Living up (or down) to expectations

Original post:  Sep 17, 2012

I heard a fascinating story this morning about expectations. An academic study focused on how teacher expectations might impact student performance.

The study told teachers in advance that there were certain students in their incoming class who had the potential for high achievement. The teachers did not know that the students had been selected at random and were no more (or less) likely to be high performers. At the end of the study period, the researchers found that the students pre-selected for high achievement actually outperformed their peers!

The researchers did a second study to try to find out why this had happened. It turns out that it was the accumulation of hundreds of smaller moments along the way. If a question was asked of a child, the response would depend on the expectations. If the child was considered low-performing, they would be given a short period of time to respond before the teacher would move on to another student. If the child was in the high-potential group, they would be given an extended period to answer (or possibly even prompted). The higher potential students were also given a bit more coaching along the way. Those little interactions ended up making measurable improvements over the course of a school year.

In the same way, this may be applied to our own interactions with our colleagues. There may be times when we are frustrated with other departments (or even with colleagues). If we can try to assume that our colleagues are working for shared interests, we may be more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. We might actually help improve our own service in the short run. In the long run, we could help our colleagues improve as well!