Transparency of Teacher Expectancies Across Language, Cultural Boundaries

Abstract

This study investigated the detection of teacher expectancy effects from extremely brief samples of their nonverbal behavior. Four groups of judges, ranging from 10-year-old students to experienced teachers, rated 10-s samples of teacher behavior when the teachers were talking about and talking to a high-expectancy student and a low-expectancy student. Three types of clips were used for each condition: audio only, video only, and audio plus video. The study was focused exclusively on nonverbal communication: all comprehension of verbal content was eliminated, because the video-taped teachers spoke Hebrew, and the New Zealand judges spoke English. All groups of judges showed considerable detection from the “talking to student” clips, rating the (unseen) high-expectancy student as a better learner and as better liked by the teacher than the (also unseen) low-expectancy student. The judges based their guesses on teachers' facial expressions and body language. As hypothesized, no detection was made by the New Zealand judges in the “talking about student” condition, in which previous research with Israeli judges demonstrated students' sensitivity to subtle nuances of teachers' expectancy-related nonverbal behavior, supplementing earlier findings showing leakage of teachers' negative affect.