Teacher Expectations and Pupil Learning (RLE Edu N)

Roy Nash

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415697033
• eBook ISBN: 9781136453199
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In the field of teacher expectations and pupil learning one important psychological truth is that the pupils' achievement in learning is strongly influenced by the teachers' expectations of their level of performance, high or low. Roy Nash discusses critically and fully important research in this area. In the belief that research must be interpreted within an overall theory of social action, the author relates the empirical studies which he examines to an interactionist theory. He emphasizes the importance of making teachers aware of the implications of what they are doing and of the possibility of establishing wider and more educative patterns of interaction. He shows that research into 'attitudes', 'perceptions', or 'expectations' is all essentially concerned with the same problem: how teachers relate to pupils on the basis of a model of what pupils may be.

Much of the work he discusses has direct relevance to teachers in their day-to-day work. The research findings will help them to become more aware of their attitudes and how these influence their actions, and should make them more likely to give all their pupils equal opportunities within their classes. Among the topics covered are observational and experimental studies of teacher expectations, the analysis of classroom climate, self-conceptions, pupils' perceptions and expectations, and the significance of classroom-based research into teacher/pupil interaction.

Chapter one

Some theoretical considerations

I hope this chapter will be a little easier to read than it was to write. Its aim is simple enough: I want to bring some conceptual clarity to the findings of recent research concerned with the actions of teachers and pupils. The difficulty stems from the multitude of concepts used by various writers in this field. One will use the term ‘expectations’ where another will use ‘norms’. Again, one will use the word ‘opinion’ as synonymous with ‘attitude’ where another will make a clear distinction, which has importance for his own work, between the two terms. One solution to this problem of terminology might be to define precisely in advance all the concepts which will appear in the pages to follow. This might make for clarity but it would also make for tedious reading. Instead, each concept will be defined as it is introduced and where my definition differs significantly from that of other writers these differences will be pointed out. I shall argue that it is the failure to develop a theoretical perspective which is responsible for directing this branch of social science towards those dead ends it seems especially prone to end up in. My own theoretical perspective is derived from the studies of A. Schutz (1932/67) and the symbolic interactionism of G.H. Mead (1934).

Before we progress further let me explain my understanding of those terms. Symbolic interactionism is simply a convenient name given to G.H. Mead's account of how people interact with each other. In short they understand each other through symbols – typically and fundamentally through the symbols we call words. In ‘Classrooms Observed’ I wrote (Nash, 1973, p.41):

These symbols are the guides to action that members of a society follow; the direct guides (norms), the guides to actions we ought to do (ideals) and the subjective guides to individual actions (attitudes). These symbols are meaningful in so far as men are able (most of the time) to predict each other's behaviour and to gauge their own behaviour according to the expectations they believe others to have for them.

We can add a little more to this. The passages which follow will elaborate the concepts of norms, ideals and attitudes and demonstrate their centrality to the theory of interaction which is developed.

NORMS, IDEALS AND ATTITUDES

Norms are the socially upheld rules which govern behaviour. Some of these will have the status of statutory law, others only the status of custom, and yet others the status of both custom and law. Within British family life, for example, a man and woman may live together without being married but their behaviour is not customary. A man may even set up house with two women, which is even less the custom, but only if he tries to marry them both will he be in breach of the law. Clearly, not all norms have the authority of law, and equally, not all laws are upheld as social norms. To some people it seems quite acceptable, for example, to drive at 40 mph in built up areas and to ‘fiddle’ the occasional ‘phone call or odd roll of sellotape from the office. Generally speaking jurists like to keep legally regulated norms in line with what is customary or acceptable in the community. This is why laws are being constantly added to and removed from the statute book. All norms are enforced by the application of sanctions of one sort or another upon those who violate them. Legal norms are enforced in a highly formalised manner by the police, judicial and penal systems. Customary norms are enforced by less institutionalised but often more powerful sanctions. For example, a young couple who do live together without being married will most probably come under some pressure from their parents, relatives and even neighbours.

The distinction between legalised norms and customary norms usefully points up a matter of some interest to sociologists. The law assumes one common community and sanctions will be applied to anyone found guilty of breaking the law. It doesn't matter very much whether he knows of its existence or not. Customary norms, however, by no means assume one community, on the contrary they are commonly specific to one particular sub-culture or group co-existing within the larger state. Commonly the norms of these groups can only be enforced by sanctions which assume that those they are directed against wish to remain members of that group. An example might be provided by the newly elected councillor who discovers that one or two of his colleagues are less than perfectly scrupulous in declaring their financial interest in matters before them. An honest man himself he mentions his concern to a friend. The friend advises him that this is not uncommon, that it has always gone on, that no real harm comes of it and that publicity would only damage the image of the council and, in all likelihood, ruin his own chances of advancement. These considerations could quite possibly lead our new councillor to revise his standards a little so as to remain in favour with the group. If he decides that he no longer wants to belong to the group then clearly these sanctions can no longer be imposed on him.

Sociologists are especially interested in sub-cultures. In particular there are evident normative differences between socio-economic groups and these have been the subject of extensive study. The business of learning social norms begins in very early childhood. The child is first socialised into the norms of his family, then into the norms of the school, and – more or less simultaneously – into the norms of his peer group. These three social entities are considered to be the main socialising agencies in the child's life.

Ideals, the guides to actions we ought to do, are learned in a similar way from our social environment. If they are to be held distinct from norms we must say that a failure to live up to our ideals can subject us to no other sanctions than those stemming from our own conscience. Ideals are, therefore, by definition, set higher than the customary norms within a particular society. For example, within Christian societies a man might believe as an ideal that he should give all that he has to the poor but, it scarcely needs to be said, this isn't the normative thing to do. No one will castigate him for failing to meet his ideal. We might say that norms are enforced by others whereas ideals are enforced only by oneself. To the extent to which we fail to meet the ideals of our society our own conscience is responsible. A man may hold ideals derived from various sources. Many ideals have a religious basis, others are political and many are specific to a particular sub-culture or group.

The concept of attitudes is particularly difficult to pin down. We saw above that it refers to the subjective guides to individual action. To say that an attitude is subjective indicates that we are concerned with the personal meanings which an individual places upon his actions. Sometimes we find attitudes directly expressed through words, at other times we note attitudes expressed through bodily stance or gesture. This latter sense was the original meaning of the word attitude. Understanding attitudes in everyday life is very much a matter of ‘reading between the lines’ in other words, of interpreting the subjective meaning of the actions of another. Attitudes can be understood as the characteristic mood of an action. If we observe a man driving on the crown of the road with one arm around his girl friend and within feet of the car in front, we should take that as an indication of his careless attitude towards driving. Attitude is often used where ‘opinion’ or ‘belief’ would be more accurate. Most so-called attitude tests are, in fact, opinion tests – but more of that later.

INTERACTIONIST THEORY AND PERCEPTION

Interactionist theory holds that in any given culture people in a social relationship act within the taken-for-granted framework of what things and events are considered relevant to that culture. Interaction takes place within the context of a set of background expectancies shared by each. Recently, ‘expectations’ has been used by empiricist psychologists in a much broader sense as an explanatory concept for teacher-pupil interaction processes. Their research will be examined in a later chapter. The theory is very much concerned with the idea of the self. One may be as metaphysical about the self as one likes but so far as this account is concerned, the self is understood as a taken-for-granted proposition. That is to say that in any social interaction I take for granted that the other has a reflective self and a self-consciousness of just the same sort as my own. The self then, – the self-conscious knowledge we all have of our personal history, our present existence, and our projected future – emerges as a result of social interaction. How the infant develops a consciousness of himself as an independent being is a fundamental concern of theorists in this field. For what a person believes about himself will form part of his motivational structure. That is to say that a person will choose to act or not to act in a given way because he regards himself as the sort of person who does or does not act in that way. For example, a man who rejects a suggested course of action saying, ‘what sort of person do you think I am?’ is clearly giving as his reason for his decision his idea of himself. These beliefs about the self are often called self-concepts or self-images. At this point we may examine the processes by which individuals conduct their face to face interactions.

The following discussion of relevant theory can only be short and will be limited to the paradigm case of face-to-face social interaction between two people. Quite clearly there may be interactions which are not face-to-face, (for example, those which take place by telephone or by letter) and which involve more than two people; but these are special cases and will here be ignored. Less clearly it has to be pointed out that not all interactions can be called social interactions. Max Weber (1922/64) has given the example of two people who crash into each other whilst riding their bicycles. This is obviously an interaction but it is not a social interaction although the situation might give rise to one if, for example, the bicyclists start to talk to each other. A social interaction exists where one person acts towards another with the expectation that the other will respond or notice. Within any particular social interaction there will be a certain range of expected responses. We can see this if we look at a very brief but successful social interaction. A man says, ‘Good morning. Bit chilly today’ to his neighbour as he goes off to work and he expects a similar sort of reply. He expects neither to be ignored nor to be treated to a technical discussion about the weather nor to an account of why, for his neighbour, it is not a good morning at all. Fortunately his neighbour understands all this and replies, ‘Good morning, John. Yes, bitter isn't it?’ and drives off. Of course, this is a highly ritualised situation and one bounded by habit but it is a genuine social interaction and has all the features that characterise less structured interactions. It is successful because both persons correctly perceive the expectations of the other. These perceptions are highly important.

Perception is much more than seeing. All sighted persons can see but they don't necessarily perceive what they see and, to take the contrary case, blind persons are certainly able to perceive (albeit with input from one less sense than most of us) what is going on around them.

As a technical term of psychology ‘perception’ is defined somewhat differently: in this context we may understand the word to mean ‘construe’ or, even more simple, ‘note’. The emphasis is on perception as an active process. Suppose, for example, that I enter a friend's living room. At once I know that something about the room is different from the way I saw it last. I perceive, first, that something has changed. For a moment I am puzzled, then, ‘Ah, you've taken out the old lights and put that neon strip up.’ I perceive, second, by a deliberate act of perception, what that difference is. In this sense perception is the active process of taking notice of subjectively meaningful phenomena.

What sorts of phenomena people find meaningful is another problem. To the men greeting each other as they go off to work in the morning the entire interaction is full of taken-for-granted meaning. Each takes for granted that the interaction takes place within the context of scores of similar past interactions. Let one aspect be different and each man's perceptual mechanism will pick up what is out of the ordinary. It might be something very minor, perhaps one man isn't wearing his suit. That will be noticed. One man drives off in a different direction from usual. That will be cause for a comment. Or it might be something more important, one man rushes out of his house and into his car without a word, his face flushed and his fists clenched. All this, we can be quite sure, will be perceived instantly. For any of these perceived deviations from the normal the other will try to find meanings. Perhaps the man's suit is at the cleaners. Perhaps he is trying to avoid the jam at the roundabout by going via the overpass. Perhaps he's had a blazing row with his wife. Whatever actions of the other we perceive that are outside our taken-for-granted frame of reference, we seek to give meaning to. What we have next to consider is the adequacy of these meanings.

THE ATTRIBUTION OF MEANING

To begin with it is necessary to understand the distinction between the terms ‘action’ and ‘behaviour’. Behaviour refers to non-deliberate movements of the body. Blinking, reflex movements, habitual routines performed absent-mindedly, gestures performed without awareness are all examples of behaviour which do not have the status of action. Action is behaviour which is subjectively meaningful and is characterised by an intention or aim. In other words action is orientated to the future and that future orientation can be known only to the actor himself. In discussing this point, Weber gives the example of a man chopping wood. One may observe a man chopping wood but one cannot, by observation alone, determine his motivational context. Is he chopping wood for his fire, in order to fulfil his obligations to the lumber company for which he works, in order to test the efficiency of his axe, or in order to become proficient for a part in a film? Clearly these are different actions and the wood-chopper may during the course of a morning move from one motivational context to another without there being any external sign. If we wish to know the meaningful grounds of the man's actions then it is necessary to know a lot more about the contexts in which they take place. Suppose, to take a further example, that I drive to work in the morning, the intention of my action is to arrive at work, and the span of the act covers the whole period of my journey.

It is also possible to relate action to the past. So that I may say, to use the same example, that I am driving to work because some time ago I accepted this job. These motivational contexts, those orientated to the past and those projected into the future, are different in kind and have important implications for problems of social causality. The essential point, for the purpose of this argument, is that reasons orientated to the past are not sufficient to define an action or to render it fully comprehensible. Schutz, whose elaboration of the ‘in order to motive’ and the ‘because motive’ has made significant contribution to our understanding of human action, shows how this distinction is most relevant to the discussion of social causality.

IDEAL TYPES AND SOCIAL CAUSALITY

The discussion of motivational contexts and the definition of action has a direct relevance to the scientific understanding of social phenomena. Research can be seen as an attempt to provide a conception or model by means of which certain aspects of the world may be better understood. In sociology these models are known as ideal typifications or ideal types. Weber, whose work made clear the significance of ideal types in social science, argues that to study, for example, the functions of bureaucracy, we need to first delineate all the defining characteristics of bureaucracy: to construct, in fact, an ideal type of bureaucracy as a tool for the analysis of actual bureaucracies.

The adequacy of a social science to explain relationships between social events rests upon the accuracy of its ideal types to reflect reality. The ideal types constructed by educational writers and the way in which they change over time makes fascinating study. Consider the different ideal type constructions of the Spens Report (Board of Education, 1938) with those of the Newsom Report. Spens set out three ideal types of child: the academically minded, the technically minded, and the practically minded, and for each of these three types separate schools were recommended – grammar, technical and secondary modern. The Newsom Report (Central Advisory Council for Education, 1963) presented a new ideal type – the Newsom child – for whom non-academic courses were to be designed. Moreover, this ideal type was further subdivided into three others, the Robinsons, the Browns and the Joneses. The differences, as I intend to show by this example, between the ideal types of social science and the personal ideal types of individuals are ones only of degree. Incidentally, some writers use the term stereotype to mean an ideal type inadequately grounded in data. To them stereotype is an ideal type constructed on prejudiced and biased grounds.

The predominant interest of the social scientist has been to find the causes of social phenomena. In educational sciences, for example, researchers have wanted to account for the cause of the relative failure of children from low socio-economic backgrounds in the educational system. They have concentrated on discovering the antecedent causes of these observed social facts. However, individuals are motivated, as we have seen from our discussion of Schutz's work, by reasons which are orientated towards the future. This apparent paradox is resolved by the construction of ideal types which possess motivational structures orientated towards the past. The most preferred model in educational sciences is the classical input-output scheme. This model assumes causality between observed social phenomena and constructs ideal types which provide explanatory meaning for this causality. The implications of this are discussed more fully below.

A theory of social interaction is necessary in so far as we suppose that personal processes are responsible for effects which cannot be adequately explained by a study of more general social facts; and it is worthwhile in so far as it deepens our understanding of the subjective meanings of individuals and leads to the construction of objective ideal types which give explanatory meanings to social phenomena. The study of general social phenomena depends upon the objective measurement of the social phenomena concerned. Where highly general phenomena like social class and attainment are concerned the operational definitions employed in the construction of measurement scales have a degree of stability approaching those of the measures of physical science. But this is only true of general phenomena. A scale of socio-economic status, although specific to one culture and one time, nevertheless has a greater useful life than measures of opinion which are often specific to a sub-culture or group which may exist as such for only a relatively short period. This is why we cannot expect a so-called scale of attitudes such as, to take a specific example, the Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory, constructed in the 1950s after work with teachers in the United States, to have much meaning for British teachers in the 1970s. It is as if in the world of physics it was necessary to redesign the thermometer every so often to match unaccountable alterations in the boiling and freezing points of water. This is one explanation of why psychologists in particular are so very concerned with constructing new tests. It is necessary because the older a test becomes the less it reflects changing reality. In a sentence people and societies are dynamic whereas any standardised test is static.

The process of constructing operational definitions is, in fact, the process of constructing ideal types. The normal procedure is for the tester to have in mind a personal ideal type which he wishes to objectify operationally. He will identify on the basis of his personal ideal type a set of people (whom he will call subjects) who are held to match that ideal type. They are given a set of items made up by the researcher again on the basis of his personal ideal type and from the replies a test is constructed which objectifies that personal ideal type and purports to measure any other person's approximation to it. One of the most serious objections to this procedure is found in the divergence between the orig...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Original Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgment
• Introduction
• 1 Some theoretical considerations
• 2 Teacher perception and expressed attitude
• 3 Teacher expectation and experimental research
• 4 Classroom climate
• 5 Self-concept and school achievement
• 6 Attitudes and expectations of pupils
• 7 Classroom teaching and classroom research
• Suggestions for further reading
• Bibliography