Pygmalion in the Classroom

In 1965, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson conducted an experiment in an elementary school to study the impact teacher expectation has on student performance. The researchers told teachers that certain children were "growth spurters" based on their results on the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition.
But. The test did not exist. The children, in fact, had been chosen at random. They did, however, nevertheless show greater intellectual growth than the control-group children after one year (12 IQ points versus 8 IQ points). Why?



Expectations serve as self-fulfilling prophecies. Teachers expecting greater intellectual development communicate these expectations with reactions, words, looks, postures, gestures; they encourage their students. Particularly younger children, i.e. first and second graders, show effects of teacher expectations (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1965). Seen from a different angle, this means that certain students are not encouraged and do not perform well due to the low expectations. This is particularly of interest when discussing the performance of children and their ethnicity, religion, gender, and socio-economic background.




-  Rosenthal, R. & Jacobson, L. (1965). Pygmalion in the Classroom. The Urban Review, 16-20, link
- photographs taken at Broadview Public School in 1959/60 via