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70-26,291 GRIEGER II, Russell Marvin, 1942- THE EFFECTS OF TEACHER EXPECTANCIES ON THE INTELLIGENCE OF STUDENTS AND THE BEHAVIOR OF TEACHERS. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1970 Education, psychology j University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan i THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED THE EFFECTS OF TEACHER EXPECTANCIES ON THE INTELLIGENCE OF STUDENTS AND THE BEHAVIOR OF TEACHERS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Russell Marvin Grieger II, B.A., M.A. «##««*#« The Ohio State University 1970 Approved by Advisor Department of Psychology ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper is lovingly dedicated, to my parents, Russell and Florence Grieger, and to my wife, Tanya. Mom and Dad, through their constant guidance, trust and confidence, provided a motivation for growth and a sense of Joy and pride in accomplishment. Tanya, through her untiring patience and affection, made this venture, and many others, both pleasant and rewarding. To them I shall always be grateful. Gratitude is also expressed to Dr. Donald C. Smith, m y advisor, for direction in the writing of this paper. More important, deep thanks are extended to him for the five years of guidance and friendship that contributed to my personal as well as professional growth. Special thanks go to Dr. Robert Wherry for advice concerning the statistical analysis of the data. Thanks are also extended to Mark Fulcomerfor help in the analysis. Appreciation Is offered to those people who contributed technical assistance to this study. Specifically, Michael Amann, William Callahan, Ellen Hoch, Edward Ladon, Eleanor Lynch, Rosalee Zukosd, Laura Titus, Lawrence Venham; and Linda Zenar diligently conducted the observations, and Eileen Brown and Carol DeLong scored the tests. ii Finally, special thankB go to the teachers of the Jonathan Alder District of the Plain City (Ohio) School System for allowing me to invade their classrooms. iii VITA February 6 , 19^+2.......................... Born: Evansville, Indiana. 196 5...................................... B.A. : Evansville College, Evansville, Indiana. 1966 ...................................... M.A. : The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. 1966-68........... ........................ Child clinical trainee, Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio. 1968-6 9 ................................... School Psychology/Child- clinical internship, The Devereux Found ation, Devon, Pa. 1969-70 .............................. .Teaching Associate, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. FIELDS OF STUDY School Major Field Minor Field Evansville College Psychology Sociology English Literature The Ohio State University (HA) School Psychology The Ohio State University (PhD) School Psychology iv PUBLICATIONS Grieger, R.M. II. Behavior modifications with a total class: a case report. Article to be published in the Journal of School Psychology, 1970. Grieger, R., Mordock, J.R., and Breyer, N. General guidelines for conducting behavior modification programs in public school settings. Article accepted for publication in the Journal of School Psychology, 1970. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................ li VITA........................................................iv LIST OF TABLES.............................................. viii LIST OF FIGURES............................................. ix Chapter I. INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM.......................... 1 II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE............................. 7 The Self-fulfilling Prophecy io Everyday Life......... 7 Experimenter Bias in Research on Animal Behavior...... 10 Experimenter Bias in Research on Human Behavior....... lU Factors Accounting for the Experimenter Bias.......... 22 Summary and Critique of Experimenter Bias Research.... 3l* The Teacher Expectancy Effect..... .................. 37 Summary and Evaluation of Teacher Expectancy Research,, ,1*5 III. PROCEDURES.......................................... 1*9 Subjects............................................ 1*9 Instruments......................................... 51 Procedures for Collection of Data.................... 57 Major Hypotheses and Statistical Analysis............. 62 IV. RESULTS............................................. 67 Teacher Behavior In Relation to Teacher Bias.......... 67 Intelligence Quotient in Relation to Teacher Bias..... 70 Subject sex as a Variable............................ 75 Teacher Recall of’^loomers”.............. ............ 79 Summary of Results...... ............................ 30 vi Page V. SUMMARY AMD CONCLUSIONS............................... 82 Summary.............................................. 82 Discussion of the Results............................. 87 Conclusions and Recommendations....................... 95 APPENDIX..................................................... 99 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................. 115 vli LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1 Descriptive Data on Teachers.......................51 2 Number of Students in the Total District, Experimental Group, and Control Group by Sex and Grade.....................................52 3 Means and Standard Deviations of Pretest Total IQs of the Experimental and Control Groups Students at Each Grade Level...................... 5^ U Analysis of Variance Summary Table for Positive Teacher Behaviors.................................68 5 Mean Frequency of Positive Teacher Behaviors for The Control and Experimental Groups............... 69 6 Frequency of Positive Teacher Behaviors for the Pre-bias and Post-bias Observation Periods by Grade and Group Membership........................ 71 7 Analysis of Variance Summary Table for Total IQ............................................... 73 8 Mean IQ Scores for Pre-bias and Post-bias Periods by Grade and Group Membership..................... 7^ 9 Point Biserial Coefficients of Correlation Between Sex and Pre-biaB Frequency of Positive Teacher Behavior by Grade and Group Membership............ 79 10 Point Biserial Coefficients of Correlation Between Sex and Pre-bias Frequency of Positive Teacher Behavior by Grade and Group Membership.... 79 11 Percentage of Experimental Group Children Recalled by Teachers at Each Grade Level....... ...80 viil LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1 Basic Design for the Statistical Analysis of the Data......................................... 65 2 Mean Pre- and Post-Mas Frequency of Teacher Behavior by Grade............... ................ 12 3 Mean Pre- and Post-bias Total IQs by Grade.........16 ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM It is a fact of life that people behave In a predictahle way. Societal norms, group pressures, and inner expectations of success or failure, among other things, serve to order and control a person's behavior. In addition, evidence suggests that one person's expectations concerning another's behavior often serves to Increase the probability of the other's behaviorf in other words, to act as a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1948; Rosenthal, 1966), Most of the systematic evidence concerning the self-fulfilling prophecy comes from laboratory situations where researchers have shown that the expectancies of a behavioral scientist can significantly Influence the outcome of his experiments, These instances of the self-fulfilling prophecy have heen termined the experimenter bias or experimenter expectancy effect, A large proportion of experimenter expectancy studies employed a standardized taak of person perception, For example, Rosenthal and Fode (1963) assigned 20 graduate student experimenters to ahow a serlea of ten photographa of peoples' faces to introductory psychology students, Each experimenter had ten subjects, The subject was to rate the degree of success or failure showing in the face of I 2 each pictured person on a scale from -IQ to +10 (-10- meaning extreme failure and +10 meaning extreme success), The photos had been selected so they would he neutral with an average score of zero. While all experimenters were given identical Instructions on administration and were told not to deviate, half were told that well established findings showed that most subjects should rate the photos as being of successful people (+5) and half were told that the subjects should rate the photos as being of unsuccessful people. As expected, those experimenters expecting higher photo ratings did, in fact, obtain higher ratings than did experimenters expecting lower photo ratings. Rosenthal and Fode (1963a) also illustrated the experimenter expectancy effect in a study of maze running in rats. Using an experimental psychology class, the authors told half the students that their rats were "maze bright" and half that their rats were "maze dull." Actually, all rats were "perfectly ordinary laboratory rats." Results showed that from the first day, and continuing through the experiment, rats believed to be maze bright performed significantly better than the other rats (p^.Ol). Further, those experimenters who were led to believe they had bright rats reported that they viewed their rats as more likeable and pleasant, and described their behavior toward the rats as more friendly and enthusiastic. 3 Barber and Silver (1968), however, doubted that the expectancy phenomenon was as pervasive and general as Rosenthal and others claimed. They analyzed the design and data of 31 studies purporting to demonstrate the experimenter expectancy