Is the Academic Performance of Schoolchildren Linked to the Expectations of Their Teachers? Results of an Experimental Study

Abstract

Teachers’ expectations may affect the academic performance of their pupils, leading to the effect of “self-fulfilling prophecies”. Teachers form their expectations about the academic performance of their pupils based on the information they possess about the latter. The present study tested a hypothesis about a correlation between the teacher’s disposal of information about the pupil’s ranking on an initial diagnostic test at the beginning of the first grade and the pupil’s academic performance at the end of the first grade. It also tested the hypothesis that the teacher’s disposal of information about the pupil’s ranking can affect his or her expectations about the level of the pupil’s cognitive skills. In this large-scale cluster randomized controlled experimental study, the participants included 4,460 first-grade students from 188 schools in a Russian region. We divided the schools into the experimental and control groups randomly. The teachers in the control group received information about the basic skills of their pupils. In contrast, experimental group teachers additionally received information about their pupils’ ranking based on a combination of indicators of their cognitive (basic reading and math) and non-cognitive (personal and socio-emotional) skills. The study did not confirm the hypotheses.