TEACHER EXPECTATIONS .2. CONSTRUCTION AND REFLECTION OF STUDENT-ACHIEVEMENT

Hypotheses regarding self-fulfilling prophecies, perceptual biases, and accuracy were tested using longitudinal data relating 98 6th-grade math teachers' expectations to 1,731 students' performance. Consistent with the self-fulfilling prophecy hypothesis, teacher expectations predicted changes in student achievement beyond effects accounted for by previous achievement and motivation. Consistent with the perceptual bias hypothesis, teacher expectations predicted their own evaluations of students' performance more strongly than they predicted standardized test scores. Consistent with the accuracy hypothesis, path coefficients relating teacher expectations to standardized achievement tests were about 80% lower than zero-order correlations, and the path coefficients relating teacher expectations to students' grades were 45% to 65% lower than the zero-order correlations. These results support a weak constructivist perspective.