Moving backwards in every way. Stop and think!

Face book activity has been off the chart lately with the regressive policies being signed off by the 45th president of the USA, the segregation of various cultures by the same 'man', the huge backwards step in science, the dictatorship of what women will be allowed to do with their bodies, and the list will surely go on for weeks or even months to come.  

The same segregation of race, colour and creed is going on under the Tory government in Britain and is not exempt from including disabled people either. This is wrong, it is wrong from any perspective. This is a dangerous road to walk down it will collapse, just as it did during World War Two.

I have many people from many walks of life on my Facebook page alone, and I am proud of this, I have Muslim and Christian believers as well as Pagan, Eclectic, Atheist and probably many others I don't know about.  I have friends from Scotland, England, Ireland, Canada, America, Iraq, India, Dubai, and Greece, there are probably more that I am unaware of.  I have black friends and white friends, gay friends and straight friends and I am actually very sad that I have to label them all here to make my point because, really it doesn't matter as, to me, we are all caring, good hearted, human beings. 

We are all living beings, with red blood, good hearts, and caring natures.  This is what truly matters to me.  The reason for my writing this is a very sad one indeed, I have noted that some people have fallen for the propaganda, I see the odd post saying the 'illegal immigrants' are taking our jobs...RUBBISH.  There is no such thing as an illegal immigrant, the definition of immigrant clearly states that an immigrant is a person who comes to a country to settle there. Every Immigrant must show they can support themselves in order to gain entry into a country, much like we do if we want to immigrate to America or Australia.   In days gone past, an immigrant was known as an emigrant, in other words, they were pioneers who farmed the lands, build the cities, and created the jobs!  So please can people stop with this incorrect use of our language!

I have also seen the occasional picture posted and its usually to do with a 'Muslim' doing something unacceptable.  It’s just a picture with words overlaid onto it with NO EVIDENCE, AND NO FACT. How on earth do we know this person is even Muslim.  Do we go about waving pictures showing what a Pagan did wrong, Do we label Christians, for example, "this Christian was banned for blah blah blah" or this "Pagan was caught for blah blah blah".  NO, WE DON'T SO JUST STOP!  This is horrendous, its causing misery to people all over the western world right now and do you know what else, it is downright arrogant.  

People are treating everyone with the same colour skin as a ‘Muslim'. Guess what, that is not their nationality!  It’s their faith, their belief, their religion.  It is also seriously annoying to see the comments relating to these people as if it was were they came from.  There is no country called Muslim, Muslimshire or the United Muslim of the Pacific Ocean for that matter.  These people come from all over the world, much like Christians, Pagans and any other religion.  You see the world is global, yes, global, and it is only if you fall for the 'alternative facts' that you will find yourself spiralling down the rabbit hole of naivety and negligence.  

Those who do fall to naivety and negligence will eventually turn around to find themselves the culprits of all that hatred they have poured onto other people.  Trust me, they will.  They will become the minority. In this world, it gladdens me to see so many human beings fighting back, standing up for moral justice, fighting for factual knowledge.  It saddens me that those negligent human beings will fall behind, and loose precious knowledge. They will continue to post these stupid, hurtful, false facts... oh sorry Mr 45th President, they are alternative facts now aren't they... alternative facts...that is an insult to our English language, there is no such thing.  I cannot believe a man with such power can be so moronic.

It disgusts me to my very core that someone so high in status can be so greedy as to manipulate thousands to his way of thinking, disparaging and segregating a whole western world over deliberately misleading, well-practised lies.  This has been done once before people, does no-one remember Hitler doing exactly the same with the Jewish people?  Today's UK and USA leaders have only replaced the word Jew with Muslim, and yet so many people are falling for this rubbish.

I ask simply that you stop and think before posting these pictures with words anyone could type, thus segregating out Muslims.  I ask that you stop and check the facts of everything you read and I ask that you stop and think about this following statement each, and every time you go to post such hateful and false information...

If you have a child, do you want that child to grow up tainted with hate, racism, or bigotry.  Would you prefer a kind hearted, caring individual that brings you so much pride and happiness, that you could burst from watching them flourish,  Can you honestly, hand on heart say you would be proud to see your son or daughter post the same hateful and false information that you do, I hope not, if you can, please remove yourself from my social media.  I care for a little girl and can honestly say I love the way she sees no difference in people, religions, or nationalities, I am so proud of her for being so open towards all people.  My only wish is that she could grow up in a world were these types of labels were gone and everyone could then truly be who they wanted to be without worry.  

Can Teachers expectations influence the school performance of their pupils?

It is widely accepted that social beliefs and judgements influence how people feel and how they behave (Myers, Abell, Kolstad & Sani, 2010).  It is through the study of social belief and judgements that the question of teachers expectations, influencing pupil performance has been researched since the 1940's.  There are two main focus areas to this question;  why a teacher has these expectations and who these expectations may or may not, effect. In this essay, these two areas will be discussed, and evidence will be provided for this argument. A summary will then conclude this discussion. 

The reasoning behind expectations is not always logical. Consequently, expectations can be incorrect.  Attractiveness of a child is evidenced as a factor in this field. Results from a study regarding attractiveness found that attractive children were afforded significantly favourable treatment than children classed as unattractive (Langlois, Kalakanis, Rubenstein, Larson, Hallam, & Smoot, 2000).  Mathematics ability was used in a study by Robinson-Cimpian, Lubienski, Ganley and  Copur-Gencturk, (2014) to evaluate what factors influence teacher expectations.  The focus of this study was gender. Data was taken from the Early childhood longitudinal study ECLS and perceptions of boys and girls mathematical aptitude were evaluated.  It was found that Boys are afforded a higher expectation in mathematics than girls.  Furthermore, Madon, Jussim, & Eccles, (1997) discuss the conceptual model with the following as reasons for expectations, previous grades, previous test scores, motivation, self-esteem, attractiveness, demographics, personality and home life.

Langlois, Ritter, Roggman and Vaughn (1991) argue that expectations of teachers do influence pupils performance because of teacher interactions and facial expressions. Myers et al., (2010) state that when a teacher has higher expectations of a pupil they look, smile, nod and interact with that pupil more. In contrast to this, a videotaped experiment recorded various teachers discussing something.  Ten seconds of the discussion was played back to viewers, with or without audio. Consequently, viewers showed an expectancy detection effect as they recognised, by the teachers facial expression, whether it was a good or poor student being discussed (Babad, Bernieri, & Rosenthal, 1991).  In a study completed by (Montague & Walker-Andrews, 2001), it was evidenced that infants understand the emotion expressed in the face. Furthermore, they often match their emotions to other people's emotions based on the facial expressions.  It is, therefore, supported that children of pre-school upwards can in-fact calculate what expectations the teacher has for them and other pupils.

The self-fulfilling prophecy (SFP),  (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968) also support that expectations do influence performance. The Pygmalion in the classroom study is a good example of SFP and has stood the test of time.  Rosenthal (1968) stated that "the self-fulfilling prophecy was in evidence primarily at [younger years] the lower grade levels. This prophecy has since been re-examined in several contexts now giving it much more depth. Madon & Jussim (1997) studied naturally occurring SFP to examine whether positive or negative expectations produced more powerful SFP.  Their research model assumed that the teacher expectations would influence performance. With this in mind, they investigated, using different contexts as follows; do high or low expectations produce more powerful SFP; do expectations that match targets self-conception...provide a more powerful SFP; are targets of low self-concept more susceptible to SFP; Are low achievers more susceptible to SFP?  The key question they were asking overall, was which expectation, and in which situation made the biggest influence on performance. Their study found that low achievers were much more vulnerable to SFP.  Although this cannot be generalised, the SFP is supported within the low achievers group.

Bohlmann & Weinstein (2013) created a more advanced study, putting the classroom into the context. Other contexts were evaluated however the key focus was on highly differentiated classrooms and low differentiated classrooms.  They took teacher ratings of students and self-reported student ratings.  It was found that in 'highly differentiated' classrooms the low achiever, student rating matched the teacher expectation, however in 'low differentiated' classes it was not significant.  It was also found that in 'highly differentiated' classrooms Teacher expectation did match the pupils actual performance in mathematics although, again, it did not occur as often in 'low differentiated' classroom environments.  In support of the SFP, Again, the low achievers are highly influenced by teacher expectations, suffice to add that this is only in high differentiated environments.

Moreover, a longitudinal study also supports that low achievers are influenced.  Using Reading, writing and verbal communication abilities as a tool to evaluate the influence of expectations, data was taken from ten sites within the National Institute of Child Care and Human Development (NICHD).  The meta-analysis demonstrated that academic achievement in high school is influenced by teachers, high or low, misinterpretations (expectations) in first grade. These teachers expectations of abilities were found to influence students. Consequently,  vulnerable pupils, including pupils from low-status backgrounds, low achievers and minority students, for up to ten years (Sorhagen, 2013). Sorhagen did, however, state that parents expectations may also play a part in performance.

To conclude, when looking at reasoning behind teacher expectations, these study's imply that factors out with the student's control recurrently influence these misjudgements. Therefore, leading to these expectations. Reasoning behind teacher expectations needs to be included and evaluated when investigating this area as they do support sorhagens' statement regarding teacher expectations being misinterpretations. Furthermore student performance results, must take into account outside factors such as environment, self-esteem, ability, academic level, age, and parent expectations (Langlois et al., 2000;  Robinson-Cimpian et al., 2014; Madon & Jussim, 1997). Only then can it be clarified if the sole responsibility for performance is influenced by teacher expectation.

In saying this, It is however abundantly clear that Teachers expectations do have an influence on student performance. This does, however, seem highly focused around more vulnerable pupils such as minority groups, low-income pupils and younger children. It is also extremely visible when looking at the results from these studies; that low achievers are impacted greatly in many of these studies.

 References

Babad, E., Bernieri, F., & Rosenthal, R. (1991). Students as Judges of Teachers' Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior. American Educational Research Journal, 28(1), 211-234.

Bohlmann, N., & Weinstein, R. (2013). Classroom context, teacher expectations, and cognitive level: Predicting children's math ability judgments. Journal Of Applied Developmental Psychology, 34(6), 288-298.

Langlois, J., Ritter, J., Roggman, L., & Vaughn, L. (1991). Facial diversity and infant preferences for attractive faces. Developmental Psychology, 27(1), 79-84.

Langlois, J., Kalakanis, L., Rubenstein, A., Larson, A., Hallam, M., & Smoot, M. (2000). Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 126(3), 390-423.

Madon, S., Jussim, L., & Eccles, J. (1997). In search of the powerful self-fulfilling prophecy. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 72(4), 791-809.

Myers, D., Abell, J., Kolstad, A., & Sani, F. (2010). Attitudes and behaviour. Jacobs, N. Rotherham, J. (1st Ed) Social psychology (pp. 146-155). Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill.

Robinson-Cimpian, J., Lubienski, S., Ganley, C., & Copur-Gencturk, Y. (2014). Teachers' perceptions of students' mathematics proficiency may exacerbate early gender gaps in achievement. Developmental Psychology, 50(4), 1262-1281.

Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. The Urban Review, 3(1), 16-20.

Sorhagen, N. (2013). Early teacher expectations disproportionately affect poor children's high school performance. Journal Of Educational Psychology, 105(2), 465-477.

Montague, D., & Walker-Andrews, A. (2001). Peekaboo: A new look at infants' perception of emotion expressions. Developmental Psychology, 37(6), 826-838.