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| Teachers, expectations of pupils |
As teachers we all have expectations of our pupils just as pupils have expectations of us as teachers. These expectations influence our behavior.
How do our expectations of pupils affect them?
We are likely to have views and prejudices about what children should be like as pupils. We may also have
views about how individual children will perform in class because of what we know about their backgrounds or previous experience. For example, if I have heard other teachers say that Emanuela in Class 1 is very slow, this may influence my view of her when I teach her in Class 2, le I respond to children according to my prejudices about them. If we think a child is clever, we will ask more challenging questions. If we think a
child is weak, we will tend to give him/her more support in answering. Children then begin to behave as we expect them to, and so they end up becoming successful or failing according to our expectations. This in turn affects their self-image or concept, le how they feel about themselves.
Here is part of an account from Barbara Shiel, a primary teacher m America, who ran an experiment with her class of 35 12-year-old. It was a very difficult class to teach and contained many 'problem' children who were not interested in school, who were underachieving and came from difficult home backgrounds. She tried every possible technique with the class without making any progress, so she decided to try a more radical approach. She let children choose what they wanted to learn - to give them greater responsibility for their own learning. She helped children draw up their own work contracts for each day Although some children found it hard to work without being directed, eventually most children in her class moved towards independent work. Here is part of her final progress report on the class.
I found that the children with the most difficulty learning also made great progress. Some who had been unable to retain the multiplication tables were able to multiply and divide fractions with a minimum number of errors by June. I cannot explain exactly what happened, but it seems to me that when their self-concept changed, when they discovered they could, they did. These slow learners became fast learners Success built up on success.
This quote suggests that success can change children's ideas about themselves. Barbara Shiel's pupils had built up low opinions of themselves through years of failing or perhaps being blamed for bad behavior In her program, they got a new start a chance to show they could be successful. This changed their self-image and, in turn, their behavior.