Hidden messages: Student perceptions of teacher expectation communication

For many years, educational researchers have been interested in whether teachers communicate different expectations to students they believe to be high achievers than to those they believe to be low achievers. Studies in the area of expectation communication indicate that teachers are transmitting a variety of expectation messages to the students in their classrooms. The question that remains unanswered, however, is whether students are receiving these messages, and whether some groups of students are more aware of, or susceptible to, teacher expectation communication than others.

This teacher-initiated qualitative study focuses on student perceptions of teacher expectation communication at O'Farrell Community School, a restructuring inner-city magnet school serving an ethnically- and linguistically-diverse group of sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students in San Diego, California. During semi-structured interviews, 48 students at the school were asked to describe teacher/adult expectation communication which conveyed high- and/or low-expectations for their own achievement and behavior, and for the achievement and behavior of their classmates.

During the interviews, students described 401 incidents of teacher expectation communication, which were categorized into 18 different expectation communication types. Data were analyzed to determine the types of teacher expectation communication perceived by students as sending high or low-expectation messages and the awareness levels of different groups of students (by gender, ethnicity, grade level, special program participation, and student/teacher ratings of student achievement and behavior) of various expectation communication types.

The findings of the study suggest that: (a) the expectation communication types identified as important by students are very different than the types of expectation communication identified by researchers in past studies, (b) the effects of teacher expectation communication on students are mediated by students' perceptions of that communication, (c) the same teacher expectation communication type can convey high- and low-expectations, depending upon the context in which it is used, (d) students appear to be more aware of positive teacher/adult expectation communication directed toward themselves and negative communication directed toward others, and (e) teacher/adult communication which occurs outside the classroom appears to be as important to students as that which occurs inside the classroom.