Abstract
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.
Highlights
Teachers’ expectations can have powerful effects on student academic attainment and their educational pathways (Papageorge et al, 2020; Wu & Bai, 2015)
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
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
Summary
Teachers’ expectations can have powerful effects on student academic attainment and their educational pathways (Papageorge et al, 2020; Wu & Bai, 2015). Despite the relevance of teachers’ expectations for students’ experiences of school, a minority of research in this area has considered students’ points of view. 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 research contributes new substantive theory that explains how students experience teacher expectation effects, including through classroom interactions that instil confidence in students
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