Previous research has documented reliable effects of teachers' judgments or expectations, respectively, on their students' school performance. However, the importance of those effects has been controversially discussed because of their limited effect size. The impact of teacher judgments on students' lives might have been underestimated due to a…

Understanding how classrooms influence a student's motivation and engagement is a persistent concern in the field of educational psychology. Social-cognitive theories postulate that individual students' perceptions of their environment influence their motivation and subsequent behavior. However, empirical research directly testing the core tenets…

Teachers' judgments of students' academic achievement are not only affected by the achievement themselves but also by several other characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, and minority status. In real-life classrooms, achievement and further characteristics are often confounded. We disentangled achievement, ethnicity and minority status and…

We examined whether African American students differentially responded to dimensions of the observed classroom-learning environment compared with non-African American students. Further, we examined whether these dimensions of the classroom mediated treatment effects of a preschool mathematics intervention targeted at students from low-income…

This research used prospective longitudinal data to examine the associations between first-grade teachers' over- and underestimation of their students' math abilities, basic reading abilities, and language skills and the students' high school academic performance, with special attention to the subject area and moderating effects of student…

In this article, we address the relationship between teacher expectation bias and student characteristics, its effect on long-term student performance, and the development of this effect over time. Expectation bias was defined as the difference between observed and predicted teacher expectation. These predicted expectations were estimated from a…

There is relatively little research on the role of teacher expectations in the early school years or the importance of teacher expectations as a predictor of future academic achievement. The current study investigated these issues in the reading and mathematic domains for young children. Data from nearly 1,000 children and families at 1st, 3rd,…

In this study, the authors examined the independent effects of teacher and mother expectations on youth achievement outcomes, the mediating factors that explain the relationship between adult expectations and student achievement, and the effects of congruent vs. dissonant adult expectations on achievement. Participants were an ethnically diverse…

Examines predictors of teachers' ratings of academic competence of 105 kindergarten children from low-income families. Controlling for children's skills and socioeconomic status, teachers rated children as less competent when they perceived value differences with parents. The findings suggest a mechanism by which some children from low-income…

Interviews 36 practicing teachers, using phenomenological methods to examine what, when, where, and to whom teachers offer choice. Final results focus on the following main points: teachers believe that choice promotes learning and motivation; choice is used in a number of ways; and teachers impose limits on classroom choice based on student age,…

The purpose of this study was to explore whether, in naturalistic physical education classes, the relation between teachers' early expectations and students' later perceived competence was moderated by the extent to which the motivational climate created by the teachers was autonomy supportive. Using a 1-year longitudinal design, data were…

Four quantitative meta-analyses examined whether teachers' expectations, referrals, positive and neutral speech, and negative speech differed toward ethnic minority students (i.e., African American, Asian American, and Latino/a) as compared with European American students. Teachers were found to hold the highest expectations for Asian American…

Teacher reactions to student academic performance may have utilitarian goals, whereas others are punitive. This study investigated these reactions, as well as situations that determine which strategies are used. Controllable causes of failure give rise to punitive and retributive strategies, whereas lack of controllability elicits utilitarian…

Thirty classes of fifth graders (n=536) were surveyed to see if their criteria for academic success, beliefs about the causes of success, and perceptions of teachers' expectations involved the coordination of personal values and contextual norms. Beliefs about causes of success have some relation to personal identities and students'…

The effects of gender and behavior as perceived by teachers on their judgments of the academic skills of their students were studied for 794 students in kindergarten through grade 2 in public and parochial schools. Results show that teacher perceptions are a significant part of their scholastic judgments. (SLD)