Search

It is well-known that teacher expectations tend to be biased by factors such as student socio-economic status (SES) and gender. However, much less research has been devoted to understanding how teacher characteristics may impact their own expectations of the students. The present study investigated teacher expectations for 343 Chilean teachers (240 in-service and 103 pre-service). We first designed and validated an instrument to measure expectations; then we assessed the effect of teacher gender and experience, and student gender and school-SES in the formation of teacher expectations. The data were analysed using hypothesis and data-driven analyses. The results showed that SES had an effect on teacher expectations (η2= .03 to .12); there was a higher probability that teachers from high-SES schools would have positive expectations of their students. However, negative expectations were equally distributed across teachers working in high and low-SES schools. There was also no evidence of the effect of teacher or student gender on teacher expectations. With respect to teacher experience, the findings were clear cut; both pre-service and in-service teachers shared identical expectations of their students. These findings have important implications regarding teacher training programmes since the expectation bias is observed very early during training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a research project on teacher authority in lower middle-class schools in Santiago, Chile. The main objective of this research is to characterize the meaning that pupils and teachers grant to teacher authority. We examined the reasons given by the students to explain why they obey some of their teachers; in addition, we interviewed eight teachers who were recognized by their pupils as the most respected and to whom the pupils were the most obedient. The meaning of teacher authority for pupils and teachers constitutes the object of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]