Teacher Expectations
The Pygmalion Theory
In ancient Greek
mythology, a king
of Cyprus,
Pygmalion made a
statue of a woman
with all the
feminine ideals and
eventually fell in
love with it and
treated as if it was
living.
Everyday Pygmalion
begged Aphrodite
to bring his statue
to life. Aphrodite
took pity on him
and breathed life
into the statue. It
was the way in
which Pygmalion
treated the statue
that resulted in it
coming to life.
Pygmalion effect is…
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Simply put, the Pygmalion effect is the
idea that expecting something to
happen can in fact make it occur
It is a self-fulfilling prophesy, a belief
that becomes a positive reality
The term ‘self-fulfilling
prophesy’, coined by sociologist
Robert Merton means that
erroneous beliefs about people
bring about the realization of
those beliefs. For example,
teachers maybe have notions
about a students ability that
have no basis in fact. If a
teacher says to a student that
they do or do not have the
ability to do something, the
student will eventually start to
behave as the teacher expects.
Examples
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A teacher counted the number of times
that children ‘told tales’ in a day
She tells 5 of her colleagues and her
husband that one day 16 children and 15 of
them were of a certain gender (Tripp, 1993)
Which gender was it?
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They all assumed that the 15 children
were girls when it was in fact the
opposite
The adults’ perceptions were gender
biased; this type of misconception has
long term self-fulfilling effects
This leads to judgments of adults,
such as “women gossip and men
discuss”
Girls are taught to perform according
to gender bias on the part of adults,
including teachers
Views on the Pygmalion
Effect
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There are contradicting views on the effect
of the self-fulfilling prophesy
Brophy (1983) concluded that the majority
of teachers do not have a significant effect
on the students
In general, he found that teacher
assessments of student’s abilities were
accurate and overall, teachers didn’t show
favouritism or bias towards students
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Contrary to Brophy, Emerling (1991)
conducted an experiment on handwriting
that showed that the majority of people
could tell which gender a writer was from
looking at a sample and Eames and
Lowenthal (1990) showed that teachers
often gave a better mark to students with
good handwriting
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Sloan and McGinnis (1982) claimed that
handwriting led to an inconsistence in
grading based solely on presentation
In some experiments, students received as
much as 3 letter grades lower than others
due to poor penmanship even though the
content was identical, thus supporting the
Pygmalion effect
A teacher’s attitude towards a student’s
work as being good or poor based on biased
values like form over content may
discourage that student.
Teachers’ attitudes towards
low- and high-achievers
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Teachers’ attitudes may vary greatly
Low achievers may be perceived as
being less motivated, autonomous,
attentive and less willing to engage in
risk-taking than high-achievers
This may cause the teacher to fear
and limit interaction with them and to
be unsure when interactions do occur
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Teachers seem to plan and prepare
better for high-achiever classes
Low-achiever classes tend to stress
more basic skills rather than higher
order thinking activities
Such students ma be perceived as
more likely to cheat and copy notes
and this affects teacher behaviour
A teacher’s expectations would likely
change according to the observed
attitudes and behaviours or and
individual, small group or class
Other Factors…
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A teacher’s pedagogical beliefs, philosophies or
methodologies may also influence expectations
A teacher more into a holistic approach to teaching
which emphasizes group work and cooperative
learning might limit the negative effects of teacher
expectation self-fulfilling prophesies
Other Factors…
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Children who feel secure in their relationship
with their teachers often feel happier while
students who feel more insecure with their
teachers may feel more anxious and
depressed
A teachers orientation may have a large
Pygmalion effect
A french immersion teacher may not have any
university courses in some of the subjects
that he teachers. His lack of interest in a
subject such as math may result in that
subject receiving less attention and students
not achieving and learning as much as they
might from a teacher trained in that area
All of these factors have to do with the
Pygmalion effect because the way that a
teacher behaves does influence his or her
students ad their subsequent behavior and
learning.
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Discussion: “Reflect on how the
Pygmalion Theory & Teacher
Expectations will influence your
teaching practices.”