Read 371 Action Research

cExpectations
Education 330/ Read 371 Action Research

Bluefield State College

HP

Alvin Hibbitts

In today’s society educational reform is at the forefront of parental concern. However, parents do not want to be held accountable for the actions of their children. In return, teachers are expected to take on the full responsibility of students’ successes and failures within the classroom. With this being the case teachers must develop a method to increase student performance within the classroom. I plan to conduct my research on how to maximize expectations in the classroom so student achievement is emphasized. When expectations are capitalized on I hypothesize students will take on their coursework with more
effort and a higher sense of responsibility. When initiating this research I decided to begin by looking at higher educated families versus.
lower educated families because I hypothesize that higher educated families convey higher expectations to their children. According to Daniel T. Willingham, “Parents who know more about how children learn and grow talk to their children in more complex ways and more often solicit ideas from their children, and high-SES (social economic status) parents often have this knowledge and convey higher expectations.” This statement implies that even at an earlier age parents of higher SES begin to invest more into their children than lower SES families. After investing years of modeling these behaviors children are expected to act accordingly. However, families that invest lower levels of positive behavior modeling expect less of their children. Parents who expect more out of their children fortify these behaviors using positive and negative reinforcement. For example, parents with higher expectations may require children to perform more difficult tasks before they are rewarded. This will cause the child to exert more effort to gain the wanted reward. Negative reinforcement may likewise be applied to children so they will reach their intended expectations. Possible negative reinforcements children may incur would be corporal punishment, time-out, and loss of pleasurable stimuli such as games, T.V, et
cetera. As children get older they begin to adopt these high expectations of themselves. Children with higher expectations of themselves begin to form higher senses of self-worth. With this being said, children begin to justify the self-fulfilling prophecy. What is a self-fulfilling prophecy exactly? Self-fulfilling prophecy is the concepts that we perform to the ability others perceive us to be capable. A study conducted by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) gave a series of tests to a group of schoolchildren and then told their teachers, falsely, that the tests had identified some of the children as “bloomers” who were likely to show a sharp increase in IQ in the near future. These children were actually selected at random. However, at the end of the year when these students received their IQ scores they actually increased greatly. This study shows proves the theory that expectations can directly affect classroom performance. The teacher in this study demonstrated the self-fulfilled prophecy. He believed he had a group of gifted learners which promoted him to expect more out of them. By the end of the year these higher expectations pushed the children to work harder, which in effect, caused their test scores to improve. This prophecy applies beyond the classroom borders to aspects of children’s’ lives, as discussed previously. Implementing higher expectations carries into the classroom atmosphere where it is then the educator’s duty to enforce policies as seen fit. Students from this point are encouraged to meet the requirements the teacher has set forth. While in the classroom students need to be motivated to carry out what the teacher expects of them. According to the Expectancy Theory of Motivation, motivation towards a particular goal can be estimated by multiplying the expectancy by the instrumentality by the valence. The expectancy is how comfortable the individual feels completing the given task while the instrumentality is how likely the participant is to gain the desired reward. The last variable, valence, which multiplied with the other two produces the motivational force with drives us towards our intended goal. What is valence though? Valance is how strongly we want the reward. For example, a student who believes he will receive fifty dollars for completing an assignment will have a high valance level. However, if he thinks the task is impossible his expectancy level will be lower. How does this Motivational Theory tie into classroom practices?
This theory applies to classroom expectancies by means of student engagement and how we can motivate them to higher academic outcomes. Students who are motivated will be more likely to meet goals, or expectancies, set by the teacher. Reverting back to Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study, students were motivated by the teacher to reach new heights because he felt they were gifted. In an inverse situation an ineffective teacher may assume students’ achievement level to be low; this will undoubtedly cause the children to fulfill their teacher’s expectations of
them. Skill is not the most important aspect in the classroom as most teachers perceive it to be. The Journal of Educational Psychology concludes that, “Intrinsic value (motivation) was very strongly related to use of cognitive strategies and self-regulation…students who were motivated to learn...were more cognitively engaged.” Self-regulation may be an intrinsic value; however, external expectations placed upon students by the teacher will cause students to have higher levels of confidence in themselves which subsequently triggers them to become intrinsically motivated. Our primary goal of this action research asks the question, “How can we use expectations to trigger higher student achievement?” The answer to this question will be to use expectations to intrinsically motivate students.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/SUSE/projects/ireport/articles/self-regulation/self-regulated%20learning-motivation.pdf Rosenthal and Jacobson 1968--http://madon.public.iastate.edu/201_PRESENTATION/201.sfp.slides.htm http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/spring2012/Willingham.pdf http://www.projectidealonline.org/classMgt_ClassroomExpectations.php\ http://www.uri.edu/research/lrc/scholl/webnotes/Motivation_Expectancy.htm http://educationnorthwest.org/webfm_send/562