0.8 Mirci, p., loomis, c., & Hensley, p. (september 2011). social  (Page 5/19)

An example of the difficulty of challenging the historical ideology emerged in a three-year longitudinal study of ten high school students involved in de-tracking (Oakes, Wells, Jones,&Datnow, 1997). Although the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) recently supported de-tracking secondary schools so all students would have access to advanced placement courses, requirements to get into such classes at various schools prevented access and continued to result in tracking (Tedford, 2009). In spite of such pressure from WASC, the researchers found that some teachers continued to exclude students from such courses by judging and ranking students solely on low expectations of perceived ability.

The influence of educators’ expectations of students on students’ self-beliefs

High-stakes testing, combined with labeling students as deficient based on not scoring well, often has led to “blaming the victim” (Brantlinger, 2001, p. 3). This ideology has long hindered teachers from helping learners to believe in their “capacity to learn” (Murphy, 1961, p. 47).

Students have tended to internalize the attitudes and expectations of teachers regarding them and this has impacted school performance (Jarvis, 2008; Loomis, 2011; Rosenthal&Jacobson, 1992). For example, in the Oak School experiment teachers were told that a group of elementary students would attain high achievement at the end of the school year based on I.Q. levels. These students were actually chosen at random but at the end of the year they outperformed their peers on an intelligence test because the teachers interacted with these students based on the expectation that these students were high achieving (Rosenthal&Jacobson, 1992).

In a longitudinal study consisting of 5,353 students, parents, and teachers, expectations of educational attainment two years after students graduated high school were identified. Teacher expectations had the strongest effect (Sciarra&Ambrosino, 2011).

In a study from New Zealand, the expectations of students, parents, and teachers were studied regarding student achievement while in school and expectations regarding what these young people would be doing five years after graduation. The perceptions of all three groups were thought to contribute to student success. Low teacher expectations of some students seemed to influence these students’ decline in achievement (Rubie-Davies, C. M., Peterson, E., Irving, E., Widdowson, D.&Dixon, R., 2010).

A study of 121 teachers from an underperforming high school examined blaming behavior of teachers regarding struggling students. Teachers who engaged in blaming behavior of student and parents for students’ underachievement did not use multiple teaching strategies in working with students, indicated that these students were inferior to their own children, and did not expect the students to succeed (Thompson, Warren,&Carter, 2004). At the same time, there were other teachers who believed their responsibility was the academic success of students.