The Power of Belief in the Classroom
“People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities.” Albert Bandura, Self Efficacy:The Exercise of Control
Late one night in 1963, a young Harvard psychologist mischievously entered his lab and put signs up on the rat cages to prank his graduate students. Some signs said that the rats in those cages were smart. And, other signs said that the rats in those cages were dumb, but it was all a lie. Every rat in the lab was an ordinary lab rat, none of them were especially dumb or smart. They were just regular rats.
The next day he told the graduate students who worked in the lab, that some of them were going to be assigned smart rats, and some of them would get dumb rats. They were told that it was their responsibility to run the rats through a maze and record how well each rat did or didn’t do.
The results were dramatic. The rats the prankster professor said were smart navigated the maze significantly better than the rats that he said were dumb, even though all the rats were exactly the same. It seemed that the thoughts or the expectations in the minds of those graduate students who put the rats in the maze had changed these average rats into two groups, smart rats and dumb rats. That young psychologist’s name was Robert Rosenthal, and when he realized what he had discovered, naturally, he wanted to publish his findings, but no academic journal would even consider his paper, because the whole thing seemed so far fetched.
What happened to these rats during the experiment? Were the rats telepathic? Could they read the signs that he put on their cages? Were the graduate students telepathic?
Turns out that the expectations that the researchers had, subtly changed the way that each one of them touched the rats during the experiment, and those subtle changes in their behavior changed their behavior. The researchers who thought that their rats were smart, felt warmly towards those rats, so they handled them more gently than the researchers who were given the dumb rats. Other studies have shown that handling rats roughly, can hurt their performance in the maze test.
Why does this matter for teaching?
Students are not rats. We do not “handle” them, and we don’t run them through mazes. We also do not group average students into groups, smart and dumb.
Or, do we?
Carol Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University, explains in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, that simply standing farther away from someone or making less eye contact, conveys our expectations of them, to them. These effects are subtle, but real. What we believe about people unconsciously affects our behavior and theirs. This is especially true for teachers.
Research has found that a teacher’s expectations of his or her students’ intelligence can raise or lower their IQ scores.
But, did the rats really get smarter? Are students losing their intelligence when their teachers don’t make as much eye contact? Or, are these just effects seen in experiments?
Studies show that a mother’s expectations can influence the drinking behavior of her middle school-aged child. Military trainers who expect cadets will run faster literally cause them to shave seconds off of their PRs.
What you believe your students can do or can’t do, subconsciously affects your behavior, subtle or not, and when they — also subconsciously — take notice of your behavior, their sensors tune in to what you may or may not believe about them. Children are e x t r e m e l y sensitive to nonverbal cues, especially when they are perceiving what adults believe about their abilities. Adolescents are even more perceptive about what adults think about them, than children, because they are essentially “identities under construction,” constantly searching their immediate environments for feedback about their traits, their qualities and their characteristics. They are looking for information about who they might be or who they might be able to be. This makes them extremely susceptible to adopting new beliefs, based on what they are sensing that you think about them.
When this belief-behave-influence pattern is repeated, we are initiating changes in them. And, when they adopt these beliefs, their behavior immediately begins to change, even though they are often unaware of this whole dynamic. For example, imagine a teacher has two eleventh grade math classes, and in September that teacher assumes that one group of 17 year olds is smarter than the other group. By the end of that school year, they will most likely behave — and be — smarter than the other group. Sadly, the others will get dumber. Hard to believe, isn’t it? It’s not telepathy, but it sure seems alchemistic.
How far can we take this?
These effects are usually very subtle, right?
That’s what I thought. Then, I heard about The Batman.
Daniel Kish has no eye balls. But, he rides a bike, because of the power of belief. Belief changed his behavior, and his behavior changed him. Or, did it give him an ability? Daniel had retinoblastoma at 13, so the doctors had to remove his eyes. Retinoblastoma is cancer of the retina. Yet today, Daniel walks without a cane. And, get this — He can ride a bike, down a hill, in the woods, and he doesn’t think of himself as blind.
How is this even possible?
Don’t people need eyes to see?
Obviously not. Daniel Kish can see without eye balls, because he “accidentally” developed his own human echolocation system. Yes. Like bats and dolphins. Hence. He is The Batman.
He did this, because of what his mother did not tell him, after his eyes were surgically removed. She did not tell him that he was blind. She did not tell him that he had limitations. She did not say that her son was blind. This made it possible for him to discover that — clicking his tongue — creates human sonar, giving him the ability to map out his immediate surroundings, inside his imagination.
I imagine that when the cops came to tell Mrs. Kish that “she shouldn’t let her blind kid ride a bike” after he was injured trying to ride it down the city streets, she rebuked them.
“Don’t tell me how to raise my son. And, don’t tell him what he can and cannot do.”
“But, lady, he’s going to get hurt,” I imagine them saying to her.
“Living his life without being able to ride a bicycle? That’s not hurting him? His thinking he is dis-abled? That’s not hurting him?” She might have said to them, as they stood in her door, Daniel, standing behind her, bleeding. His mangled bike on the floor of their apartment.
He didn’t see any limitations, because she didn’t. Adults are powerful models, and parents are more powerful, but mothers — children believe their mothers the most. If I were one of those police officers, I would have thought “that kid’s mother is negligent.”
But, Mrs. Kish got me thinking. What does “hurt” mean? What is a dis-ability?
Daniel was injured many times, while trying to live a life unrestricted without functioning eyeballs. His perspective is that injury is a natural part of life. His mother did not push him to do this and did not deny his physical blindness existed. Without instruction, he eventually developed his echolocution so he could live life like someone with eyeballs.
This led me to wonder what is sight, anyways? Exactly, how do we define the act of seeing? And, what is injury?
Still think that our expectations don’t change our students? Still think it’s only an effect, that occurs in the laboratory?
A year after Rosenthal did his experiment with the rats, the principal of an elementary school in SanFrancisco, read about his research in the journal American Scientist, and she reached out to him. Her name was Lenore Jacobson.
In the article, he mentioned the possibility of a similar phenomenon that may be present with teachers and their students. This got her thinking.
And so, Jacobson and Rosenthal began to collaborate on a research project at her school. This led to a study that was later published in Psychological Reports in 1966. Then, in 1968, their findings were published as a book titled Pygmalion in the Classroom.
Their book described the effects of the teachers’ expectations on the first and second grade students’ in Jacobson’s school. Rosenthal and Jacobson hypothesized that if a group of teachers’ expectations of their students’ ability were manipulated by researchers early on in a learning process, those expectations would affect the behavior of students in such a powerful way that their performance on IQ tests would change. Jacobson guessed that telling some of her teachers that some of their students were “bloomers,” would lead to higher levels on IQ test performance. She and Rosenthal also bet that creating low expectations for other students, would lower their IQ scores. Turns out, they guessed right about the effect of expectations on IQ.
Why should teachers care about this study?
Rosenthal and Jacobson found that student performance was intertwined with teacher expectation in a very powerful way. Their research supported their hypothesis that student academic performance can be measurably influenced in a positive or negative way by the expectations of their teachers. They proved that the expectations of one person about another person’s ability, accurate or not, can affect the performance of another person, in this case, children — in school. And, the younger the children, the greater the effect.
Their study went like this — students in an elementary school in California were given an IQ test. Their teachers were not told the IQ scores. But, the teachers were told that 20% of the school could be “intellectual bloomers.” The researchers did choose a group equal to 20% of the school, but they were not chosen by scores. They were chosen at random by the researchers. The teachers were then given the names of the randomly selected students and told they were “bloomers,” meaning they were gifted. After the school year was over, all the students’ IQs were tested again. And, all the students in both the experimental and the control groups showed a mean gain in IQ. There were six grades in that school. 255 students. They all made IQ gains. But, that’s not even the interesting part.
Even more interesting, the first and second grade students in the experimental group, the bloomer group, showed statistically significant gains in IQ. They had performed on the IQ test as if they were “intellectually gifted.” Were they? If so, when did that happen? And how? Aren’t cognitively gifted people smart from birth?
Isn’t mental giftedness genetic? Isn’t it biological? Smart people’s brains work better, right?
Rosenthal and Jacobson concluded that teacher expectations can and do influence student achievement. They believed that the attitude and mood of a teacher could positively affect student performance. They theorized that, perhaps teachers give more attention to students they think have special ability and treat them more warmly when they struggle with challenges.
They also guessed that the teachers in the study may have subconsciously behaved in ways (toward the students they thought were “bloomers”) that encouraged their success. Conversely, studies show that teachers may also be affected by the students in their classroom in much the same way. Our performance may be influenced subconsciously by our students’ attitudes, moods and the behavioral consequences of those moods and attitudes. The potential for a dynamic that I call the reciprocal expectation-effect may exist in classroom environments where a teacher has faith that his or her students can learn the curriculum, while at the same time, the students believe that the teacher can teach them the curriculum. When this phenomenon occurs, a success spiral bends upward, and the: rate, intensity, sustainability and level of achievement rise continuously as the teacher believes in the students’ abilities and the students believe in the teacher’s abilities. The only thing stopping this upward spiral is when expectations are countered by doubt, disrupted by fear or the relationship ends for Summer vacation. It makes perfect sense really. When a teacher expects a group of students to perform well academically, they are more likely to do so. Once the students start making progress, they are likely to credit the teacher with being a good instructor. The teacher senses that the students expect him or her to be a good instructor, so the teacher is more likely to be good at his or her job, and then the teacher expects the students to be able to perform more challenging academic tasks. And so on. It’s quite literally, as they say, “all good.”
The importance of the study is that the most subtle behaviors can affect our students’ ability to learn, to achieve and to become educated. How we look at students, our tone of voice, and our posture — all influence their performance and cumulatively their ability.
Have you ever had a teacher tell you, that you were dumb or lazy? How did that affect you?
In 1977, now well-known Harvard Psychologist, Albert Bandura, originator of Social Learning Theory, was investigating how modeling helps people who are scared of snakes. During this study, Bandura discovered something about his subjects. He realized that their beliefs about themselves, their beliefs about their own capacities to alleviate their phobia, to cope with their fear, changed their behavior and mediated their fear-arousal. He decided to launch a research project to investigate the role that the thoughts we have about ourselves play a role in our psychological functioning and as a result, our behavior changes.
This led to his book, Social Foundations of Thought and Action, published in 1986. From his research on how people’s beliefs about their own ability affect their performance, he developed a theory of human functioning, describing how self-regulatory and self-reflective processes are at the center of how humans adapt and change to conditions they experience. The theory further explained how people are not merely reactive creatures, impulsive and influenced solely by inner and outer forces. His theory identified self-organization, self-reflection and self-regulation in subjects as internal behaviors that proactively define our responses to conditions and are embedded in identity.
“Ability is not a fixed property; there is huge variability in how you perform. People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failure; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong.’’
Albert Bandura, Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, 1996
This theory, when applied to student motivation and learning outcomes, shows that students perceptions about their own ability to perform (self-efficacy) can lead them to set higher goals for themselves, if they believe they are capable of accomplishing those goals (high-self-efficacy). This increases the likelihood that the students might try to accomplish the goals. Because effort is almost always required to accomplish academic goals, trying (using energy to make an attempt) makes it possible for them to actually learn. If a child does not believe that his or her efforts will pay off, then the child is not likely to invest the time and expend energy to try for it. They will reach for what they perceive is the lower hanging fruit. This is not laziness. It’s human-nature. We aren’t programmed to waste our time and energy, trying to do things, that we think we are not able to do. It is that simple. Biologists call this the theory of “conservation,” when describing how organisms behave. It’s part of species “self-preservation.”
Thus, self-efficacy is about a person’s (for our purposes, a student’s and/or a teacher’s) belief or expectation that participating in specific actions (work, effort, expending energy) may help them achieve their goals.
When the teacher told you that you were lazy or dumb, did that help or hinder your performance in his or her class? Did those words have an effect on your ability to assimilate skills in that subject matter even after that school year? Do you still feel you are not good at math or chemistry or spelling — whatever it was?
In 1985, another psychologist at Harvard, named, Irving Kirsch, was studying a similar effect, called The Placebo Response. He discovered that expectations play a powerful role in the effectiveness of medical treatment. Kirsch found that when patients think that a treatment will work, displaying a stronger response than thinking the treatment might not work, the treatment is more likely to actually work, even when the treatment is inert. Kirsch’s work and the work of other researchers reinforced Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy that our beliefs about what we can do is not trickery, magic or fake. It is a complex, little understood, cognitive process. This is part of what is known as “the mind-body problem,” this process enables people to transcend their immediate environments, giving them access to something — that seems like a magical power to shape their lives. These powers are actually something we all have deep inside our bodies.
Bandura understood that people contribute to the circumstances of their lives. He believed that we are not merely the products of those external conditions that surround us. His theory rejected the commonly held duality that separates the mind from the body, separates human agency from social structures. Like Alfred Adler, before him, Bandura believed people create individual and social systems that determine our futures through unconscious behavior, and that those systems influence our lives. So, it may look like we have no control over our lives, but we do. We just aren’t always aware of when and where and how the influence works, because it is subconscious. This is the opposite of determinism. Bandura and Adler understood that we choose our fates, even if we don’t know it. This complex coevolutionary process influences human behavior at both collective and individual levels, spanning a diverse set of existential spheres that influence our lives, creating cultural systems and shared beliefs that, in turn, circularly influence our behavior and that of others, like our students.
Have you ever had a teacher who expressed that they believed in your ability? How did that affect your performance in their class and in that subject? Were you more resilient in the face of setbacks? Were you less afraid to take intellectual risks? Did you expend more effort in his or her class?
For teachers, the power of belief is unleashed, when we begin to see it, awaken to it, become conscious of it, and when we make it visible to our students. When we can catch ourselves judging students as being lazy or stupid or bad, when we are conscious of the beliefs we hold that give birth to those judgements, the one’s that influence our own thoughts and behaviors, — the Russian philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin, called it our “internally persuasive discourse” — we possess the potential to change our behavior. And, we can use conscious and intentional expectation messaging to give our students an advantage. This changes the rules of the game completely, because our students’ belief in their abilities will be transformed, and consequently their behavior will as well. And, isn’t that what real teaching is?
REFERENCES
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1986.
Dweck, C. S. (2013). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Psychology press.
Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House Digital, Inc.
Geers, A. L., Weiland, P. E., Kosbab, K., Landry, S. J., & Helfer, S. G. (2005). Goal activation, expectations, and the placebo effect. Journal of personality and social psychology, 89(2), 143.
Jenkins, J. R., & Deno, S. L. (1969). Influence of student behavior on teacher’s self-evaluation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 60 (6p1), 439.
Kish, D. (2009). Human echolocation: How to “see” like a bat. New Scientist, 202(2703), 31–33.
Kirsch, I. (1985). Response expectancy as a determinant of experience and behavior. American Psychologist, 40(11), 1189.
Pollard, R. (2018). Dialogue and desire: Mikhail Bakhtin and the linguistic turn in psychotherapy. Routledge.
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. The urban review, 3(1), 16–20.
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils’ intellectual development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston