Page 445 - Sociology and You

Chapter 12 Education 415
be on the verge of “blooming” and the rest of the students existed only in the minds of the teachers.
Intellectual growth was measured by the difference between a child’s IQ score at the end of the previous school year and that same child’s IQ score eight months after the next school year began. As Rosenthal and Jacobson expected, the children in the “blooming” group gained more IQ points than the other children (a 12-point gain versus an 8-point gain). The IQ gain of the children in the “blooming” group over the other students was the most pronounced among first and second graders. First graders in the “blooming” group gained over 27 IQ points, compared with 12 points in the remainder of the class. Among second graders, the advantage was 16.5 IQ points to 7.
Low teacher expectations do not necessarily prevent good students from doing well in school. And high teacher expectations cannot spur poor learners to the highest levels of achievement; however, high teacher expectations can be a powerful motivator for low performers who are capable of doing much better (Madon, Jussim, and Eccles, 1997). This occurs because teachers with high expectations for students treat them in special ways—they tend to smile and look at them more often, set higher goals for them, praise them more frequently, coach them in their studies, and give them more time to study (Rendon and Hope, 1996).
Operation of the self-fulfilling prophecy has been confirmed by other researchers in many other social settings (Myers, 1999). Research subjects behave as they think researchers expect, and a client’s progress in therapy is influenced by the therapist’s expectation. People who are expected by others to be hostile will exhibit more hostile behavior.
Working with the Research
1. How do you think the self-fulfilling prophecy works? That is, how are expectations transmitted from one person to another, and how do these expectations produce behavior?
2. What are the implications of the self-fulfilling prophecy for students? For teachers?
3. Explain why the self-fulfilling prophecy supports the labeling process discussed on pages 214–217 in Chapter 7.