Teacher Expectations Student Achievement
Teacher Expectations Student Achievement
Teacher Expectations Student Achievement(TESA) is a behavioral change staff development program for all educators, grade levels, and subject areas. Teachers learn 15 interactions designed to encourage equitable interaction with all students. The program is based on expectation theory and the early research of Thomas Good and Jere Brophy.
The TESA framework directs teachers to examine their actions in three areas: how they solicit and manage students’ responses to questions, how they give feedback, and how they demonstrate personal regard for students. Each month, they practice one trait from each category.
- Equitable Distribution of Response Opportunity : The teacher learns how to provide an opportunity for all students to respond or perform in classroom learning situations.
- Affirmation or Correction: The teacher learns how to give feedback to students about their classroom performance.
- Proximity: The teacher learns the significance of being physically close to students as they work.
- Individual Helping: The teacher learns how to provide individual help to each student.
- Praise for the Learning Performance: The teacher learns how to praise the students' learning performance.
- Courtesy:The teacher learns how to use expressions of courtesy in interactions with students.
- Latency: The teacher learns how to allow the student enough time to think over a question before assisting the student or ending the opportunity to respond.
- Reasons for Praise: The teacher learns how to give useful feedback for the students' learning performance.
- Personal Interest Statements and Compliments: The teacher learns how to ask questions, give compliments or make statements related to a student's personal interests or experiences.
- Delving, Rephrasing, Giving Clues: The teacher learns how to provide additional information to help the student respond to a question.
- Listening: The teacher learns how to apply active listening techniques with students.
- Touching: The teacher learns how to touch students in a respectful, appropriate and friendly manner.
- Higher-Level Questioning: The teacher learns how to ask challenging questions that require students to do more than simply recall information
- Accepting Feelings: The teacher learns how to recognize and accept students' feelings in a nonevaluative manner.
- Desisting: The teacher learns how to stop a student's misbehavior in a calm and courteous manner.
Nearly all schools claim to hold high expectations for all students. In reality, however, what is professed is not always practiced. Although some schools and teachers maintain uniformly high expectations for all students, others have "great expectations" for particular segments of the student population but minimal expectations for others. And in many urban and innercity schools, low expectations predominate.
Asa Hilliard III (1991) contends that "our current ceiling for students is really much closer to where the floor ought to be." Many believe there is great disparity between "what youngsters are capable of learning and what they are learning" (John Bishop 1989).
Evidence suggests that schools can improve student learning by encouraging teachers and students to set their sights high.
The expectations teachers have for their students and the assumptions they make about their potential have a tangible effect on student achievement. Research "clearly establishes that teacher expectations do play a significant role in determining how well and how much students learn" (Jerry Bamburg 1994).
Students tend to internalize the beliefs teachers have about their ability. Generally, they "rise or fall to the level of expectation of their teachers.... When teachers believe in students, students believe in themselves. When those you respect think you can, you think you can" (James Raffini 1993).
Conversely, when students are viewed as lacking in ability or motivation and are not expected to make significant progress, they tend to adopt this perception of themselves. Regrettably, some students, particularly those from certain social, economic, or ethnic groups, discover that their teachers consider them "incapable of handling demanding work" (Peggy Gonder 1991).
Teachers' expectations for students-whether high or low-can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, students tend to give to teachers as much or as little as teachers expect of them.
A characteristic shared by most highly effective teachers is their adherence to uniformly high expectations. They "refuse to alter their attitudes or expectations for their students-regardless of the students' race or ethnicity, life experiences and interests, and family wealth or stability" (Barbara J. Omotani and Les Omotani 1996).
Either consciously or unconsciously, teachers often behave differently toward students based on the beliefs and assumptions they have about them. For example, studies have found that teachers engage in affirming nonverbal behaviors such as smiling, leaning toward, and making eye contact with students more frequently when they believe they are dealing with high-ability students than when they believe they are interacting with "slow" students (Jerry Bamburg 1994).
Students who are perceived to be low in ability may also be given fewer opportunities to learn new material, asked less stimulating questions, given briefer and less informative feedback, praised less frequently for success, called on less frequently, and given less time to respond than students who are considered high in ability (Kathleen Cotton 1989).
In addition, instructional content is sometimes "dumbed-down" for students considered to be low in ability. Students in low groups and tracks are usually offered "less exciting instruction, less emphasis on meaning and conceptualization, and more rote drill and practice activities" than those in high or heterogeneous groups and classes (Cotton).
When teachers summarily categorize or label students, typically some students end up receiving "a watered-down curriculum and less intense-and less motivating-instruction" (Gonder).
In the U.S., many subscribe to what Bamburg dubs a philosophy of "educational predestination." That is, innate ability is viewed as the main determinant of academic success. The role played by effort, amount and quality of instruction, and parental involvement is discounted (Bamburg).
Poor performance in school is often attributed to low ability, and ability is viewed as being immune to alteration, much like eye or skin color. Therefore, poorly performing students often come to believe that no matter how much effort they put forth, it will not be reflected in improved performance.
This view contrasts sharply with the predominant perspective in many other cultures, where hard work and effort are considered key to students' academic achievement. In these cultures, high expectations are maintained for all students, and if a student is not succeeding, it is attributed to lack of effort and hard work, not to insufficient intellectual ability.
Tracking and ability grouping can also affect expectations. A criticism of traditional tracking is that expectations for students as well as pace of instruction are reduced in lower ability groups. According to Stockard and Mayberry (1992), "A large number of studies from a wide range of years suggest that... ability grouping appears to be detrimental for low-ability students.... [and] impedes the progress of students in lower groups." Mixed-age and mixed-ability classes, in contrast, have been shown to improve achievement, perhaps in part because more is expected from students in such groups.
Although students may appear to accept or even relish lax teachers with low standards, they ultimately come away with more respect for teachers who believe in them enough to demand more, both academically and behaviorally.
In a recent national survey of over 1,300 high school students (Public Agenda 1997), teens were asked on questionnaires and in focus group discussions what they think of and want from their schools.
Teens' responses concerning what they want were clustered in three main areas:
Similarly, when 200 middle school students in Englewood, Colorado, were surveyed about their most memorable work in school, they repeatedly "equated hard work with success and satisfaction. Moreover, they suggested that challenge is the essence of engagement" (Wasserstein 1995).
Research has shown that teachers' expectations for students tend to be self-fulfilling. Therefore, Jere Brophy (1986) advises teachers to "routinely project attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and attributions. . . that imply that your students share your own enthusiasm for learning. To the extent that you treat your students as if they already are eager learners, they will be more likely to become eager learners."
Obviously, having high expectations does not magically equalize students' innate abilities and learning rates. To accommodate differences among students and help all students achieve mastery without resorting to watering down standards and expectations, teachers can manipulate three variables-time, grouping, and methodology (Omatoni and Omatoni 1996).
Preservice and inservice training can sensitize teachers to possible unconscious biases and heighten their awareness of the detrimental effects of holding differential expectations for students.
Teachers who view intelligence as dynamic and fluid rather than static and unchanging are less likely to have rigid preconceived notions about what students will or will not be able to achieve.
When teachers and administrators maintain high expectations, they encourage in students a desire to aim high rather than to slide by. To expect less is to do students a disservice, not a favor.
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Last modified: April 26, 2005
Disclaimer: This website is the sole responsibility of Mike McMahon. It does not represent any official opinions, statement of facts or positions of the Alameda Unified School District. Its sole purpose is to disseminate information to interested individuals in the Alameda community.
