TEACHER EXPECTATION, AUTHORITARIANISM, AND ATTRIBUTIONS OF CAUSALITY FOR PUPILS' PERFORMANCES
1982 Volume 30 Issue 2 Pages 91-99
Details
1982 Volume 30 Issue 2 Pages 91-99
The present study was to investigate the influences of teacher expectation and authoritarianism on their attributions of causality for pupils performances. Subjects were twenty-four school teachers (15 males and 9 females). Half of them were assigned to a high authoritarian group, and the others to a low authoritarian group, based on their self-rating scores on reconstructed authoritarian personality scales.
All teachers were interviewed as to their expecta tions for each of their pupils. At the same time, a standardized arithmetic test was administered to all the pupils in their classrooms.
Considering the interview data, 2 pupils with positive expectation ratings and 2 pupils with negative expectation ratings were selected in each class as the targets for this experiment. Selected pupils were assigned to one of four conditions on the basis of both their performances on the arithmetic test and the direction of teacher expectation, i. e. positive expectation-high performance, positive expectation-low performance, negative expectation-high performance, and negative expectation-low performance.
Teachers were informed of all targets test performances, and were then asked to rate the effects of causal factors (ability, effort, test difficulty, and luck) on pupils performances, using 7-point scales.
Resultant findings:
(1) Teachers tended to attribute high performances by positive-expectation pupils to internal factors much more than those of negative-expectation pupils, and low performances by positive-expectation pupils to external factors much more than those of negativeexpectation pupils. That is, pupils performances were attributed in the direction of confirming teachers preestablished expectations.
(2) It was partly found that the relation between teacher expectation and causal attribution for pupils performances was influenced by teacher's authoritarianism. That is, high authoritarian teachers tended to attribute the causality for pupils performances in the direction of confirming teachers; preestablished expectations more strongly than did low authoritarian teachers.
These findings were discussed from the viewpoint of teacher expectation effects.
