Teacher's Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform

      

       Alix Spiegel decided to look at expectations like how teacher’s expectations can affect the performance of the children they teach.  Harvard professor, Robert Rosenthal, was the first psychologist to systematically study this when he conducted an experiment at an elementary school south of San Francisco in 1964.  He wanted to see what would happen if teachers were told that certain kids in their class were destine to succeed.  Rosenthal took a normal IQ test and dressed it up.  He just put a cover on a standardized IQ test that said 'Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition.'  He chose several students from each class and told the teacher that the test predicted the kids were on the verge of an intense intellectual bloom, even though these children were just selected at random.  The teachers expected for these children to be smart and the children were.  These kids IQ increased so much because the teachers had been led to expect the great gain.  Some schools now videotape classes over a period of months and get the teachers to work with a personal coach to watch these videos and give them recommendations about different behaviors to try.  Teaches were found that their beliefs had shifted way more than the beliefs of teachers given a standard informational course.