Enacting High Expectations for all Students Dr Christine Rubie-Davies PhD, Associate Professor, School of Learning Development & Professional Practice
Teacher Expectation and Student Achievement
Teacher Expectation and Student Achievement
We frequently hear cries from policy makers and those within the Ministry of Education that teachers need to have high expectations for all their students. This implies that currently teachers do not have high enough expectations and they ought to. However, this seemingly simple demand carries with it many questions which appear to go unanswered by those making the statements: What do high expectations look like in classrooms? Should expectations be high and equally high for all students? How would teachers know if their expectations are too low or high enough? Does holding high expectations for students miraculously lead to enhanced achievement? The conception that some teachers hold high expectations Teacher number for all their students while others do not is something that has fascinated me for a number of years now and has its genesis in Figure 1. Graph showing the expectations of six high and three low Figure 1. Graph showing the expectations of six high and three low expectation teachers in my own teaching experience. I witnessed that teachers who I expectation teachers in relation to achievement perceived had high expectations for all their students, appeared relation to achievement to have a huge positive effect on, not only their students’ low expectation teachers whereby it can be seen that the achievement, but also their self-belief. My research career expectations of high expectation teachers do vary across has involved identifying teachers who have high expectations classes but nevertheless are very high relative to achievement. for all their students (high expectation teachers) versus those For low expectation teachers, the opposite is depicted. The whose expectations are low for all (low expectation teachers), conception that expectations are relative to achievement means discovering whether having high expectations for all students that expectations for individual students will vary. Among predicts student achievement gains, investigating what high high expectation teachers, their expectations will be high and expectation teachers do differently from other teachers and, challenging for all students but achievable. The point is that high latterly, teaching regular teachers in regular classrooms the expectation teachers expect all the students in their classes to make large learning gains – and the students do. In one of my pedagogical practices and beliefs of high expectation teachers. I define high expectation teachers as those who have high studies (Rubie-Davies, 2007), the mean effect size gain in reading expectations for all their students relative to achievement. for students with high expectation teachers over one year was The graph (right) illustrates this point for six high and three d = 1.01 whereas for students with low expectation teachers, the Mean expectation and achievement
Mean expectation and achievement
Reading exp Reading ach 1
Teacher number
gain was only d = 0.05 (effect sizes tell us how important the impact is of one thing on another). In John Hattie’s terms (2009) any intervention, teaching strategy and so on with an effect size above 0.4 is well worth implementing. Therefore, we should be cloning high expectation teachers! Clearly expectations in and of themselves are not magical. So what is it that high expectation teachers do which results in their students increasing their achievement by far more than might be anticipated? Several studies have shown that high expectation teachers differ from low expectation teachers in three key areas: they do not ability group, they create a warm class climate for all students, and they set clear learning goals with their students. At the heart of these differences, in my opinion, is the use of flexible grouping rather than ability grouping. Class climate and goal-setting emanate from this key difference. Why is ability grouping important? We have been told, often, that New Zealand has one of the highest disparities between our highest and lowest achievers in the PISA and PIRLS results. A consideration is that many students are ability-grouped throughout schooling. Using John Hattie’s figures again, within-class ability grouping has a d = 0.16 effect on achievement while streaming or banding has a d = 0.12 effect. Clearly these are practices that are not worth investing in and yet they are not only prevalent but mandated in many schools. Worse, an enormous body of research demonstrates the negative equity effects of streaming and ability grouping. As a secondary school teacher recently said to me, “As you move down the streams, the students get browner.” The major problem with ability grouping is that it results in differential opportunity to learn and therefore differential learning. Students learn what they are given the opportunity to learn. Students arrive at school at 5 years old, and within a week or two they find themselves in the Red group, or the Tigers group, or whatever group name teachers think disguises the hierarchy that represents ability grouping. As a result, students in one group are given different learning experiences to those in another group and, not surprisingly then, those considered to have more ability learn more because they are given the opportunity to do so. Students are placed in what becomes not only an academic hierarchy but also a social hierarchy. There are studies (e.g., Good, 1987) that have shown that even controlling for ability, the within-class ability group that students are placed into in their first year of school predicts the stream they will be placed in at secondary school. There are studies (e.g., Mason, Schroeter, Combs, & Washington, 1992) that have shown that if students from so-called low achieving groups are placed in average or
even high achieving groups, they quickly begin achieving at the same level as their peers (sometimes they outdo them). There are studies (e.g., Ireson, Hallam, & Hurley, 2005) that have shown how inaccurate student group assignment actually is. There are studies that have shown the pernicious effects of ability grouping on student self-beliefs (e.g. Weinstein, 2002) because students can accurately determine where they are in class and what their teachers expect of them. There is even a very recent study (Liem, Marsh, Martin, Mcinerney, & Yeung, 2013) that shows the detrimental effects of streaming on the self-concept of high achieving students. There are no studies to my knowledge that show that ability grouping is wonderful! And yet the overwhelming research evidence of these many, many studies is ignored in our schools and in many of our teacher education programmes, and the practice of ability grouping, in one shape or another, persists throughout schooling. Questions then arise about why there is such a discrepancy in achievement outcomes between our highest and lowest achievers. I fully accept that ability grouping is not the only answer, that there are complex social and economic issues to be considered. Nevertheless, ability grouping is certainly a contributing factor and is something that could be rectified in schools by providing more equitable opportunities for students. Ability grouping categorises and sorts our young people almost from the moment they enter our schools. Finland is often hailed as having a high quality schooling system and consistently performs very well in the PISA and PIRLS tests. Interestingly, and certainly worth considering, is the fact that Finland has a policy throughout schooling of only using heterogeneous grouping and they have one of the smallest disparities between their highest and lowest achievers (OECD, 2007). Again, I concede that there may be other explanations for Finland’s lack of achievement disparity. Nevertheless, their policy of heterogeneous grouping versus ours of homogeneous ability grouping is worth considering as one potential explanation for the large gap and tail that exists in New Zealand when there is no such large variance in Finland. High expectation teachers (often contrary to their own school policy) do not ability group for learning experiences. Instead those I have studied in-depth use mixed ability grouping arrangements, particularly for students’ learning activities, whereby students can choose the activities that they complete, or higher and lower achievers are paired, or students are socially grouped, or students choose who they will work with, or students work in assigned mixed ability groupings. Some high expectation teachers still instruct students in ability
groups but more pull out students to teach particular skills such that the salience of ability is diffused. As a teacher in a project I recently completed described, “I’ve done away with ability groups and have a range of activities to choose from, but I still pull out targeted students for guided lessons, focussing on gaps.” And as another teacher said, “My students are much more engaged in their reading and maths since I introduced flexible grouping. Students no longer worry about what group they are in.” Students can concentrate on their learning rather than on their place in the hierarchy. A further aspect of flexible grouping is that students form relationships across the classroom rather than just with those
students in their group because their seating groups and who they work with are regularly changing. This results in a sense of class community; students are more connected to each other as outlined by this teacher who also took part in the project described below, “The biggest difference I’ve noticed is in my classroom climate . . . every two weeks the children move desks and it means they have all got to know one another and there is more harmony in the classroom.” Perhaps not surprisingly, high expectation teachers also create positive relationships with all their students, manage behaviour positively and most often pre-emptively, and show all students that they care about them and their learning.
Goal-setting also arises from flexible grouping. In many of the classes of high expectation teachers, the students were choosing their activities from a range at various achievement levels. This fostering of student autonomy meant that high expectation teachers were not as aware of where their students were up to as they would be if they made all the decisions. Also, the students were advancing quickly in their learning. For both these reasons, the teachers regularly monitored student learning and co-constructed clear goals with students for their next steps. This was motivating for students. Having clear goals, knowing what they would achieve next, and having clear feedback from teachers on their progress meant that students were challenged and engaged in their learning. There were few behavioural issues in these classes. My earlier work resulted in the Teacher Expectation Project (http:// www.education.auckland.ac.nz/ en/about/schools-departments/ ldpp/ldpp-research/ldpp-researchprojects/teacher-expectation.html) which was funded by a Marsden Fast Start Grant and a grant from the Cognition Trust. In brief, the project consisted of training a group of randomly assigned teachers (intervention group) in the practices of high expectation teachers. They learnt what high expectations look like in the classroom. The intervention group attended four workshops where they learnt how expectations are portrayed and learnt about the practices of high expectation teachers. They learnt to self-analyse their non-verbal behaviour from videos of them teaching. They also planned together how to implement the practices of high expectation teachers into their own classes. We measured student achievement and changes in their beliefs, teacher expectations, and changes in teacher beliefs. The project ran over three years (2011–2013). In the second year the intervention group trained the control group and we monitored the student and teacher changes. We also tracked the students with intervention teachers from the first to the second to the third year so that we could measure whether the achievement gains they made from being with intervention teachers were sustained once they went into new classes. There was a direct association between how much intervention teachers engaged in the project and how much their students gained in achievement. This shows that the more teachers employed the practices of high expectation teachers, the more their students benefitted. Further, overall students with intervention teachers gained 28 per cent additional learning in mathematics above what control group students learnt in the first year of the project, a sizeable effect. All students gained – and, perhaps, importantly, that disparity between the highest and lowest achievers diminished in the intervention group but increased in the control group.
All students come to school enthusiastic about learning and the adventures that lie in store. Many leave school several years later disillusioned, disappointed and dispirited. From an economic standpoint alone we need a skilled workforce; “We cannot afford to waste even a single drop of academic talent” (Weinstein 2002, p.292). From an equity perspective, all students deserve the opportunity to achieve to their highest potential. High expectation teachers recognise the possibilities in all their students and work to ensure that all students achieve at the highest levels they can. It is teachers who foster student talent and who can help every child to love learning, to challenge themselves, and to achieve more than others might have thought possible. References Good, T. L. (1987). Teacher expectations. In D. C. Berliner and B. V. Rosenshine (Eds.) Talks to Teachers. New York: Random House. Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London, England: Routledge. Ireson, J., Hallam, S. and Hurley, C. (2005). What are the effects of ability grouping in GCSE attainment? British Educational Research Journal, 31, 443–458. Liem, G.A.D., Marsh, H.W., Martin, A.J., Mcinerney, D.M., & Yeung, A. S. (2013) ‘The big-fish-little-pond effect and a national policy of within-school ability streaming: alternative frames of reference’, American Educational Research Journal, 50, 326–370. Mason, D.A., Schroeter, D.D., Combs, R.K. & Washington, K. (1992). Assigning average-achieving eighth graders to advanced mathematics classes in urban junior high. Elementary School Journal, 92, 587–599. OECD (2007) ‘PISA 2006 Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World, Volume 1-Analysis, Paris, France: OECD. Rubie-Davies, C. M. (2007). Classroom interactions: Exploring the practices of high and low expectation teachers. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 289–306. Weinstein, R.S. (2002). Reaching higher: The power of expectations in schooling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. About the Author Christine Rubie-Davies (PhD) Associate Professor, Head of School, School of Learning Development and Professional Practice, Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland. Private Bag 92601, Auckland 1150, Ph: (+649) 3737 599 extn. 82974, Fax: (+649) 623 8827
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