Stability of Teachers' Expectations for Elementary School Aged Children

Abstract

To determine the stability of teacher expectations six elementary physical education specialists were asked to rate their students according to how they expected each to perform in terms of 4 expectancy variables: (1) over-all physical performance, (2) social relations with peers, (3) cooperative behavior during class, and (4) ability to reason. Each teacher was asked to rate students from a second, fourth and sixth grade class that they were teaching. Eight weeks after the first rating was taken, the teachers were again asked to rate the same students. Product-moment correlations calculated for each teacher showed a high degree of stability across the 4 expectancy variables for all three grades.