Forming Judgements in the Classroom: How do Teachers Develop Expectations of Their Pupils' Performances?

This experimental study investigates the question as to how teachers relate to two different information factors about pupils and arrive at a prediction. Anderson and Butzin (1974) suggested that it is by multiplication that adults integrate information about the motivation and the aptitude of a specific person to reach a judgement on his/ her ability. Here it was assumed that there were major differences in the patterns by which individual teachers integrate information. An experiment was designed to allow a statistical evaluation for every teacher. The dependent variable was a prognosis of pupils’ performances in the next examination of the teacher’s subject. The findings of this study contradict the results mentioned above. Teachers arrive at their judgement by means of differentiated considerations, best explained by a twostage process of information integration.