Reflecting on decades of teacher expectations and teacher effectiveness research: Considerations for current and future research

Abstract

This article reviews over 50 years of research on teacher expectations and teacher effectiveness. In addition to describing these research traditions and findings, I tie the research in these evolving fields to the societal issues in play when the research was conducted and connect historical and emerging work. I describe the enormous growth of knowledge in both fields and its potential for practice. Among many outcomes, these two research traditions yielded clear evidence that teachers impact student achievement. Despite the potential value of this research, it has largely been ignored by policy makers, and when used, has been misused. I contend that policy makers have focused on the weaknesses of normative teaching and have ignored teachers’ strengths and knowledge. Of course, aspects of normative teaching can be improved, as can teacher expectations and teacher effectiveness research. Current and continuing research has some capacity for addressing the opportunity and achievement gaps that separate more advantaged and marginalized students; however, teachers and schools alone cannot resolve these vast opportunity differences that are available to American students.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The coding reliability for distinguishing broad from narrow questions was high, but I worried about the validity of this distinction. At times, I wondered if a broad question was a request for students to summarize something previously discussed. Thus, I did not initially emphasize that students believed to be low achievers received fewer broad questions than other students in my dissertation (Good, 1968) or when I published these results in The Elementary School Journal (Good, 1970). After reflecting on the fact that borderline decisions were always coded as narrow questions, I have come to accept the distinction between broad and narrow questions as valid. As a young researcher, I learned that many classroom actions are subject to interpretation, as others learned (e.g., Medley & Hill, 1969) and continue to report (e.g., White & Klette, 2024).

2 In this important study, Bergold and Steinmayr also show that teachers who “overestimated” had positive effects on several non-subject matter outcomes (e.g., life satisfaction), suggesting that teachers’ beliefs may affect outcomes other than achievement.

3 When done well, whole class teaching can meaningfully involve a heterogeneous group of students in ways that help students not only acquire new knowledge but also to question that knowledge and to put it in a personal perspective. Effective whole class teaching is replete with questions like, what does that remind you of? Given that we know this, what do you think will happen next? Mary Beth, that is a good analysis, but is there anything else we can add to that? What would you like to know now? Do you agree or not?.