The Pygmalion effect
In a famous study by psychologist Robert Rosenthall, elementary school teachers were told that certain students in their class had been identified as intellectually gifted, yet were classified as ‘late developers’ who were not yet actively demonstrating the effects of intellectual giftedness. full of the giftedness they had. been evaluated as having.
The researchers found that as a result of this thought being planted in their minds, the teachers began to show slight positive differences in the way they treated those children. Interestingly, this led to the students’ perception of themselves becoming more positive as well. As a result, those specific students began to behave in accordance with those beliefs and began to perform above the level of the other children in the class.
The problem was, of course, that these children had not been identified as gifted at all. His teacher was simply told that they were.
This study was famous for showing how a student’s teachers’ expectations affect student performance, and is known as the Pygmalion effect. The opposite of the Pygmalian effect is known as the Golem effect, where students’ performance suffers when their teachers have negative expectations of them.
The bottom line is that for a young trainee to become good at something, a part of them must believe that they are good at that thing, and that part will be heavily influenced by how their role models perceive them. That is why it is so important for us as agents of change not only to sow positive seeds in the minds of our students, but also to sow positive seeds in the minds of their parents and even their teachers so that the Pygmalion effect works in our favor. .
Positive Expectations vs. High Expectations
While the terms positive expectations and high expectations can be used interchangeably, it is important to differentiate between them.
Think of positive expectations as the ability to see the “glass as half full” in every situation. That is, any negative effects are allowed to fade into the background, while positive results are brought strongly to the fore and come into sharper focus.
High expectations, on the other hand, will only be effective if they are high enough to push the student beyond their comfort zone, but low enough to be realistically achievable. If high expectations become unrealistic, they essentially cause the student to fail, resulting in various negative consequences.
The link between performance and self-esteem.
If your student’s parents want a tutor, it’s safe to assume that they want their child to do better in school. If the parent is dissatisfied with his son’s performance (or with his own ability to improve his son’s performance, as is often the case), then there is a good chance that his dissatisfaction affects the child’s self-esteem, and his self-esteem will be affected. affecting her performance.
While it may sound strange, if all he did was walk into the house, snap his fingers, put the father in a trance, and hypnotize him into believing his son was doing fantastic, that alone would have a drastic impact. When parents begin to believe in a student’s strengths, those beliefs unconsciously spill over into the student, raising the student’s self-esteem and thus breaking the chain of demotivation that holds them back.
While we don’t expect you to learn hypnotic induction techniques, we hope you can now see how important it is to positively impact parents’ perception of their child’s school strengths, to indirectly impact a child’s perception of their own strengths.
How can its impact on the perception of parents?
Now you can begin to see why it’s so important to spend at least a couple of minutes giving verbal feedback on student progress to parents at the end of each lesson, especially when it comes to praising parents vs. the rest. little boy.
However, for your words of praise to have the right impact, it is crucial that you have established yourself as a knowledgeable authority figure by displaying certainty and establishing a strong, trusting relationship. Showing certainty without a good relationship can make you seem arrogant, while being in a good relationship without authority can mean that parents, even though they like you, may not ‘admire’ you or follow your example.
Once you have both an authoritative presence and a relationship, you gain the power to alter someone’s perception. If you establish these two psychological factors while directing parents to focus heavily on student strengths, progress, and autonomy, you’ll quickly see noticeable changes happen faster than you ever imagined possible.
writing to the teacher
If you are working as a home tutor, a powerful strategy is to contact your students’ teachers at school. While writing to the teacher helps you stay on top of what the student is doing in class (assuming you return right away) and helps promote your image to parents as your own personal advocate, it also serves another purpose. It gives you the opportunity to plant positive seeds of thought in the minds of teachers and about student progress, allowing the Pygmalion effect to work on both parents and teachers.
If the teacher begins to notice that the student is more active in class, showing signs of initiative, or even a generally brighter attitude, this is likely to favorably affect how the teacher treats the student, albeit subconsciously. If the teacher notices this more (which he is more likely to do if you plant positive seeds of thought in their minds) and mentions these observations to the parents, he will only give more impetus to the whole positive process. Therefore, the Pygmalion effect works best if it affects parents and teachers at the same time.
To learn more about using the most powerful psychological effects when acting as a change agent for your students, check out the Top of the Class Tutoring website.