Hermine H. Marshall

Classroom Factors Affecting Students’ Self-Evaluations: An Interactional Model

This paper presents a complex interactional model of classroom factors that contribute to the development of students’ self-evaluations. This model integrates previously investigated factors, suggests the operation of additional factors, and extends the notion of the operation of classroom factors to account for the possibility that certain factors may compensate for or negate the effect of otherwise crucial factors in influencing students’ interpretations of and reactions to classroom events. Described are (a) task structure, (b) grouping practices, (c) feedback and evaluation procedures and information about ability, (d) motivational strategies, (e) locus of responsibility for learning, and (f) the quality of teacher-student relationships. This notion of compensating and negating features within the classroom environment can be applied to understanding other student outcomes as they are influenced by teaching processes.

Pygmalion and the Student: Age and Classroom Differences in Children's Awareness of Teacher Expectations

This study explores age and classroom differences in childrens awareness of teacher expectations and in the relation between awareness and self-expectations. In a sample of 579 children and their teachers in 30 first- (6-7-year-olds), third- (8-9-year-olds), and fifth-grade (10-11-year-olds) classrooms, assessed in the fall, younger children were found to be less accurate than fifth graders in predicting teacher expectations and in reporting differential patterns in their own interactions with the teacher. Yet first graders identified classroom differences in the degree of differential teacher treatment toward high and low achievers that were associated with differences in the expectations that high and low teacher-expectancy students reported for themselves. Fifth graders appeared more likely than younger children to mirror teacher expectancies in their self-descriptions regardless of the degree of differential treatment reported in the classroom environment.

Children's Understanding of Academic Tasks: Work, Play, or Learning

Abstract Childrens understanding of the purpose of school tasks—including the learning purpose of these tasks—and influences on this understanding were explored. Where teachers clarified what the tasks were intended to teach, kindergarten children were able to understand the learning purpose. In classrooms where teachers emphasized work completion and used basic skills worksheets as their instructional core, students were more likely to perceive their tasks as work that they have to do. However, work can be understood as the need for mental effort, reflecting the teachers emphasis on the thinking required to learn. Implications of differences in childrens perceptions of school tasks and of the meaning of learning and work are noted.

Note on “Disinhibition”

Use of the term “disinhibition” by social learning theorists is criticized on several grounds. (1) Use of a descriptive term as an explanatory concept is circular. (2) Since the term carries specific explanatory meaning stemming from traditional learning theory, adding another meaning to a single term is likely to cause unnecessary confusion. Altering the name of the term, e.g., “de-inhibition” might help clarify the literature. (3) Where the same term is used to explain seemingly different situations, one is uncertain as to whether the implied underlying process is indeed a single one. (4) The underlying process postulated by Bandura and Walters to account for “disinhibition” is the counterconditioning or extinction of anxiety responses, but the possibly crucial role of E and the experimental arrangements in mediating the effect of the model have been overlooked. Further research regarding the presence of anxiety responses and the effect of the experimental arrangements seems necessary before conclusions can be reached as to the process underlying increments in deviant responses and their generalizability to real life situations.