6 - Pygmalion - 25 years after interpersonal expectations in the classroom

Summary

Introduction

Some years ago, the Israeli humorist Ephraim Kishon wrote a successful comedy entitled Ho, Julia, in which he fantasized about the life of the middle-aged Romeo and Juliet, presuming they had survived their dramatic death scene and lived happily ever after. In the same vein, it might be possible to visit Pygmalion and Galatea one generation later, or to analyze the life and work of Robert Rosenthal, the man known among educators and behavioral scientists as “Mr. Pygmalion.” Indeed, Pygmalion in the Classroom also survived deadly criticisms, and the field of teacher expectancies is an important area of educational psychology today. Rosenthal was directly involved in all stages of development of this field throughout the years - introducing self-fulfilling prophecy (SFP) effects to education through Pygmalion; specializing in methodology and meta-analysis during the periods of controversy over the existence of SFP effects; investigating interpersonal interaction processes when the study of behavioral mediation of expectancies gained momentum; and studying nonverbal communication when the study of expectancies moved in that direction. In all of these fields, Rosenthal became a leading expert and a scientific authority.

This chapter is intended to illuminate and discuss central issues in teacher expectancy research and to examine the development of this field since the publication of Pygmalion in the Classroom (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). In the historical analysis (part II), I attempt to trace the underlying psychological reasons for the intense controversies over (teacher) expectancy effects, and to delineate not only the strong trends but also the areas that have remained relatively neglected in teacher expectancy research.