Elisha Babad

Students as Judges of Teachers’ Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior

Students differing in ages and teachers differing in experience were exposed to extremely brief samples of teacher behavior when talking about, and talking to, students for which they held high or low expectations. Judgments of teacher characteristics as well as those of the unseen student with whom the teacher was involved were collected. An expectancy detection effect was found such that when teachers were involved with their high-expectancy student, raters judged the unseen student more positively than when teachers were involved with their low-expectancy student. This detection was facilitated differentially by the teachers’ verbal and nonverbal behavior. Ratings of teacher characteristics showed similar expectancy effects but only for older raters. Findings demonstrate the detectability of teachers’ expectancy-related behavior. We discuss the implications of young students’ detecting teacher expectancies from brief samples of behavior and the educational significance of the observed discrepancies between verbal and nonverbal communications.

Some Correlates of Teachers’ Expectancy Bias:

Israeli elementary school teachers graded a handwritten worksheet allegedly written by an “excellent “or a “weak “student. A significant expectancy bias effect was caused by this ability label, similar to documented expectancy bias effects caused by a stereotypic ethnic label. The bias effect was unrelated to the teachers’ ethnic origin and to their preferred method of teaching, and somewhat related (p< .10) to their length of tenure, teachers of longer tenure showing a smaller bias effect. Beliefs about the success of school integration in Israel were related to the expectancy bias: Teachers believing integration to be moderately successful showed no bias effect, while highly optimistic and extreme (“highly successful” and “not at all successful”) respondents showed a significant bias effect. This finding supports previous reports on the relationship between susceptibility to biasing information and extremity of the belief and attitude system.

Nonverbal and Verbal Behavior of Preschool, Remedial, and Elementary School Teachers:

This paper presents a relatively context-free method of assessing teacher behavior. The context is removed through the use of extremely brief (10-second) clips of videotaped teacher behavior, separated into isolated nonverbal and verbal channels. This method makes it possible to trace subtle within-teacher differences in isolated visual and verbal channels, such as the face, the body, speech content, and tone of voice, as well as to compare teachers who work in disparate educational contexts. To examine a commonly held belief about the relatively high quality of Israeli preschool teachers, samples of preschool, remedial, and elementary school teachers were videotaped, and brief clips were rated on 10 scales by 15 judges. Following a principal component analysis, the 10 rating scales were reduced to three interpretable factor-based scores. The groups of teachers did not differ in their “active teaching behavior”—a composite score consisting of task-orientation, clarity, dominance, and activity/energy/ enthusiasm. The groups differed in “nondogmatism” (ratings of teacher as democratic, flexible, and warm) and “negative affect” (ratings of teacher as hostile, condescending, and tense/nervous/anxious) manifested in their behavior. For these composite variables, a clear linear trend was observed, with preschool teachers showing least dogmatism and negative affect, elementary school teachers showing most dogmatism and negative affect, and remedial teachers falling between these two groups. Dogmatic behavior was detected in both the face and the verbal channels, whereas negative affect was detected only in the teachers’ faces.

EXPECTANCY BIAS IN SCORING AS A FUNCTION OF ABILITY AND ETHNIC LABELS

A fourth-graders handwritten worksheet was attributed to a gifted or non-gifted child (ability label) with either a European (high ethnic status) or Moroccan (low ethnic status) name. Grades given to the worksheet varied as a function of the ability label, and to a smaller extent as a function of the interaction between ethnic and ability labels.

Pygmalion in Reverse

The effects of learning potential (LP) and teacher expectancies on IQ, school achievements, and teacher ratings were studied in eight special classes for the retarded. Fifty-eight EMR subjects were divided into four groups in a 2 1/2 design, first according to their true unrealized intellectual potential (high and low LP) and then at random into expectancy groups (high and low). The subjects were tested at the beginning and the end of the school year. The IQ, and particularly its reasoning component, was affected by learning potential, but not by teacher expectancies. A consistent interaction effect was found for changes in most of the teacher ratings and some of the objective achievement scores, characterized by unexpected inferiority of the high-LP/high-expectancy group.

Teaching Group Dynamics in Academic Settings: Basic Dilemmas and Some Tentative Solutions

The goal of these teachers was a course with balanced integration of the cognitive-intellectual and the personal-affective models.

Effectiveness of social reinforcement as a function of contingent and noncontingent satiation

Abstract The social satiation effect is the inverse relation between the availability of a social stimulus and its subsequent efficacy in a reinforcing role. According to a suggested cognitive-interactive theory, the satiation effect is mediated by childrens attributions of contingency between their own behavior and the experimenters actions in the satiation treatments. Perceived contingencies depend, at least to an extent, on actual contingencies, and it was therefore predicted that a satiation effect would be observed only for groups presented in the satiation treatment with noncontingent social stimuli but not for groups presented with contingent stimuli. Middle-class 5- and 7-year-old children were subjected to a 10-min waiting period in which the stimulus word “Yafeh” (“good” in English) was presented 2 or 20 times, contingently or noncontingently. They were then given a 75-trial binary discrimination test: correct responses were reinforced with “Yafeh”. The hypothesis was confirmed in the analysis of variance. However, the predicted difference between the slopes of the contingency and noncontingency conditions was found clearly only in the older sample, while the younger children were more influenced by the number of social stimuli presented in the treatment (satiation) and less influenced by the method of stimulus presentation.

Age and Coaching Effects on the Reasoning Performance of Disadvantaged and Advantaged Israeli Children

Summary The nonverbal reasoning performance of Israeli advantaged and disadvantaged (N = 952) children was measured in grades 2, 4, and 6. Measurement followed the “Learning Potential” (LP) paradigm, with its three stages: pretesting, coaching in relevant problem-solving strategies, and posttesting. All results were presented in raw scores, in an attempt to assess absolute performance levels, and to present differences in terms of time gaps. The results show that all groups benefited substantially from training, but the improvement following training tended to decrease in the higher grades. In all grade levels, the disadvantaged children benefited from the coaching more than the advantaged children. The performance time gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children was about two years, with a tendency to grow with increasing age. The contribution of the coaching session in terms of absolute performance was equivalent to about two years. Posttest distributions of raw scores revealed a growing tendency ...

An All-Purpose Model for Group Work

A comprehensive modelfor the understanding of group work is presented. The model consists of two dimensions, each divided into three categories, creating nine cells. The Type of Operation dimension is divided into Learning, Therapy, and Experience categories, and the Level (or Focus) of Operation dimension into Individual, Interaction, and Group categories. A profile of cells can be sketched for any approach, type of group, process, or goal. Applications of the model in the areas of teaching group dynamics, supervision and training of trainers, analysis of ongoing group work, and in the field of research, are presented.

Can Social Satiation be Learned Vicariously

Summary An attempt was made to create the social satiation effect via vicarious learning. Second-grade boys and girls from middle class homes in a Jerusalem school observed other children being administered a short treatment in which the stimulus word Yafeh (“Good”) was presented by E twice (low-satiation) or 20 times (high-satiation). Immediately thereafter, E administered to the observers a 75-trial binary discrimination task, to test the efficacy of the word Yafeh as a reinforcer. The control groups consisted of Ss treated and tested by the same E. A typical satiation effect (i.e., decreased performance of the group presented with 20 stimuli) was observed for the control groups, but no difference was found between groups of Ss observing the high- and low-satiation treatments. It was thus concluded that social satiation had not been learned vicariously. The post-treatment inquiry on the Ss who were observed by the experimental Ss revealed that these children were aware of the frequency of stimuli presen...