ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the rich history and beginnings of teacher expectations research that has included more than a thousand studies being conducted on the topic. Much of the teacher expectation research has focused on teacher effects on individual students, with teacher data aggregated across classrooms. The effects of teacher expectations on student learning found in the Pygmalion study were modest and in many of the subsequent studies that took place in regular classrooms, the effects were also described as small or moderate. Within the teacher expectation field, the area of the long-term effects of teacher expectations is one where research could make an important contribution to understandings of the effects and processes of teacher expectations. One of the earlier debates about whether teacher expectations existed and had effects on student learning, centered on studies that tried to replicate the findings of Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson.
