Pygmalion in Chinese Classrooms: Links Between Teacher Expectations, Teacher Behaviours, and Student Academic Achievement

Abstract

The 5 decades of research on teacher expectations has established knowledge and deepened our understanding of teacher expectations and the associated classroom effects. However, many research gaps remain. This doctoral research aimed to examine the stability of teacher expectations, student- and teacher-level teacher expectations, and their effects on student achievement in the underresearched Chinese context. The thesis begins with a systematic review of the literature over a 30-year period from 1989 to 2018 which has identified new research topics raised in the past 3 decades as well as the existing research gaps in the literature. The first study investigated individual student-level and teacher-level teacher expectation effects on student academic achievement in the Chinese junior high school context. Both student- and teacher-level expectations (controlling for achievement) positively predicted student academic achievement. Teacher expectations at the student level showed a stronger influence on student-achievement outcomes than teacher-level expectations. In addition, teachers tended to hold higher expectations for girls than for boys and were more likely to have lower expectations for students who were children of migrant workers. The second study explored and compared the instructional practices and classroom interactions of teachers who had correspondingly high or low expectations for all their students. Classroom observations revealed meaningful differences in the instructional practices and the socioemotional classroom environment created by high and low expectation teachers. Using three time points of teacher expectation data, the third study examined the stability of teacher expectations within a school year. The stability of individual student-level teacher expectations varied across different classrooms, ranging from very flexible to very stable. High-achieving students were systematically and increasingly overestimated over the year, whereas low-achieving students were systematically underestimated across the school year. Collectively, the research suggested that teachers’ expectations may affect their classroom teaching behaviours and in turn either facilitate or hinder student academic growth. Teacher professional development should aim to ensure teachers are more aware of their expectations, especially low expectations towards low-achieving students, in order to prevent the detrimental effects of negative-expectation bias and to promote educational equity.