Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupil's Intellectual Development Book Description

When first published in 1968, (later updated in 1992), Pygmalion in the Classroom was received with almost universal acclaim for its ground breaking research. The "Pygmalion Phenomenon" is the self-fulfilling prophecy embedded in teachers' expectations. Simply put, when teachers expect students to do well and show intellectual growth, they do; when teachers do not have such expectation performance and growth are not as encouraged and may in fact be discouraged in a number of ways. Research suggests that our expectations strongly influence the performance of those around us from the members of our football team to the students in our classes. In the Oak School experiment discussed in this book teachers were led to believe that certain students, selected at random, were likely to be showing signs of a spurt in intellectual growth and development. The results were startling. At the end of the year, the students of whom the teaches had these expectations showed significantly greater gains in intellectual growth than did those in the control group.

Robert Rosenthal has contributed to Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupil's Intellectual Development as an author. Rob Rosenthal is Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University. He has written widely on housing and homelessness including "Homeless in Paradise" (1994) and the use of music in social movements. He has played in bands for over forty years, including The Fuse which recorded his rock opera "Seattle 1919" in 1986.