The Pygmalion Effect – School teachers and parents can improve children’s education with great expectations
Do you want your children to be a success at school. The greater the expectation placed upon children by teachers the better they actually perform in their education at school.
To say this in another way; when teachers expect children to do well in school that is what they do and when teachers do not expect them to do well they do not do so well.
This is a type of self-fulfilling prophecy and is known as the ‘Pygmalion Effect’.
In the world of education the effect was discovered by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson and set out in their book ‘Pygmalion in the classroom’.
In their study teachers were told that a class had very intelligent students and that the teachers had to make sure that they were stretched. Though these were ‘ordinary’ school students they achieved brilliant results.
Why?
Because these school students came to believe that they were the best and this belief motivated them to achieve at a higher level.
Anthony Robbins says that “what we consider possible or impossible is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.”
If you believe you are something you will take action on that belief.
If you believe you are a dancer, not just that you can dance, then you will dance. If you believe that you are a mountaineer you will take action and climb mountains.
If a child believes “I am intelligent and good at schoolwork” then he or she will do far, far, better at school.
So, does this have a lesson for you as a parent concerned over your child’s education? We think it does.
If you have high expectations of your children then they will do better in school work.
If you give your child the belief that they are intelligent then they will absorb this belief and act accordingly. How can you do this in a practical sense?
Rather than intelligence being narrowly defined as it used to be, intelligence is now viewed as being the product of multiple intelligences.
If your child is not so great at written work, are they better at speaking, do they come up with fantastically creative stories? Praise them and tell them that they are intelligent. Are they not so good at maths at school but good at singing, clapping, playing an instrument? Praise them and tell them that they are intelligent.
The spin off will be that your child will believe that they are intelligent, it will become part of who they believe they are and they will act accordingly and you will find that this belief has a positive impact on those areas of your child’s school work that they may not doing as well as they could be.
Your child’s belief that they are intelligent will raise their performance in all areas of school life as they act on that belief.
