A Social Psychology of Schooling

The Expectancy Process

Colin Rogers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351846127
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

If a theory of education is to be helpful to the practising teacher, it must take the social context of learning into account. Originally published in 1982, Colin Rogers does just this, exploring the implications of two decades' detailed research in to the social psychology of teaching and learning. The central theme that emerges from this study is the importance of the still controversial 'teacher-expectancy effect' – the effect of teachers' expectations on the performance of pupils. By examining in detail the claims made by those who believe that the expectations of teachers can influence levels of pupils' academic attainment, the book shows the complexity of interpersonal interaction and perception within the classroom and the nature of problems involved in studying these. It also focuses on the way that the mutual perceptions of teachers and pupils themselves affect, and are affected by, other aspects of life in a school; and extensive use is made of research conducted in British schools to illustrate major points. The conclusion of the study was that it is the classroom – the very environment in which teachers and pupils interact – rather than teacher training that may need reform.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Interest in the social psychology of education has shown a notable increase in recent years (Lindgren, 1978). There are many reasons for this, including the general increase in social scientific research stemming from the 1960s and a growing awareness on the part of educational researchers that attention must be given to ‘social’ factors in order to advance our understanding of the nature of any one child’s educational career. While the development of psychological theories of learning and associated theories of instruction have considerable potential significance for the practising teacher, it has become increasingly clear that studies of the learning and teaching processes that do not take into account the social context within which these activities take place will be of only limited value.

In 1968, Rosenthal and Jacob son published a book entitled Pygmalion in the Classroom that, in spite of its many faults, played a considerable part in developing interest in the possible application of social psychology to educational problems. The details of the research reported in their book, the criticisms of it and a part of the body of research that has been directly inspired by it will be the focus of later chapters in this present volume (particularly Chapters 2 and 3), but a brief outline of the claims made within it will be given here as a preface to the following discussion of the reasons for choosing this particular work as a starting-point for the present volume.

Rosenthal had previously developed an interest in the extent to which the expectations of one person could influence the behaviour of another. In earlier work (Rosenthal, 1966) he had investigated the extent to which researchers, quite unintentionally, would tend to produce the results that they expected to get. His work in this area led him to the conclusion that expectancy effects, or self-fulfilling prophecies were real phenomena and of potentially great significance in their consequences.

Together with Jacobson, he applied the ideas developed in this work to a consideration of educational issues. The particular question to be addressed was an apparently simple one. If teachers expect certain of their pupils to perform at given levels, either above or below average, will that expectation in some way influence the behaviour of the teacher and in turn the relevant pupils, so as to make the expectations come true? The answer obtained by Rosenthal and Jacobson was Yes. In their case the expectations that had been given to teachers were not veridical. The teachers would have been expecting some pupils to do especially well, while in fact there were no good reasons to believe that these pupils would do better than any of their peers. Yet the results seemed to show that if teachers expected above average progress from a pupil then that was what they would probably get.

Not surprisingly, claims such as this had a marked impact on the educational world and even now, several years later, some of the dust has not yet settled. Nor should it have, for in their inquiry Rosenthal and Jacobson helped to open up the Pandora’s box of the social psychology of education.

Social psychology and the expectancy process

This book is not in any way intended to be an introduction to social psychology as such. Many excellent introductions to this basic discipline exist (one that relates well to the concerns of this present volume is Eiser, 1980). Social psychology is not in its entirety relevant to the interests to be developed here. Social psychologists have developed a great many theories concerning a wide range of different phenomena. A social psychology of education will only draw on a limited amount of this. Furthermore, the processes involved in the expectancy effect initially studied by Rosenthal and Jacobson represent only a part of the social psychology of education. The nature of the relationships between the social psychology of education and the specific topics to be discussed throughout this book will be discussed below. The present section is concerned with a preliminary discussion of the general application of social psychology to the study of the possible effects of teachers’ expectations for their pupils’ performance.

In Chapter 3 of this volume, the ‘expectancy process’ will be outlined and discussed in some detail. A very brief summary of this can be given here. If teachers’ expectations are to influence pupils’ levels of performance in school a number of things must happen. Among the more important of these we can list the following: (1) Teachers must actually form impressions of particular pupils and on the basis of these impressions come to establish expectations for future performance levels. (2) The behaviour of the teachers must be in some way affected by their expectations, with or without their awareness. (3) The pupils must at some level notice those aspects of teacher behaviour that are related to the teachers’ expectations, but again it will not be necessary for the pupils to be aware of the relevant aspects of the teachers’ behaviour, the teachers’ expectations or, indeed, both. (4) The pupils must then in some way respond to their teachers’ behaviour so that they, the pupils, come to behave in a manner that more closely matches the expectations of the teachers.

As will be seen in later chapters, each one of these steps is in itself problematic and leads us into a wider range of issues. For the present purposes, however, it is the general nature of each of these steps, the features that they have in common with each other, that are important.

Each step involves aspects of interpersonal interaction, the ways in which people observe each other, behave towards each other and react to the presence and behaviour of others. In this respect they reflect some of the central concerns of social psychology.

As has been stated above, this book is not an introduction to social psychology. As such it is not appropriate here to give a lengthy discussion of the definition of social psychology. While there have been, and will no doubt continue to be, many arguments about the most desirable form that social psychology can take (see, for example, Secord, 1977; Armistead, 1974), it is possible to put forward a general definition that would attract the support of most social psychologists. Ultimately, such a definition will prove to be too general to satisfy everybody all of the time, but it will be perfectly adequate for present purposes. Social psychology then can be defined as the study of the ways in which the behaviour of one individual person is affected by the actual and imagined presence of others, together with a study of the ways in which that individual’s behaviour in turn affects the behaviour of others who may or may not be physically present at the time.

Three points of clarification may be needed with respect to this definition. First, the use of the term ‘imagined’ is not a reference to imaginary others of the sort characteristic of the phantasy play world of a young child. Rather it refers to the influence that very real people may have upon us even though they may not be there at the time. So in this way the young child might refrain from engaging in a certain act as she knows that her mother, who is not present, would disapprove and be upset if she were to find out.

Second, given this definition, social psychology is seen to be the study of the individual person. Often, on coming to social psychology for the first time and on being asked what they expect to find, people reply, The study of groups.’ The definition given above certainly does not rule this out, but it does emphasise that for the social psychologist the focus of attention will be upon the individuals within groups and the ways in which they influence each other. It is not the study of the group per se.

Third, the above definition should also be taken as implying that the social psychologist’s attention will not be directed solely towards the behaviour of people. Behaviour is often ultimately what one would wish to explain (e.g. the behaviour of a school pupil that determines his degree of academic success) but along the way one would also want to investigate the cognitions of the individual. ‘Cognitions’ is used here as a general expression to cover a range of mental processes including the perception of other people, the making of inferences about their intentions, feelings, thoughts, etc., the formation of the individual’s own intentions, thoughts, feelings and attitudes towards other people and objects. It is through the study of the workings of those various cognitive processes that many social psychologists believe that it will be possible to obtain an understanding of the nature of interpersonal influence.

Given this definition of the nature of social psychology and the above statement of the component parts of the expectancy process as it might operate within a school classroom, it is clear that the one is related to the other. The expectancy process has been said to involve a number of steps each of which is characterised by being in some way concerned with the processes of interpersonal interaction and influence. Social psychology has been said to be the general study of these very processes. Social psychology therefore must have something of relevance to say about the nature of this particular process to be found within the educational system.

Would that life was always so simple. Ultimately, I would agree that social psychology does have something of relevance, and indeed significance, to say about this and many other aspects of the educational system. However, this support for the argument that social psychology deserves to be taken seriously by those interested in education has to be qualified.

The application of social psychology: perspectives, theories and methods

Typically, people talk about the ‘application’ of social psychology. By this it seems that they often mean that they would expect to be able to examine a problem in the particular ‘area’ that concerns them and then turn to social psychology for a ready-made answer. Such people are usually disappointed.

This is not because social psychology is incapable of being applied. There are, it is true, strong arguments for claiming that the nature of ‘pure’ social psychology, as it has developed in practice, does not make it as amenable to application to real social problems as many would like it to be. Some of these arguments will be exemplified throughout this book. (For a more general discussion see Deutsch and Hornstein, 1975, and issues of the Applied Social Psychology Annual, 1980 onwards.)

Rather, the reasons for the disappointment come from an initial misunderstanding of the nature of the contribution that social psychology can make to the study of ‘real’ issues, such as those involved in education. What seems to be expected from social psychology is the provision of ready-made answers, the end of a person’s quest for understanding. In reality, the application of social psychology involves what is perhaps best described as a new beginning to that search.

The contribution made by social psychology to the study of various social issues can be seen to come about through three separate, but closely related, routes. First, social psychology can supply a particular perspective, a way of looking at any particular issue. Given the definition of social psychology presented above, it is clear that this perspective will be one that will draw attention towards processes of interpersonal interaction. In the case of some issues, such as perhaps the teacher expectancy effect, the social psychological perspective might appear as particularly appropriate, but this will certainly not always be the case. Where alternative perspectives are clearly available, social psychology can make no claim to being the way of looking at the issues involved. It will be one among many. A complete understanding of any social issue is likely to involve the application of more than one perspective. This is especially the case with the study of education, hence the ‘multi-disciplinary’ nature of most university and college education departments. The education department that was staffed entirely by social psychologists would offer its students a very poor package indeed.

For this reason, it is important not to allow the adoption of a social psychological perspective to blinker our perception of our object of study. Throughout this book, aspects of the educational process will be examined from a social psychological perspective. This will limit us to asking only certain types of questions, and will direct us towards accepting only certain types of answers. There is no harm in this, but it is important always to bear in mind that at certain points an analysis from, for example, a historical, political or economic perspective would be equally valid.

The adoption of a social psychological perspective, however, is only the first step. Within social psychology there are many competing and sometimes directly contradictory theories from which to choose. For example, a well-known review of theories of attitude change (for a long time a major research topic in social psychology) discusses some fourteen different theories, and these are only the more important of those available at the time (Insko, 1967). Theories within social psychology can be said to play a similar role to that of ‘perspectives’ as discussed above. A well-articulated theory draws together the information available on a particular topic and places some kind of interpretative organisation upon it. A good theory can turn an apparently disorganised and only loosely related collection of separate pieces of information into a coherent and understandable whole. Hence Lewin’s dictum: ‘There’s nothing as practical as a good theory.’

Within any one perspective, in our case a social psychological one, the adoption of one particular theoretical system continues the process of directing our attention towards particular types of questions and certain types of answers. However, perhaps most importantly, theories enable us to predict the as yet unknown as well as to interpret what has already been studied. The application of social psychology then, to education or anything else, would seem to depend critically upon the quality of the theories that social psychologists have to offer. If the theories are good and useful ones then they will enable us to predict what will happen within the area of application with which we are concerned. In the case of teacher expectancy effects, good theories of the effects of aspects of interpersonal interaction and influence will enable us to predict with precision under exactly what circumstances such expectancy effects will take place and just how powerful they will be. As will quickly become apparent in the next chapter that examines some of the research that has sought to establish just these things about the teacher expectancy effect, the available theories within social psychology are not that good.

To a very large extent theories can only be as good as the data upon which they are based (often they are worse). The range of a theory, the extent to which it is able to explain and predict different things, or the same things under different circumstances, will be determined by the range of the data that has been used in the formulation, testing and elaboration of that theory. It is in this respect that social psychological theories have been most strongly criticised. This brings as to the third avenue of application, methods.

Like psychology as a whole, social psychology has often seemed to be attempting to emulate the natural sciences in an attempt to gain academic respectability and to further its own development. Whether or not this is generally a good strategy to have followed is beyond the scope of this present discussion, but what seems to be undeniable is that such a strategy has led to the great majority of social psychological experiments being laboratory based. The abandonment of laboratory-based research, and the construction of theoretical systems based exclusively upon it, is often called for but it is not in itself without its problems (Secord, 1977; Leinhardt, 1978; Runkel, 1978). While laboratory studies offer the possibility of close control over what happens, thus making available to the social psychologist the benefits of the experimental method, they also create very particular types of situations.

These situations are often referred to as ‘artificial’. This is a label that I confess to having some difficulty in understanding. A social-psychological laboratory is no more natural (which I take to be the opposite of artificial) then a school classroom. Laboratories are, however, only one type of social situation and it does indeed now seem unlikely that attempts to build theories upon data collected exclusively within one type of social setting will be readily generalisable to other types of social settings. If one builds theories concerning the social psychology of education by studying only those social settings found within the various educational systems that are available, then one will probably only be able readily to generalise those findings, and apply the resultant theories, to yet further instances of educational settings. This is unlikely to be perceived as a problem, however, as the educational social psychologist would probably not want to claim that her theories and findings will apply to settings beyond the confines of educational systems.

The ‘pure’ social psychologist, however, would often seem to want to claim that his findings can be generalised beyond the confines of the laboratory. It is certainly the case that those who are interested in the application of social psychology have often sought to make such generalisations. Indeed, it would seem to be the case that such generalisations are not impossible, they are just difficult. Throughout this book many such attempts will be made. Some of these will doubtless appear to the reader to be more successful than others.

Generalising the actual methods of the laboratory-based social psychologist to the classroom, however, would seem to be quite a different matter from generalising some of the fruits of those methods. If the latter is difficult then the former is much closer to being impossible.

As will be seen later, some of the more fundamental criticisms of Rosenthal and Jacobson’s work on teacher expectations have been concerned with just this – the use of methods appropriate to the laboratory in a classroom setting to which such methods are nowhere near so appropriate. The problem of developing a suitable set of methodologies for classroom research is one that cuts across all the work to be reported in this book. It will therefore be an issue that will be returned to from time to time as appropriate.

To summarise this introduction so far then we can state that the book is to be concerned initially with an examination of research into the teacher expectancy effect and with the application of social psychology to educational matters. The expectancy effect will be closely concerned with matters of interpersonal interaction and influence and the study of these matters has been defined as the main concern of social psychology. The application of social psychology will be through the avenues of perspective, theory and method. The effect of the adoption of a social psychological perspective will have a general and pervasive influence on the nature of the discussion that makes up the rest of this book. It will help to define the type of problems that are to be studied and the type of solutions that will be considered acceptable. Application through theory will be more particular in its effect and there will be a little more to say about this later on. Application by way of method will prove to be the most problematic of the three. The methodologies of social psychology have traditionally been concerned with laboratory-based research. While such research has its value in the development of a social psychology of education this will be primarily through the avenue of resulting theory. A social psychology of education needs to develop its own methodologies and, as will be seen in various examples throughout this book, this development will not be an easy one.

The social psychology of schooling, the social psychology of education and social psychology

The discuss...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Research into teachers’ expectations and their effects
• 3 The expectancy process
• 4 Teachers’ perceptions of their pupils
• 5 Pupils’ perceptions of their teachers
• 6 Cognitive responses to success and failure
• 7 The intermediary role of the self-concept
• 8 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index