This article reviews over 50 years of research on teacher expectations and teacher effectiveness. In addition to describing these research traditions and findings, I tie the research in these evolving fields to the societal issues in play when the research was conducted and connect historical and emerging work. I describe the enormous growth of…

Various theories from the field of educational psychology, including high expectation theory (HET) and self-determination theory (SDT), focus on the classroom conditions which facilitate students' motivation, learning, and well-being. In the current paper, we aimed to breech the theoretical division between HET and SDT through a synthesis of both…

Teachers' enactments of literacy pedagogies are recontextualisations not only of curriculum documents, but of system and school-based policies, approaches, frameworks and the demands of assessments. These external inputs combine with teacher professional experience, beliefs about teaching and the roles of teachers and learners to generate…

Florida's Broward County Public Schools and the University of Chicago engaged in a Research-Practice Partnership (RPP) to scale teacher practices that support students' critical thinking. As part of the RPP, Jeanne Century's research team conducted research to determine what barriers might limit the spread of these practices. The findings show…

This paper offers a critical and theoretical exploration of the contemporary use of standards in assessment in higher education. It outlines three discourses of assessment standards. Each perspective foregrounds particular realities and backgrounds others, and so influences practice in particular taken-for-granted ways. The assumptions of these…

In this portrait, Maleka Donaldson vividly illustrates how two teachers in real-world, public school settings convey their expectations for kindergarten student performance and set the tone for learning from mistakes and feedback. Research in psychology and education has established the benefits of corrective feedback on learning but has not…

Alternative approaches to assessment in education (many of which are linked to inclusive and antiracist pedagogies) are gaining in popularity across the board, from PK--12 to higher education (Esquivel, 2021; St. Amour, 2020). One such antiracist assessment strategy is using labor-based grading contracts (LBGCs), popularized by Inoue (2019; see…

In 2020, the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE) within the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education published "What Works Best: 2020 Update (WWB2020)." Drawing on Michael Apple's "simple questions" as a theoretical lens, this paper analyses the first two "Themes, Practices, or Strategies" (TPS)…

This article reviews Rosenthal and Jacobson's (1968) seminal study, "Pygmalion in the Classroom" (PC). We consider what preceded PC, the actual study, immediate criticisms of it, Rosenthal's reactions to the criticism, and, importantly, the research that followed PC from 1968 to roughly 1990. Despite critical criticisms of it, we…

The Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) complements the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). FSSE measures faculty members' expectations of student engagement in educational practices that are empirically linked with high levels of learning and development. The survey also collects information about how faculty members spend their…

The Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) complements the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). FSSE (pronounced "fessie") measures faculty members' expectations of student engagement in educational practices that are empirically linked with high levels of learning and development. The survey also collects information about…

Teacher expectancy effects, the class of phenomena in which teacher beliefs about students influence student outcomes, are widely believed to operate through recursive processes of teacher-student interaction. Recent work in "wise" interventions has shown profound and robust effects in educational domains, and has attributed these…

This special issue marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark Pygmalion experiment (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). It offers contributions from across the globe, attesting to universal features of teacher expectancy effects. Reviews of this history underscore controversy, advances, and few intervention studies. Empirical studies emphasise…

This narrative essay describes a basic writing instructor's engagement with student confusion in a hybrid Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) course. The story examines the ways confusion can mark sites of engagement for students and teachers and how ALP courses, in particular, might mediate effective (and ineffective) forms of confusion.

Reflective students who are pro-active in thought processing in the classroom often do not receive the same level of positive appraisal from teachers. Many educators have been conditioned by universal norms to believe that to talk profusely during class time means to engage while to remain frequently quiet tends to denote a lack of engagement. The…