Psychology
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies in Educational Tracking and Teacher Expectations
Quick fact
In the famous 1968 'Pygmalion in the Classroom' study, Rosenthal and Jacobson told teachers that certain randomly selected students were 'intellectual bloomers.' By the end of the year, those students showed significantly greater IQ gains than their peers—demonstrating that teacher expectations alone can alter student achievement.
Why this is interesting
Have you ever noticed that students sometimes live up—or down—to what teachers expect of them? What if those expectations were based on something as arbitrary as a test score or a teacher's first impression?