Success in any meaningful endeavor is marked by a history of high expectations that provide the challenge and inspiration necessary to press the individual to his/her highest level of performance. Though there are supportive components of success – environment, general and special abilities, personal work habits and attitudes, and even chance – the central factor is high expectations. One’s own expectations of oneself are important in the sense that people usually set their goals first and then develop their action plans accordingly. Others’ expectations of individuals are also critical, since people tend to strive to accomplish what is expected of them. In both cases, without expectations, individuals invariably drift toward mediocrity or even failure. The case is no less true in education. The strong relationship between expectations and academic achievement has been well established both theoretically and empirically. Schools with exceptional levels of academic achievement consistently demonstrate high expectations and goals supported by data-driven collaboration and ongoing assessments. Within the individual classroom, there is a clear correlation between teacher expectations and student achievement. High expectations represent an overall orientation toward improvement and growth in the classroom, which has been demonstrated to be a defining characteristic of benchmark schools. Effective teachers not only express and clarify expectations for student achievement, but also stress student responsibility and accountability for striving to meet those expectations.
The influence of teacher expectations on students has long been recognized. Expectation have been shown to have a measurable effect on outcomes, and whole some research has shown these effects to be small, effects for vulnerable students have been found to be large. To date, the emphasis of research designed to enhance academic achievement has almost exclusively focused on academic variables and instructional practices, with varying levels of success. Yet the teacher expectation research suggests that the socio-emotional variables, including the role of teacher expectations, which are at play in the classroom can have as much, if not more, effect on student outcomes. High teacher5 expectations are associated with specific beliefs and practices, which lead to significantly enhanced outcomes for students.
Studies about the topic reveal that students often attribute their lack of success at school in large part to poor relationships with their teachers, coupled with teachers’ low expectations. As a result of these studies, many programmes have been developed which focus on changing teacher expectations and enhancing the socio-emotional environment by introducing cooperative grouping and greater student autonomy. These factors have been identified by leading expectation researchers as practices used by teachers with high expectations. Interestingly, the early teacher expectations research was almost exclusively conducted in primary schools: it suggested that girls were more susceptible than boys to teacher expectations, as were younger relative to older students. Given such findings, it was assumed that middle school and secondary school students would be less vulnerable to teacher expectations, and so this phenomenon was rarely investigated in these contexts. However, relatively recently, the belief that teacher expectations do not affect the outcome of older students has been questioned, and a number of researchers have begun exploring expectations beyond the primary level. Such studies have suggested that, while the effect of expectations may level out across the primary school years, their impact increases at points of transition. For example, in one study, teacher expectations were found to significantly impact on student motivation and academic outcomes when students moved from primary to middle school. Similarly, other researchers have shown that teacher expectations affect student achievement on standardized tests at Grades 9 and 10, the point at which students are transitioning from middle school to high school. Further, when students move to secondary school, teacher expectations suddenly become more important than students’ own expectations in predicting student achievement.
Research has identified that the expectations that teachers have for their students in terms of behavior and academic performance can have a strong impact on success in learning, since they can act as self-fulfilling prophesies. The concept of self-fulfilling prophecy as applied in educational contexts states that students will live up or down their teachers’ expectations, predictions, or preconceived notions, regarding their behavior and academic performance. At the core of the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy is the assumption that “one person’s prediction of another person’s behavior somehow comes to be realized” and that these expectations are communicated in “quite subtle and unintended ways”. In essence, this theory states that:
a. Teachers form different expectations for their students
b. These expectations are communicated to students
c. Teachers’ expectations impact, either positively or negatively, on student behavior and performance
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