AS TEACHER S and educators understand, just because you want a student to learn something or perform well doesn’t mean that they always will! Often we focus on what the student is doing or not doing correctly – “Why can’t they just…?”. However, if we only focus on reasons that are external to us, we may miss important opportunities to reflect on how our own behaviour might influence our students’ performance.
When turning the spotlight back on ourselves, it is helpful to understand how we might be influencing our students’ learning. Once we recognise the nature of our attitudes and expectations, and the impact they may have on others, we can then develop techniques to use them for the good.
In 1968, Rosenthal and Jacobson conducted what is now a famous experiment that led to their theory of the “Pygmalion Effect”. This theory suggests that an authority figure’s attitude to a person under their influence will cause the individual to conform to these exact beliefs and fulfil what is expected of them. Today we call this “attitude” a “frame”, in the sense that we place a set picture around a person which pre-determines their abilities and their achievements.
In the musical My Fair Lady, which is based upon the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, Professor Higgins expected he could make Eliza a lady. His influence motivated Eliza to be just that. As her line goes: “...the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.”
Rosenthal and Jacobson conducted their Oak School experiment on 300 primary school students and their teachers. Students were tested on measures of non-verbal intelligence (IQ) at the start of the school year. Based on the IQ results, the students were allocated to three groups – Upper, Middle and Lower.
These original results were noted, but the researchers provided a different set of groupings to the teachers (without them knowing). Instead, the researchers randomly allocated 20 per cent of the students from all three groups into a separate fourth group which they labelled as “late bloomers”. The teachers were told this group had been determined by the IQ test to be “special” children, on the brink of rapid intellectual growth.
At the end of the school year, all 300 students were re-tested on their IQ. On average, the “non-late bloomers” had gained eight IQ points, whereas the “late bloomers” had gained 12 IQ points.
In addition, they had demonstrated significantly better grades (than the non-late bloomers). Teachers reported that the “late bloomers” were “more interesting”, “curious” and “happy”, and were “more likely to be successful in the future”. In actual fact, the students had performed better because the teachers had put a certain “frame” around hem, causing the teachers to think, behave and interact differently than they would have if they thought the students were not “late bloomers”.
Many further studies have since identified the impact of others’ expectations upon ability and performance, and have all reinforced the key point – ‘”What you expect is what you get”. (We can also do this to ourselves through our personal expectations, otherwise known as the “self-fulfilling prophecy”.)
It can take courage to turn the focus back on yourself. If you are teaching a group of students who are misbehaving, not achieving or progressing, you might need to ask yourself if your own expectations are at fault. What beliefs do you hold about this group? Is there something about your approach, your body language, the words that you use that might be being reflected back at you?
Using the notion of “framing” students, you could ask yourself: How have I framed each student in my class? Is this “frame” I have helpful or hindering to their progress? What results am I seeing in my students – does this match with my existing expectations? How have I framed groups or classes of students? Does this influence how I teach them or communicate with them? Do I look forward to teaching some grades and not others? Why?
Sometimes this can be a challenging question to ask ourselves.
If you realise that some of your frames are hindering, you can change them. That’s good ews. Invest some time in consciously creating new frames for your students. Expect them to be doing better, even if they aren’t at present.
Notice how your new frame changes how you interact with them. If you start to expect that a student will work hard, that they will pick things up quickly, that they will progress, that they will perform well – guess what! They are more likely too.
Maybe it’s time for your own little My Fair Lady experiment!
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.
Dr. Gene Moyle is an ex-ballet dancer turned psychologist working with elite athletes and performing artists. She lectures in performance psyhology at QUT Creative Industries and additionally works as an organisational psychologist and executive manager within the corporate business sector.
