ABSTRACT
The teacher’s pet phenomenon is related to the previous chapter because it also deals with teachers’ preferential treatment and their deviation from fairness and equity in classroom behavior. However, the teacher’s pet phenomenon is not an expectancy-related concept. Rather, it is a phenomenon of a special emotional relationship (often a love relationship) between the teacher and a particular student (or two) in the classroom. Although the phenomenon is extremely well known, very little research that focused directly on teachers’ pets has been published, and we don’t even know its rate of occurrence in schools beyond two or three studies. This chapter is based on a series of studies conducted in Israel.
