GRACE HUNT

9/17/18
EDCURRIC 622 STRUCTURED ESSAY

High Expectations: Well, you wouldn’t lower them,

would you?
Teacher expectations are defined by Good and Lavigne (2017) as determinations and
inferences that teachers make about the future behaviour or academic achievement of their
students, based on their knowledge they have about their students at a given time. Whether
the teachers have low or high expectations for their students has an on-going impact on the
decisions made around professional pedagogy and teaching practices (Meissel, Meyer, Yao,
& Rubie-Davies, 2017). Further discussed by Meissel et al (2017), these expectations can
have ramifications on grouping, programme placements, student achievement and thus
student learning throughout their schooling years. The challenge for teachers is to have high
expectations for all students which allow all students to be extended and challenged
(McDonald, et al., 2016) and in that way inequity can be challenged. I believe all teachers
should be taking up the challenge set out by McDonald et al (2016) as students need to be
given a chance to have autonomy over their learning and be able to self-regulate.

In learning from earlier research done by The Teacher Expectation Project (TEP), the New
Zealand Ministry of Education (2012) have published, five key elements of a high
expectations classroom (Timperley & Phillips, 2003). The five elements will be used as
points of discussion in my essay which I will expand further about why we should have high
expectations for all students rather than teaching to the middle ground or having low
expectations of students.

The first element is about having a cohesive classroom environment. A classroom climate
created by any teacher should be one that advocates and encourages high expectations.
Everyone within a class comes with a vast amount of prior knowledge and life experiences. A
cohesive classroom environment shows both strong bonds between students but also between
students and their teachers. Culturally responsive teaching can then be a good indicator of
high expectations. In light of this teachers play a critical role in shaping encouraging and
cooperative interactions between students, modelling supportive behaviours and recognising
the potential of all students. If having a strong rapport between students correlates to an
upward trajectory of student grades and the achievement of positive outcomes (Frisby &
Martin, 2010), why have lower expectations of some students?

Getting to know your students allows teachers to tailor their programmes to suit the needs of
their students and this can be further informed and enhanced by use of continuous
assessment. A warm, connected classroom climate allows increased student achievement,
increased feelings of belonging and academic self-efficacy. (New Zealand Ministry of
Education, 2012). Thus, should be evident in a high expectations classroom (Frisby &
Martin, 2010). It is the role of the teacher to empower students and encourage growth and
learning through exploration of difference and risk taking (Berryman, Lawrence, & Lamont,
2018).. By actively listening and engaging in a dialogic classroom it is students giving the
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students room to feel safe voicing opinions and taking risks whilst continuously forming
stronger relationships between individuals and encouraging teachers to have high
expectations of them. Berryman, Lawrence and Lamont (2018) state that getting to know
students and being culturally responsive begins with being able to actively decode and make
meaning of what other people have said both verbally and nonverbally. With all that in mind,
I believe lowering expectations would create a classroom climate that will not only advocate
for restricted progress, but to develop students with lower self-confidence, self-efficacy and
academic-efficacy. Finally leading to decreased motivation and engagement in students.

A low expectations teacher will usually ability group their students as they believe that they
are able to make accurate judgements about their students’ abilities and use those judgements
as a way to manage the diverse range of learners. Additionally, low expectation teachers
believe ability grouping permits them to adapt content for the readiness and needs of students
whilst enabling more effective learning for students (Rubie-Davies C. M., 2015; Haushek &
Woessmann, 2005). To consider the argument students to have limited intelligence and thus,
lower chances of achieving highly can be negated strongly by research into flexible grouping
and variation in learning experiences. This is the second element stated by the New Zealand
Ministry of Education (2012). Christine Rubie-Davies article (2015) states that flexible
grouping may help in providing instruction for students at their level while avoiding the strict
stratification and negative psychological outcomes often associated with ability grouping.
Cindy Strickland (Strickland, 2007) supplements this statement by saying that flexible
grouping allows students to look at themselves in new contexts, new roles and new situation
which can provide opportunity to discover new strengths and address any weaknesses to
improve future student learning. The differential learning opportunities gives all students the
chance to develop a range of cognitive processing skills rather than focussing on a limited
curriculum and less cognitively demanding tasks that can become repetitive and
unstimulating (Rubie-Davies C. M., High expectation teachers and flexible grouping: A
theoretical discussion, 2015). As a further benefit to the differential learning opportunities,
working with peers of variable abilities brings about positive behaviour and task completion
due to positive peer modelling. In contrast, ability grouping of students can for some students
promote hierarchy and status. Teachers try to preserve student self-esteem through ability
grouping because putting students who are working at similar levels to each other develop a
more positive attitude towards themselves and their learning. The drawback of this is that
students know quickly what group they are in and where they stand academically in
comparison to their classmates. Ability grouping lacks opportunities and curriculum
differentiation that would contribute to equitable outcomes in schools. So, having high
expectations of students in their ability to extend themselves and challenge themselves
through flexible grouping takes away from the stigmatization of grouping that is visible in
many classrooms.

Expectations within literacy should always be high for all students and to do this,
programmes should be tailored and differentiated to all students needs but of equal
importance is to plan learning experiences that take student interests into account. This again
links into knowing your students and respecting who they are, where they come from and
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what prior knowledge or past experiences they bring to the classroom (Berryman, Lawrence,
& Lamont, 2018). Incorporating student interests in planning helps to motivate and engage
students in their learning in the classroom. Keeping students engaged and interested in
literacy can start by way of reading a book or short novel before starting a lesson. Most
students love being read to and it becomes a segway into the reading programme. Student
interests should be incorporated into the texts chosen and the activities that follow. Students
need to have the opportunity to work with multi-modal texts and should not be limited to
having a book chosen for them each lesson. Giving students a range of text types exposes
them to a range of different purposes, ideas, language features, structures and audiences.
Being exposed to these different aspects of literacy brings the students’ focus to thinking and
trying to make sense of what they have been exposed to. They are using higher order thinking
to decode and make meaning. The challenge of that becomes the engagement aspect. When
students pick from a range of texts they are able to pick one or several that are of interest to
them. Teachers can incorporate student interest to keep engagement high through high
expectation activities that relate to the chosen literary texts. This again gives students choice
(Rubie-Davies C. M., High expectation teachers and flexible grouping: Practical applications,
2015). For example, teachers could use the form of a literacy tic-tac-toe, this would mean
students would have to complete 3 literacy tasks within a certain timeframe, but they chose
which tasks to complete and thus, how much they challenge and or extend themselves. The
important thing here is that all students have the right to do all the activities. Students should
not be limited or restricted to certain tasks of certain levels of difficulty (2015).

It is our aim as teachers to have all our students achieve to the best of their abilities in
literacy. “Having a clear framework for their learning would ensure that students were
cognitively and behaviourally engaged in the classroom” and result in enhanced student
learning (Rubie-Davies C. , 2014, p. 183). Rubie-Davies then goes on to say that high
expectation teachers would see their students as lacking motivation rather than lacking in
ability (Rubie-Davies C. , 2014). Moreover, research has found that high expectation teachers
place high importance on fostering intrinsic motivation within students as it relates to success
(2014). One way which that can happen is through the setting of high expectation mastery
goals which provide students with a pathway for learning. In addition to this Lock and
Latham proposed three conditions which needed to be met in order for students to achieve
their goals. Firstly, the students have to feel as though they are able to reach the goal i.e. they
must be challenged but not challenged so much that the goal feels unattainable. The goal
must be of relevance and have a purpose to students, so they stay motivated to achieve the
goal. Lastly, students need to have set goals which are specific and clear so that they can
focus on and make an effort to achieve the goal. Having these three conditions met, in a
classroom where high expectations are advocated will mean that students have an increased
sense of self-efficacy, they will be more engaged and motivated in the learning experiences
and, the level of learning and performance will be much greater. However, it implies that
teachers are assessing students regularly to see how they are progressing and giving clear,
effective feedback for students to take on board to help them achieve success. Given the right
feedback students will be encouraged to engage with more advanced activities and use higher
levels of cognitive thought and problem solving. T clear feedback given by the teacher needs
to be understood by the student thus, permitting for students to scaffold and take ownership
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of their own learning. It is also permitting the teacher to help facilitate student learning and
builds a stronger academic relationship between the two (Rubie-Davies & Peterson, Teacher
expectations and beliefs: influences on the socioemotional climate, 2011).

If we were to take guided reading as a context for talking about high expectations and goal
setting in literacy we would talk about students having a goal that they are focused on while
the teacher provides support for the different needs of their students. In this setting teachers
can implement mixed ability grouping using a range of texts, text forms and content to help
students achieve their individual or group goals but may use ability grouping for instruction
beforehand (Rubie-Davies C. M., High expectation teachers and flexible grouping: A
theoretical discussion, 2015). This becomes beneficial to all students and their learning
because not only does it link topics to prior knowledge but the reading and meaning making
can be specifically linked to oral and or written activities (Thompson, Lois; New Zealand
Ministry of Education, 2005). It also makes links to the criticality of writing. To be able to
fully engage in the reading lesson, students need to be able to respond to it in a written form.
Being in a smaller group brings more confidence to students and thus, the students will take
risks and take opportunities to confirm or alter predictions or ask questions in order to aid
them in reaching their guided reading goal which could be to use clues from other parts of the
text ‘to clarify a concept or idea we do not understand’. Students taking risks allows for
teachers to formatively assess learning and they can then differentiate their teaching to needs
which have come out of that formative assessment. It permits the differentiation of learning
experiences for students whilst keeping motivation and engagement high through the use of
focused, strategic instructions and specific feedback. Whilst in the guided reading context,
students can receive feedback on their progress instantaneously and reflect on their progress.
Nevertheless, it is important to have high expectations as students need the opportunity to
have autonomy over their learning. Students need autonomy over their learning to feel as
though they have ownership. This in part is enhanced by the previous point, goal setting.
McDonald et al (2016) found from their study involving 90 teachers that implementing a high
expectations strategy such as goal setting made a positive difference to students’ learning
outcomes. They found that students were able to reflect on goals and feedback, find the gaps
in their learning and use that knowledge to set new goals as the focus for self-managing their
own learning (McDonald, et al., 2016). Student autonomy not only relates to self-regulation
of learning but also having choice. For example, a task that is created with high expectations
in mind may give the student choice in which activities to complete or not whilst giving them
a timeframe for completion. In this way students are gaining the skills to manage their time
effectively to ensure completion but are not told which ones they are allowed or not allowed
to complete. Another way that student autonomy will be beneficial when talking about high
expectations is giving students a range of activities that cater to a range of ability levels and
difficulties. Whereas, low expectations create inequity and less independence for students as
it is much more focussed on instruction, repetition and constant review. Low expectations
advocates for environments where the teacher is at the centre transmitting all knowledge to
the students (Rubie-Davies C. M., High expectation teachers and flexible grouping: A
theoretical discussion, 2015). In knowing that high expectations allow for more student
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choice, self-regulation and self-management it does not seem appropriate that we lower
expectations as teachers need to be facilitators who help students to learn.

High expectations for all students within a classroom is important when it comes to student
learning. If we were to have negative preconceived ideas and information about students, we
would be able to see the negative impacts that has not only on student learning but the
students’ self-efficacy. High expectations for all in literacy relates to selecting ambitious
outcomes for all students which is challenging in the face of having a range of diverse
learners and being able to differentiate learning experiences to cater for that diversity.
Secondly, it relates to being able to use time well (R. Jesson, Personal Communication, 12
September 2018). This means giving students access to all needed resources and equipment
through efficient systems such as spreadsheets with hyperlinks or a classroom layout that
gives all students enough room to move about and access all needed resources. Thirdly,
teachers need to be designing tasks that require higher order thinking (2018). Repetitive
worksheets and constant revision of prior learning becomes boring and demotivating. Higher
order thinking on the other hand, gives students the opportunity to think critically, look to
other perspectives and work collaboratively. Lastly, students need to be exposed to
multimodal texts and resources that lead into high level conversations (2018). Our everyday
register of language is very different to that of the internet, to that of encyclopedias, to that of
scientific research, thus, exposing our students to this idea of multimodal texts gives them the
upper hand on embedding language into their vocabular that sits outside of the language used
when speaking. Students will be able to assert themselves to a higher level when they go into
higher level study or into the workforce because they have the knowledge and language skills
to be able to decode and make meaning of different content, contexts and perspectives, then
make connections with prior knowledge and experiences to embed that learning into existing
schema. It is readying students to find who they are. They are going through change similar
to that of the early years, for example learning to talk. So again, they have to find where they
stand in this world that is ever changing (Earl, 2013).

Bringing all ideas and evidence together, I do believe that expectations should be high for all
learners and classrooms as it has many more benefits holistically than that of a middle ground
or low expectations environment. The effect on student achievement has a positive
correlation and the engagement and motivation of students is generally high.

Word count: 2721

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