In 1963, after 6 years of teaching History, Barak Rosenshine went off to pursue his Ph.D. in Education at Stanford University. That was the start of the journey that would eventually make Rosenshine a household name in the world of education, as he eventually developed what would be known as the ‘Principles of Instruction’. There have been plenty of books and articles written about Rosenshine over the last few years (see Tom Sherrington/@teacherhead) and obviously you can read his own writing on those important principles.
But also in 1963, there was also a young psychologist at Harvard University called Bob Rosenthal who was running an interesting experiment in his lab related to rodents. Beside two cages, he labelled one set of rats as intelligent species and the other as dim-witted. He then instructed his students to take these rats and put them in a maze and time how quickly they completed it. The rats were exactly the same but they were labelled differently. To his surprise, those labelled as intelligent, completed the maze at a quicker rate. You can read all about this in Rutger Bregman’s excellent new book ‘Humankind – A Hopeful History’.
What he discovered is that students handled the ‘intelligent’ rats (and those with which they had higher expectations for) more gently and with greater care and it seemed that this treatment had changed the rats’ behaviour and enhanced their performance. He took this study into the world of education and eventually came up with the Pygmalion Effect – what he discovered is that teachers who expected students to do well, treated them in a different way, by giving them more attention, more encouragement and more praise and (amazingly) this had an impact on their performance.
In Bregman’s book, we also learn that there is a flipside to this called the Golem Effect – if we expect the worst then we treat them differently and we get the worst. There is a quote in the book that suggests the Pygmalion Effect is ‘great science that is under applied’ and obviously this got me thinking…specifically about target grades.
I’m sure my school is the same as pretty much every other school with regards target grades. At the beginning of studying GCSE and A-Levels, the school generates target grades based on previous data. This is then given to the teachers (alongside other additional data as well) and this is supposed to help us improve how we teach these students by maybe linking it to a seating plan or using differentiation or how we set students. In most schools from my experience (but not all), they are also given to students and parents. Clearly, the question we have to ask, given what we know about the Pygmalion and Golem Effect is, why do we do this? If we are interested in using science within education and have this knowledge at our disposal, why do we give information to teachers that will alter (unconsciously) the way they behave? Why do we feel teachers are immune to this stuff when past research shows this has not been the case? It relates to another point, why do some bits of research take-off within schools and some don’t? Surely in order for Rosenshine’s work to have the most impact, we need to be know about Rosenthal’s work.
A long time ago, there was a report written by the Policy Exchange that suggested every student should start with an A*. It was an interesting report that fitted in nicely with ‘growth mindset’ theory and the argument that there was no limit to your potential. Many will baulk at the link to ‘growth mindset’ as it has fallen out of favour (despite an interesting report from Chile related to this) but viewing it through the lens of the Pygmalion Effect makes much more sense. Is this the future for target grades or would it better for everyone not to have any at all? Is this something that the Chartered College should be pushing for? I’ve always argued that when it comes to evidence in education (to paraphrase ‘Animal Farm’) all evidence is equal but some is more equal that others. This can easily be applied to the BRs!
On Teaching... 