How can teacher's expectations affect student attainment?

Sian May explores how the Pygmalion effect can be harnessed to increase positive changes in student’s results

I am part of an enormous team that stretches from our Group Executive Board, into our schools, both offline and online. In this network of colleagues almost every conceivable form of expertise can be found. This makes me both very fortunate and also accelerates my own professional learning, reflection and growth at every turn. I have often found myself seeking advice and guidance from a range of high performing teams on subjects ranging from spiralled STEAM curricular, the psychology of assessment, wellbeing science, and more. This created a number of tracks for investigation. How do we attract and retain colleagues who share our beliefs and values in putting students first? As I analysed the organisations’ success I started to decode the leadership and strategy behind it.  

Ultimately, when working alongside colleagues, it has become clear that those who make the most impact believe that they can and will positively impact student outcomes. This is not news, Proteroe (2008), Goddard (2001) and others have explored this phenomenon at length. However, when such shared belief is scaled it produces powerful collective teacher efficacy and creates a dynamic environment in which students and educators thrive. As leaders, we want to know how to utilise this “Pygmalion Effect” to benefit students! 

The Pygmalion effect can be harnessed to great effect in our schools as Jenni Donohoo’s current work on collaborative inquiry and other tools to achieve collective efficacy illustrates. 

The Pygmalion effect was exemplified in 1968, when Rosenthal and Jacobsen conducted an experiment to examine student achievement in relation to teacher expectations. Elementary school children were given an IQ test which informed their teachers which children were going to be average and which children were going to be ‘Bloomers’ (the twenty percent of students who showed “unusual potential for intellectual growth”). The study showed that teachers did not expect much from the average children and gave additional attention to the Bloomers, including a nicer environment and more detailed feedback on work. However, unknown to the teachers, these students were selected randomly and may or may not have fulfilled that criteria. After eight months, they came back and retested the children's intelligence.

The results showed that Bloomers’ IQ scores had risen (experimental group) significantly higher than the average students (control group), even though these academic bloomers were chosen at random. The Bloomers gained an average of two IQ points in verbal ability, seven points in reasoning and four points in total IQ. In short, the experiment showed that teacher expectations worked as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This continued knowledge, followed by many repetitions of similar studies, equips us to better understand the communities we wish to create. The values and beliefs teachers bring to our teams are the building foundations of our students’ experiences. We must seize on this opportunity to create teams who believe in all students’ potential, especially in an international environment when a key disposition of our teachers is intercultural awareness.

I return to this thinking time and again. Our teachers’ Pygmalion beliefs enable us to form learning organisations which continually create quality experiences for our students.