NEW ZEALAND – A recent study by a University of Auckland education PhD candidate further confirms what many education reform advocates have harped on for years: Teachers, especially their expectations for students, make a big difference in how well students learn.

Zheng Li, a graduate student at the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Education, studied 4,617 students in 116 English language classes taught by 50 different teachers at two South China universities in an effort to understand how teacher expectations impact students, Phys.org reports.

Lis surveyed educators on their expectations of incoming students, and asked students about classroom climate, teaching style and socio-emotional factors both at the beginning and end of the school year.

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What Li found wasn’t particularly surprising.

“It seems to me that student learning is largely dependent on which teacher they happen to be placed with, because different teachers may lead to diverse learning experiences and outcomes,” Li told the news site.

In other words, Li’s research shows a teachers attitude and perceptions of students’ abilities likely has a much bigger impact on academic performance than other factors.

Li told Phys.org that educators in her study seemed to develop their expectations based on their pedagogical beliefs and perceptions of their own ability, and that those expectations for students are hard to change, even when confronted with contradictory evidence.

“Teachers with different expectations also varied in the ways they instructed and interacted with students; their behaviors, depending on their expectations, led to different instructional and socio-emotional environments in classrooms,” according to the news site.

Teachers who believed their students could achieve gave them more frequent, challenging, and rewarding work, than those with lower expectation teachers. The higher expectation teachers better engaged students, and built better relationships with them than those who expected less.

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In the end, students with high expectation teachers got better grades than their peers with low expectation teachers.

“Low expectation teachers didn’t have positive relationships with their students,” Li told Phys.org. “So the students are not so reliant on their teachers and they don’t show much acceptance of their teachers. They are more reliant on their peers and classmates.”

The results of the study illustrates that educators can have a very significant impact on students’ learning experience. And the teacher’s expectations typically impacts all their classes and students.

“If a teacher held high expectations for one class, they appeared to hold similar expectations for other classes, and the results were the same for teachers who held low expectations,” Li said. “This shows teacher expectations are pervasive.”

The research further solidifies justification for the movement from traditional teacher evaluations – based on years on the job and college credits – to a more performance-based system.

If school administrators truly want to improve student learning, this research shows their ability to gauge a teacher’s effectiveness is a critical component, and likely has much more of an impact than social status, poverty and other common excuses offered by teachers unions in poorly performing school districts.