Discussion
· LaVoie and Adams suggest that “physical attractiveness may be important
for initial expectancies,” but gives way to better information, such as
students performance, making attractiveness only important “during the initial
part of the school year” (as cited in Dusek & Joseph, 1983).
· Teachers also use other teachers’ evaluations to develop expectations of
students’ performances.
· Expectations of lower level teachers, which are the most vulnerable to
attractiveness bias, will have small effects on every teacher who reads
them.
· Despite the smallness of this effect, “even small effects may become
significant if they accumulate over the course of a child’s school career”
(Alvidrez & Weinstein, 1999).
· Thus, academic achievement should correlate with teacher-student
similarity with the child’s pre-school and kindergarten teacher.
· The amount that a student is similar to the main stream population of the
school, and school’s faculty, and amount of teacher-student’s parent similarity
should also be looked at as a possible predictor of teacher expectation.
· If all of the possible aspects in which biases of teacher, community, and society
are explored we might then realize the true effect self-fulfilling prophecies
have on academic achievement.
*This proposal was
written in partial fulfillment of requirements for an undergraduate research
methods course and is not intended to be carried out.*