ABSTRACT
The publication of Rosenthal and Jacobson's American Study, 1968, Pygmalion in the Classroom, drew the attention of educationalists and the popular press to the phenomenon that has come to be known as the teacher expectancy effect. Their study seemed to demonstrate that if teachers expected higher standards of work from some pupils than from others, then those former pupils would indeed do better over a school year. In this study, primary school teachers, at the start of a school year, were presented with information regarding their pupils. The results appeared to demonstrate that the expectations induced did indeed lead to higher levels of IQ in those children identified as spurters. Recent research begins to show peopel how teacher behaviour can affect pupil's attributions. Rosenthal himself has carried out a large-scale survey of research into the teacher expectancy effect. He has concluded that since his own Pygmalion Study more than four hundred further studies have demonstrated the existence of the effect.
