read

Table of contents

The long term impact of teacher expectations, bases of teacher expectations, high expectations versus low expectations, teachers’ expectations and classroom interactions, teacher gender biased interactions in the classroom, students’ perceptions of differential teacher treatment, the self-fulfilling prophecy, students’ socioeconomic status, students’ racial background, physical attractiveness of students, social learning theory: students’ self-efficacy, students’ self-perceptions of ability, teacher’s expectations of student ability in specific domains.

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Essay on Expectation In Class As A Student

Students are often asked to write an essay on Expectation In Class As A Student in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Expectation In Class As A Student

Understanding expectations.

As a student in class, you are expected to learn new things. This means paying attention to your teacher, asking questions if you’re confused, and trying your best on homework and tests. It’s like being a detective, where your mission is to solve the mystery of the subject you’re studying.

Being Prepared

Being ready for class is important. This includes having your books, completing your homework, and being ready to share your thoughts. Think of it as packing a backpack for an adventure where every book and notebook is a tool for your journey.

Respecting Others

In class, you should treat everyone kindly. Listen when others speak and wait for your turn to talk. It’s like being on a team where every player’s role is valued, and everyone deserves a chance to shine.

Meeting Deadlines

Handing in your work on time shows you’re responsible. It’s like crossing the finish line in a race, where finishing on time is a big part of success.

Self-Improvement

250 words essay on expectation in class as a student, what students expect in class.

When you are a student, you look forward to many things in your classroom. It’s like a small world where you learn, play, and grow. Every student has hopes and wishes for their time in class, and these are some of the common ones.

Learning New Things

Firstly, students expect to learn new things every day. Whether it’s about numbers, words, or the world around us, every lesson is a chance to know more. Teachers are important because they share knowledge in a way that’s easy to understand.

Fun and Friends

Secondly, students want to have fun and make friends. School isn’t just about books; it’s also about enjoying time with classmates. Games, activities, and group work help students bond and create memories.

Support and Help

Another expectation is getting help when things are tough. Sometimes, lessons can be hard, and students hope for a teacher who is kind and ready to explain things again. Feeling supported makes learning easier.

Being Heard and Respected

Students also expect to be heard and respected. When a student has an idea or a question, they want their teacher to listen. Being taken seriously makes students feel valued and confident to speak up.

A Safe Place

Every student’s expectation is like a seed that needs the right care to grow. Teachers and schools work to meet these hopes, making every day in class a step toward a brighter future.

500 Words Essay on Expectation In Class As A Student

What are expectations.

When we talk about expectations in class, we mean what teachers and classmates think you should do and how you should act. As a student, you are supposed to follow certain rules, listen to your teacher, and try your best to learn new things. These expectations help everyone in class to work together and create a place where learning can happen without problems.

Learning and Working Hard

A big part of being in class is learning to respect others. This includes listening when someone else is speaking and not making fun of them. It also means sharing things like books and pencils, and helping classmates who might be struggling. When everyone respects each other, the class can be a nice place for everyone.

Following Rules

Every class has rules, like raising your hand to speak or walking quietly in the hallways. These rules are there to make sure that the class runs smoothly and that everyone gets a chance to learn. It’s expected that you follow these rules, and if you do, the day will go by without any trouble.

Participating in Class

Teachers expect students to take part in class discussions and activities. When you share your ideas or answer questions, you are not only showing what you know, but you are also learning more. Participation helps make the class more interesting for everyone.

Setting Personal Goals

Apart from what others expect from you, it’s good to have your own goals. Maybe you want to get better at reading or learn how to solve tough math problems. Having goals can help you stay focused and give you something to work toward.

Handling Mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes, and that’s okay. Teachers expect that you will sometimes get things wrong, but what’s important is that you try to learn from those mistakes. When you understand what went wrong, you can do better next time.

In conclusion, being a student comes with many expectations. You are supposed to learn, respect others, follow rules, come prepared, participate, set goals, and learn from mistakes. Meeting these expectations can be tough sometimes, but they help you grow and become a better learner. Remember, it’s not just about making your teacher happy—it’s about doing your best for yourself.

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Guest Essay

The Ten Commandments Are Trump’s Favorite of All the Commandments

By Christopher Buckley

Mr. Buckley is a novelist and humorist.

Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana signs a bill mandating that the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public classrooms. He says of the legislation, “ I can’t wait to be sued .”

Mr. Landry is sued by 28 organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amalgamated Atheists of America, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Beelzebubbians, the Spouses of U.S. Supreme Court Justices Neighborhood Welcome Wagon Association, and Liberals for the Prevention of Morality.

The Republican Party responds with a fund-raising email blitz for a new legal defense fund. The subject line reads, “Moses ❤️ Louisiana (and Trump!!!).”

Donald Trump hails Mr. Landry, calling him “the greatest mayor of Louisiana maybe ever.”

“Actually, ever,” he adds.

When President Biden points out that Louisiana is a state, not a city, a Trump spokesman responds with a statement: “Once again, the morally corrupt head of the Biden Marxist Leninist Maoist family crime syndicate has demonstrated its contempt for all residents of Louisiana, or as it will be known in the second Trump term, Holy Land East.”

Speaking before the annual conference of the Evangelical Substitute Teachers Association on the eve of Thursday’s presidential debate against Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump calls the Ten Commandments “my favorite of all the commandments.” In an apparent reference to Moses, he says that “being from New York City,” he “personally knows many, many people named Moe, all of them terrific, and most of them dentists.”

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