Social Perception, Social Stereotypes, and Teacher Expectations: Accuracy and the Quest for the Powerful Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of research on accuracy, error, bias, and self-fulfilling prophecies. It also reviews a research showing that teacher expectations predict student achievement—mainly because they are accurate, although they do lead to small self-fulfilling prophecies and biases. The conditions under which self-fulfilling prophecies might be considerably more powerful are embarked. The results of new research showing that teacher expectancy effects are more powerful among girls, students from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds or African–Americans are also addressed. Some evidence of bias show differences in teacher's perceptions of students from the differing groups corresponded well to actual differences among those same groups of students. The chapter also analyzes ways to distinguish among self fulfilling prophecies, perceptual biases, and accuracy, and examines processes underlying expectancy-related phenomena—discoveries have some relevance and applicability to many other relationships beyond teachers and students. Conceptual model of relationships between teacher perceptions and student achievement and some evidence regarding the role of stereotypes in naturally occurring person perception is also explained in the chapter.