Sociologists and I

Barbara stated that what students believe and teachers expect is the students’ guides to success (Barbara, 1993). I agree with her point of view as well I support what Rosenthal argued regarding the Pygmalion effect. At the beginning of the year I formed my expectations to my grade eight students taken-into-granted their previous achievements and the results were as I predicted, but then five low achievers astonished me when they achieved what their classmates did exactly after I had encouraged them by my explicit messages “You really can do it” and “I won’t give up on you”

In one of the grades in a school, there were two sections A and B, in which students of section A were “superiors” and those of section B were not. When the “superiors” were taken to section B and the students of section B were placed in section A, the students’ achievements in both sections were opposite to what were in their habitat sections. Also it happened with my grade nine low achievers who remarked their marks and behaviors after they trusted my words that mathematics is significant in our life and they should love it in order to success in it. Though they didn’t reach their high achievers classmates but they jumped to a noticeable level.

Is it “Bright” or “low” students who are praised or punished more? Who are given more wait-time? How can you differentiate students from the first look or impression?

You cannot answer the first two questions unless you are a reflective teacher watching yourself on a video tape after the class or you are a student watching your teachers in your classes. I am sure you will individually conclude how teachers’ expectations and behaviors can shape students’ achievements and behaviors. It really happened with my grade seven student in the physics subject; he gave me three ways to perform an experiment on “the existence of air” when I gave him the chance to do so though he was a low achiever student at the first days of this school year. I am sure this happened due to his hope to get more rewards as he used to have periodically after three successive correct answers.  

Are you a prophet? If you are so then you will predict personalities and achievements from the first impression, however, you are not able. An experiment was done last year in my grade seven class showed that 90% of students, who are labeled as low achievers, were able to answer 80% of my mathematics questions without I even noticed that but the tape records which were fixed to their desks were able to tell the truth. They are now in grade eight and two of them are able to do better than high achievers in certain tasks as proved by the term marks.

These experiments and cases which I faced or did convey with what stated by Barbara and his students and also can show a great similar to what was noticed and observed by Cooper regarding the Pygmalion behaviors (Cooper, 1979, pp. 389-410) and with what Oakes stated about how teachers and schools bring unequal opportunities to students (Oakes J. , 1985).