Self-fulfilling prophecy in teacher's pupils
The teacher had been waiting all year to get to that part of the Science book. Finally, there it was for all to see - the picture of a sprouting seed, and inside the seed was what looked like a tiny tree, a harbinger of what the seed would become in a few years. The picture was very much like the seed the students had seen sprout in their paper cups. Only the picture was bigger and more colorful.
Then the teacher put a surprising, non-Science spin to it all.
“Yes, boys and girls, you are like this seed. Inside you is a great big oak tree waiting to come out,” the teacher said. The students’ eyes grow like saucers.
“Someday you will be firefighters, soldiers and pilots, doctors and teachers, presidents of your own companies, artists and writers and columnists.”
The children murmur among themselves.
“You will get a job. Some of you will get married, be mommies and daddies, and you will buy Pampers for your babies.”
There is a ripple of giggles. Boys start punching each other sheepishly.
If a teacher expects students to succeed in life, will they succeed in life? If a teacher expects his/her students to do well in school, will they do well in school?
In 1968 Harvard Professor of Psychology Robert Rosenthal and coauthor Lenore Jacobson reported in Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupil’s Intellectual Development the results of a study showing that yes, students excel when a teacher expects them to excel. Though other researchers have tried to reconstruct Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study with mixed results and varying conclusions1, the study remains important several decades after it was conducted.
Pygmalion in Greek mythology is a king of Cyprus who fell in love with his sculpture of a maiden which goddess Aphrodite brought to life.
In Rosenthal’s study, “Oak School” K-5th teachers were asked to give a test to his/her class. They were not told that it was an intelligence test. What they were told was that it was a Harvard test that could predict which student would “bloom” academically. After the initial testing the teachers were told which specific students would “bloom”. They were told to expect an IQ gain from these specific students. In reality, these students had been randomly selected. Rosenthal reported that within a year students who were identified as “bloomers” did show greater gains in IQ than students in the control group, or that “teachers brought about intellectual competence simply by expecting it.”
You can just imagine the after effects of such results. Rosenthal’s study was cited in public policy changes and court proceedings involving ability tracking, testing and placement.
Pygmalion effect has been studied in management (are organizations more effective when leaders have high expectations?), courtrooms (are there more guilty verdicts when judges believe a defendant is guilty?), nursing homes (is depression reduced when caretaker expectations are raised?), even rats. (Rats became “brighter” when an experimenter was told they were “bright” rats.)
Rosenthal’s data showed that there was no difference in the amount of time the teachers in the study spent with the “blooming” and “non-blooming” students. He speculates that it is the quality of the time spent with the “blooming” students that was different.
Even some of Rosenthal’s most ardent critics, such as educational psychologists Robert L. Thorndike and Richard E. Snow agree that expectancy can influence if not intelligence, at least performance.
“…’self-fulfilling prophecy’…most clearly appear in areas that are most directly teacher-based and school-dependent, such as learning to read, to write and to cipher,” wrote Thorndike.
“I agree that…teacher expectancies…can influence classroom teaching and learning, at least sometimes,” wrote Snow.
Rosenthal himself cautioned against etching policy changes based on his results, but makes a personal conclusion: “When our children were in school we didn’t want them taught by teachers who “knew” they couldn’t learn.”
Therein lies the bottom line. Children, being the intuitively smart people that they are, know when a teacher believes he or she can or cannot learn. How do they know this? Though Rosenthal and Jacobson did not provide data on specific teacher behavior that caused a Pygmalion effect, my guess is students see it in their teachers’ eyes, or literally in the apple, or center, or pupil of a teacher’s eyes. In the Bible’s Deuteronomy 32:10 we read that God kept Israel as the apple, or the daughter of his eye. “Apple of the eye” here comes from the Hebrew term 'ishon,’ a diminutive of 'ish’, or ‘man,’ meaning little man or manikin. It refers, according to some lexicons, to "the little image one sees of himself when looking into another's pupil".
Teachers must still prepare the materials, deliver the instruction and assess learning. But having done all that and all other things equal, when students looks into a teacher’s eyes, hopefully they will see a vision of how much they can learn and become or be. In that classroom of students looking at a Science text, they saw the promise of a mighty oak tree in the wee seeds that they were. And the powerful image of a self fulfilling prophecy reflected in their teacher’s pupils.
Then the teacher put a surprising, non-Science spin to it all.
“Yes, boys and girls, you are like this seed. Inside you is a great big oak tree waiting to come out,” the teacher said. The students’ eyes grow like saucers.
“Someday you will be firefighters, soldiers and pilots, doctors and teachers, presidents of your own companies, artists and writers and columnists.”
The children murmur among themselves.
“You will get a job. Some of you will get married, be mommies and daddies, and you will buy Pampers for your babies.”
There is a ripple of giggles. Boys start punching each other sheepishly.
If a teacher expects students to succeed in life, will they succeed in life? If a teacher expects his/her students to do well in school, will they do well in school?
In 1968 Harvard Professor of Psychology Robert Rosenthal and coauthor Lenore Jacobson reported in Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupil’s Intellectual Development the results of a study showing that yes, students excel when a teacher expects them to excel. Though other researchers have tried to reconstruct Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study with mixed results and varying conclusions1, the study remains important several decades after it was conducted.
Pygmalion in Greek mythology is a king of Cyprus who fell in love with his sculpture of a maiden which goddess Aphrodite brought to life.
In Rosenthal’s study, “Oak School” K-5th teachers were asked to give a test to his/her class. They were not told that it was an intelligence test. What they were told was that it was a Harvard test that could predict which student would “bloom” academically. After the initial testing the teachers were told which specific students would “bloom”. They were told to expect an IQ gain from these specific students. In reality, these students had been randomly selected. Rosenthal reported that within a year students who were identified as “bloomers” did show greater gains in IQ than students in the control group, or that “teachers brought about intellectual competence simply by expecting it.”
You can just imagine the after effects of such results. Rosenthal’s study was cited in public policy changes and court proceedings involving ability tracking, testing and placement.
Pygmalion effect has been studied in management (are organizations more effective when leaders have high expectations?), courtrooms (are there more guilty verdicts when judges believe a defendant is guilty?), nursing homes (is depression reduced when caretaker expectations are raised?), even rats. (Rats became “brighter” when an experimenter was told they were “bright” rats.)
Rosenthal’s data showed that there was no difference in the amount of time the teachers in the study spent with the “blooming” and “non-blooming” students. He speculates that it is the quality of the time spent with the “blooming” students that was different.
Even some of Rosenthal’s most ardent critics, such as educational psychologists Robert L. Thorndike and Richard E. Snow agree that expectancy can influence if not intelligence, at least performance.
“…’self-fulfilling prophecy’…most clearly appear in areas that are most directly teacher-based and school-dependent, such as learning to read, to write and to cipher,” wrote Thorndike.
“I agree that…teacher expectancies…can influence classroom teaching and learning, at least sometimes,” wrote Snow.
Rosenthal himself cautioned against etching policy changes based on his results, but makes a personal conclusion: “When our children were in school we didn’t want them taught by teachers who “knew” they couldn’t learn.”
Therein lies the bottom line. Children, being the intuitively smart people that they are, know when a teacher believes he or she can or cannot learn. How do they know this? Though Rosenthal and Jacobson did not provide data on specific teacher behavior that caused a Pygmalion effect, my guess is students see it in their teachers’ eyes, or literally in the apple, or center, or pupil of a teacher’s eyes. In the Bible’s Deuteronomy 32:10 we read that God kept Israel as the apple, or the daughter of his eye. “Apple of the eye” here comes from the Hebrew term 'ishon,’ a diminutive of 'ish’, or ‘man,’ meaning little man or manikin. It refers, according to some lexicons, to "the little image one sees of himself when looking into another's pupil".
Teachers must still prepare the materials, deliver the instruction and assess learning. But having done all that and all other things equal, when students looks into a teacher’s eyes, hopefully they will see a vision of how much they can learn and become or be. In that classroom of students looking at a Science text, they saw the promise of a mighty oak tree in the wee seeds that they were. And the powerful image of a self fulfilling prophecy reflected in their teacher’s pupils.
