re aimed at correcting methodological flaws in order to determine whether the effects of teacher expectations still presented themselves.
A comprehensive picture of the type of research that was undertaken following the publication of Rosenthal and Jacobson's (1968) research can best be provided by review of a representative sampling of this early research. In one early study, Feldman and Theiss (1982) examined the joint effects of teachers' expectations about students and vice versa on the performance and attitudes of both participants. Results of the study were said to confirm Rosenthal and Jacobson's (1968) original work showing that student performance varied as a function of the teacher's expectations.
An important question arising out of the early research was whether there was a causal connection between teacher expectancy and student performance; this because most of the studies conducted were actually correlational in nature. Thus, some researchers explored for a causal connection between the two variables. For example, Crano and Mellon (1978) investigated the causal interplay of teachers' expectations and children's academic performance using a four-year longitudinal design.
Subjects in the study consisted of 4,300 British beginning elementary school children. A series of cross-lagged panel correlational analyses demonstrated that the preponderant cause in the achievement-expectancy relationship was that of teachers' expectations causing children's achievements to an extent appreciably exceeding that to which children's performance impinged on teachers' attitudes. Also, it was found that teachers' evaluations of children's social performance affected later achievement to an extent exceeding that attributable to academic expectations.
In a comprehensive review of the early research into the teacher expectation/student performance relationship, Brophy and Good (1974) concluded that a variety of methodologi...