4. (1) Expectancy Theory
“What You Expect is What You Get”
Dr. Robert Rosenthal, researcher
Teacher expectation affects students’ scores
Pygmalion effect
Self fulfilling prophecy
5. Expectancy Theory and Practices
Rosenthal’s and subsequent studies consider how students
respond to expectations adults convey to them.
Expectancy studies suggest possible teacher bias.
Critics of Rosenthal and critiques of expectancy theory
question prophetic factor.
An outcome is attention to high expectations for each
individual learner.
6. (2) Impression Formation Theory
“An Impression That Precedes Meeting”
Dr. Solomon Asch is the founding researcher.
Social psychology of pre-conceived impressions is also
cognitive psychology.
Characteristics describe and precondition our impressions
of others.
The “warm / cold” study focused on preconceptions and
discrimination.
7. Impression Theory and Practices
Asch’s research considers how people are described, not
how they are.
Schools use more descriptive texts than actual experiences
as pedagogies.
Impressions alter with adjustment among various
characteristics.
Impression theory predicts and explains behavior toward
others.
8. (3)Cognitive Processing Theory
“Mental pictures explain sense making.”
Dr. Edward Tolman studied cognitive behaviorism.
Stimulus – response theory is too simplistic.
Cognitive maps are mental representations of information
being processed.
The complex maze of the world requires complementary
learning strategies.
9. Cognitive Processes and Practices
Tolman’s research spawned interest in mental processes.
The way information is processed is as important to
learning as the task itself.
Cognitive maps, graphic organizers and metacognition are
important in pedagogy.
10. Notable and Related Studies
Bandura’s studies of aggression
Piaget’s research on stages of development
Kohlberg’s studies of moral development
11. Conclusion
Early studies paved the way for modern cognitive
research.
Technology is expanding the research.
Practicing educators should be well informed, and
should inform, the work of psychologists who study
cognition and learning !
12. Works Cited
Asch, Solomon E. “Forming Impressions of Personality.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,
41. (1946):258-290. Print.
Hock, Roger. Forty Studies that Changed Psychology: Explorations into the History of Psychological
Research. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002. Print.
Koch, Janice. Teach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2012. Print.
Piaget, Jean. The Development of Object Concept: The Construction of Reality in the Child. New
York: Basic Books, 1954. Print.
Rosenthal, R., & L. Jacobson. “Teachers’ Expectancies: Determinates of Pupils’ IQ Gains. “
Psychological Reports, 19. (1966): 115-118. Print.
Tolman, Edward C. “Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men.” Psychological Review, 55. (1948):189-208.
Print.
Zimmer, Carl. “In the Human Brain, Size Really Isn’t Everything.” New York Times. New York Times,
26 December 2013. Web. 19 May 2014.
Editor's Notes
What follows is a presentation about theories from psychology that have particular relevance to studies of education, teaching, learning and pedagogy.
It extends resources made available to students in EDUC 464. It is included as a supplement to readings available in Koch, Teach.
It references material in Part 2: The Evolution of Schools and Teaching Practices that are found in Chapter 4: Principles of Teaching and Learning: Exploring Pedagogy, Curriculum and Instruction.
Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that is concerned with the way the human mind works. Research findings that emerge from cognitive psychology (that help explain how human beings learn) have a particular relevance to education and schooling. Three selected theories, for which a number of studies have been done, stand out in the research literature because they are widely accepted, frequently cited, and commonly included in teacher preparation and general education texts.
Those theories are:
(1) expectancy theories that emerge from the premise that expecting a result increases the likelihood that one gets that result;
(2) theories about how impressions are formed by descriptions that precede them; and
(3) theories that describe learning as the outcome of complex processes besides observable stimuli and responses and that can be mapped.
The first group of theories build on the famous “Pygmalion” study that demonstrated how not only performance of children in school but actual scores of children on tests (including IQ tests) could be influenced by the expectations of others.
(2) The second group of theories relates to how human beings form impressions of people or things without ever meeting or seeing them. Influenced by descriptions, the human mind arrives at an opinion or judgment that is not based on direct observation.
(3) The third group of studies in cognitive psychology address the mental processes that humans use to make sense of information using mental images that may be represented by cognitive maps.
All three of these types of studies have significance in learning theory and can be applied to inform teaching practices.
Expectancy theories are concerned with how what one is looking for is what one actually finds; or put another way, it may be said that “What you expect to get is what you are likely to get.” Studies about this consider the relation of what one is looking for to what one finds. Robert Rosenthal is one of the most well known of the psychologists studying this phenomenon. A seminal work in the category of expectancy theories is the work of Rosenthal and Jacobson described in a 1966 article called “Teacher’s Expectancies : Determinates of Pupils’ IQ Gaines” that was published in the referred scientific journal called Psychological Reports.
Rosenthal did an experimental study that involved telling teachers that some students had made gains in their test scores and that some had not. Teachers were led to expect improvement by some children and not by others. Students were later re-tested after an extended period of instruction. Findings included a suggestion that there are long term effects on students in relation to the expectations their teachers have for them.
Rosenthal dubbed this the Pygmalion effect, in reference to the Greek myth about the sculptor Pygmalion who fell in love with a statue he created and to the play in which the professor cultivates Liza, a child of the streets, into a refined lady.
The implications of this strand of research are significant as they suggest that there is a self-fulfilling effect of an anticipation or prophecy about what the likely outcome of one’s effort will be.
Rosenthal can be given a great deal of credit for the attention that expectancy theories have gotten, especially in the literature used to inform the preparation of teachers and other educators. Even in the 1990’s, some thirty years after his article, “Teacher Expectancies…” was published there were more than 80 scientific articles that referenced his Pygmalion effect. Both within and beyond education studies, into the area of interpersonal expectations, Rosenthal’s work has been cited.
One of the subsequent research articles (Andrews, Wisniewski, & Mulick, 1997) has disturbing implications. It suggests some pre-emptory biases found among educators. Those authors reported that teachers in their study referred Black children for testing and for assignment to special education services at significantly higher rates than White children. Furthermore, boys were summarily and disproportionally punished for their behavior in comparison to girls who misbehaved.
The Pygmalion studies and Rosenthal’s work has not been without controversy. There continue to be criticisms and studies which report findings that are inconsistent with those of Rosenthal and his colleagues. Among the detractors is psychologist Richard Snow who has sparred with Robert Rosenthal for thirty years about the validity of his findings and assertions about the Pygmalion effect. Among other things, he questions that it has a substantive prophetic effect on intelligence.
Nevertheless, the impact of Rosenthal’s studies and expectancy theories is significant. Teachers are expected to proceed from an assumption that all children can learn. Educators are urged to set and maintain high standards for all students and to use a variety of instructional strategies, according to individual needs, in order to support each student individually.
Dr. Solomon Asch is one of the earliest and most well known of the researchers who did experiments to evaluate central and peripheral characteristics and how they carry weight in the process of forming impressions . In what has come to be called the “warm-cold” study he used one of those two adjectives along with comparable descriptors of characteristics to describe unknown individuals to his subjects. He reached a number of conclusions about how the human mind works to make judgments of other people, for example as we refer to a “good” teacher or a “poor” student to describe others based on a number of contributing characteristics.
These social/psychological considerations are also considered by cognitive psychologists who are interested in such things as the primary and secondary characteristics used to arrive at that descriptor. These considerations are also of interest in social psychology. Both areas of scholarship concern themselves with how humans form first impressions and judgments, adjust them, and act on them.
Impression formation theories are concerned with the characteristics that we use to form an impression of a person. These theories account for the way variables are combined to create a summative descriptor that people attribute to other individuals. Asch studied the range of factors as primary and secondary . He noted that they have a dynamic effect on each other when combined.
The implications of impression formation research are significant because they suggest how we put a combination of factors together to form an impression. Asch shows (in his study with lists of descriptions that included either adjective “warm” or “cold” to pre-introduce a person) how various factors interact with each other and that some emerge as more powerful; they have an influence on the weight they carry in relation to other details.
Solomon Asch, himself, noted that his work relied on studies in which people were described by others. He considered descriptors used by observers instead of empirical measures of the subjects’ actual characteristics. Essentially, Asch’s research considered how people are described by other people, not how they are in reality, what they perceive themselves to be, or what they make an attempt or aspire to be.
However, considering that in schools, textbooks and teachers and reference materials “tell” students about things more often than they show things to students or provide authentic experiences, these studies by Asch seem relevant. In the typical classrooms of most schools we use more descriptive texts and secondary sources than actual experiences. Use of primary sources and experiential learning methods are typically the exception rather than the standard in practices of classroom instruction in core content subject areas, especially.
Furthermore, the idea about the interrelation of descriptors accounts for the way impression characteristics vary in relation to each other. A teacher may be called “tough and fair” or “tough and rigid.” The resultant impression may be positive or negative of the teacher depending on the secondary characteristic. Similarly a “weak but trying hard” student is favored over a “weak but doesn’t care” student by a teacher. In other words, the impressions that humans form about other people have a high degree of relational variability and may alter with adjustment of characteristics. They are valued in relation to other descriptions with which they may be paired.
This points to an additional observation from this research that our behavior toward others is influenced by our impressions of them. There is a usefulness to practice in this theoretical research because impression theory predicts and explains behavior toward others. The theory applies to both teachers and students and has implications for the conditions that determine effective and positive relations or detrimental and negative relations in classrooms and other learning environments.
In the 1940’s Dr. Edward Tolman questioned the merits of simple explanations of learning based on what could be observed about overt behavior. His early work was referred to as cognitive behaviorism to distinguish it from the prevalent theories of behaviorism that dominated the scholarship about learning at the time. Tolman felt that something important but not observable was going on in the mind. He felt it merited more attention than what researchers recorded as they watched human behavior.
The prevailing wisdom of the time was that in response to an action there was an inevitable reaction in the behavior of the human subject. But Tolman, (and subsequently more educational psychologists and philosophers like John Dewey and others), asserted that stimulus-response theory at the core of behaviorism theory is too simplistic to effectively explain human motivation and behavior.
The information processing theories that grew out of this dissatisfaction with behaviorism introduced the idea of mental maps and graphic mental pictures as tools used for thinking and sense making. Cognitive maps are mental representations of information being processed. With the notion that the mind created such representations came the idea of asking people to reproduce them on paper.
Descriptions of the connections that are made in the mind helped validate the early theories about cognitive processing. The complex maze of the world requires complementary learning strategies. Humans have a capacity for multilayered thinking that integrates memory and imagination along with rational and empirical and sensory data.
A generation of research and studies have emerged in cognitive psychology and environmental psychology. Tolman’s research spawned interest in mental processes and what is going on when humans are learning something. Even though those mental processes could not be directly observed in an empirical way by the researcher, they could be represented and relayed by the human subject. Those graphic representations of thinking processes have proved valuable to researchers who study teaching and learning.
Early learning theories focused on prompts and responses to them by students. Attention to cognitive processing and recognition of them as complex and multidimensional undermined simplistic stimulus response behaviorism. Attention to the way information is processed currently garners attention in the educational literature. Processing was recognized as being vitally important to explain cognition. Scholars recognized that brain activity and information processing is as important to learning as the task itself .
As a result of this strand of research and the theories that emerged in cognitive psychology, teachers are now using cognitive maps and graphic organizers as tools for teaching. Metacognition, or “thinking about thinking” is something that students are taught to do and expected to practice . The methodologies and representations of mental maps that cognitive researchers use have also become tools for instruction and self directed student learning.
Albert Bandura and a number of colleagues studied aggression in children. They observed behavior that was an imitation of aggressive acts. Bandura researched the impact of witnessing use of force and the propensity of children to emulate it. This may be described as research in the area of learning and conditioned behavior. These studies are cited frequently in literature on behavior, discipline and classroom management.
Jean Piaget used his early studies of biology to propose an age related stage theory of cognitive development. His work primarily involved observations of boys. For his lack of diverse subjects, his work has been criticized. However, he provided an inspirational foundation for work in developmental psychology. Theories that emerge from Piaget’s studies help educators think about developmentally appropriate teaching practices, methods and materials.
Lawrence Kohlberg extended the use of stage theories and directed his attention to moral development of children. He recognized a distinct category of reasoning and looked for evidence of it in the sense making and instinctive responses to right and wrong in the minds of youngsters. Kohlberg and his associates offered a great deal of support for attention to moral reasoning capacity and character development as part of the school curriculum.
Those additional researchers should be noted and acknowledged for their contributions to theories of learning, especially those on which educational theories draw. Stanley Milgram’s studies of obedience and B.F. Skinner’s theories of behaviorism are quite well known and cited, especially in early education literature ( Koch, Teach 73). Others, in addition to the three highlighted here, have more contemporary relevance. They are not grouped with the three previously discussed because they may be sorted into their own categories of psychology. However, that does not suggest that they don’t have relevance in the context of learning and cognitive theories, along with the previously mentioned ones.
The work of Milgram and Skinner, Bandura, Piaget, Kohlberg, Tolman, Asch and Rosenthal relied on the research tools available at the time. Today’s researchers have the burgeoning resources of medicine and technology that allow the brain and human physiology to be examined and tested and studied in unprecedented ways. Brain science is making enormous leaps! We have equipment and data that was never dreamed of by some of the researchers who laid the foundations of educational psychology. So much more is being discovered every day.
It is important for teachers and all educators to be aware of up-to-date findings about how the brain works and how humans learn. A strong connection between researchers and practitioners should be forged. Teachers should learn from the research and researchers should look to teachers for information to guide their studies and help interpret findings in ways that benefit learners. Teaching, like psychological and cognitive research is both a science and an art. The future of effective teaching and applied research will demand cooperation, collaboration and mutual understanding and ongoing scholarship that builds on the foundations of expectancy, impression formation, and cognitive processing and numerous additional theories of learning and cognition.
The works cited in this presentation include the following :
The course text
Koch, Janice. Teach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2012. Print.
Books
Hock, Roger. Forty Studies that Changed Psychology: Explorations into the History of Psychological Research. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002. Print.
Scholarly Journals
Asch, Solomon E. “Forming Impressions of Personality.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,41. (1946):258-290. Print.
Rosenthal, R., & L. Jacobson. “Teachers’ Expectancies: Determinates of Pupils’ IQ Gains. “ Psychological Reports, 19. (1966): 115-118. Print.
Tolman, Edward C. “Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men.” Psychological Review, 55. (1948):189-208. Print.
News Article
Zimmer, Carl. “In the Human Brain, Size Really Isn’t Everything.” New York Times. New York Times, 26 December 2013. Web. 19 May 2014.
