Teacher Expectation: Sociopsychological Dynamics

The teacher is without question the key to a successful class-room learning experience. Acceptance of this statement is no longer confined to the pages of educational literature; its full impact is evidenced in the mounting allocation of funds for teacher improvement. If there is agreement on the paramount importance of the teacher's personality in classroom learning, there is much less agreement on the different ways in which the teacher's personality affects the learning of different children. Exactly how the dynamics of teacher personality operate to effect differential performance is one of the prime questions facing the instructional theorist. Although unequivocal answers await empirical investigation, educators and social scientists in the past decade have produced research at least to formulate tenable hypotheses regarding pupil-teacher interaction. One of these hypotheses suggests that the teacher for varied reasons perceives competencies and potentialities of children differently and that these expectancies are reflected in his interactions with children to produce differential performance among learners, thus fulfilling his prophecy. "Teacher expectation, " "self-fulfilling prophecy " and "teacher faith " have been coined to imply this tendency for the teacher to create a reality commen-surate with his perceptions. Furthermore, the learner, while creating his own reality, shadows substantially the reality form-ing in the teacher's mind. That these basic concepts underlying self-fulfilling prophecy