Teacher Expectations and Student Characteristics

Abstract

Teachers and student teachers (N = 208) enrolled in summer school courses at Memorial University were presented with a fictitious report card for a Grade 6 pupil, with a photograph attached. Report cards were varied only by the gender and attractiveness of the student portrayed; this is essentially a replication of earlier experiments by Clifford and Walster (1973) and Clifton and Baksh (1978). An attempt was made to extend the findings of these studies in two ways: first, by expanding the number of dependent measures included; and second, by using a regression analysis to compare the relative importance of student gender, student attractiveness, and teacher's education in differential expectations. Expectation effects due to attractiveness or gender were rather meagre. Furthermore, for about half the expectation items studied, the amount of the teacher's university education contributed more to the variance of the dependent measures than did student characteristics. In addition, it was noted that increasing education tends to be associated with more negative expectations about children. Implications for research on teacher expectations are discussed with reference to teacher training programs.