Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils' Intellectual Development

When first published in 1968, (later updated in 1992), Pygmalion in the Classroom was received with almost universal acclaim for its ground breaking research. The "Pygmalion Phenomenon" is the self-fulfilling prophecy embedded in teachers' expectations. Simply put, when teachers expect students to do well and show intellectual growth, they do; when teachers do not have such expectation performance and growth are not as encouraged and may in fact be discouraged in a number of ways. Research suggests that our expectations strongly influence the performance of those around us from the members of our football team to the students in our classes. In the Oak School experiment discussed in this book teachers were led to believe that certain students, selected at random, were likely to be showing signs of a spurt in intellectual growth and development. The results were startling. At the end of the year, the students of whom the teaches had these expectations showed significantly greater gains in intellectual growth than did those in the control group.

Professor Rosenthal's research has centered for over 40 years on the role of the self-fulfilling prophecy in everyday life and in laboratory situations. Special interests include the effects of teacher's expectations on students' academic and physical performance, the effects of experimenters' expectations on the results of their research, and the effects of clinicians' expectations on their patients' mental and physical health. For some 40 years he has been studying the role of nonverbal communication in (a) the mediation of interpersonal expectancy effects and in (b) the relationship between members of small work groups and small social groups. He also has strong interests in sources of artifact in behavioral research and in various quantitative procedures. In the realm of data analysis, his special interests are in experimental design and analysis, contrast analysis, and meta-analysis. His most recent books and articles are about these areas of data analysis and about the nature of nonverbal communication in teacher-student, doctor-patient, manager-employee, judge-jury, and psychotherapist-client interaction. He is Co-Chair of the Task Force on Statistical Inference of the American Psychological Association.