ABSTRACT
For a teacher who believes that girls have superior learning ability over boys, knowledge concerning the sex of a particular child will be highly significant. For another teacher, who genuinely does not believe that there are any differences whatsoever, with respect to all those activities with which the teacher is concerned, between the sexes, the same item of knowledge will lead to no expectations being formed at all. Interest in studying the effects of teachers' expectations has centred on those situations in which the pupil's performance might move closer to the expectations of his or her teacher. Rosenthal and Jacobson discussed the possibility of an anti-self-fulfilling prophecy. The analogue study by Beez, that provides evidence in support of the teacher-expectancy effect, supplied teachers with information concerning social as well as academic factors while the more recent study by Crano and Mellon, using naturalistic expectations, shows that social expectations can be particularly important in determining future levels of performance in pupils.
