http://www-scf.usc.edu/~sgabay/academic%20labeling.htm
Why do labels carry such significance in an academic environment? After all, shouldn’t they just be considered modes of classification within the classroom to better aid the teacher in providing an environment that is most conducive to the student’s learning? While such a means of classification certainly helps teachers of learning-disabled students by specifying the type of aid that these students need, it provides for regular, mainstreamed students an opportunity for much bias within the classroom because every label—“slow,” “bright,” “trouble-maker,” or “difficult”—entails a set of expectations that are associated with it—expectations that, when made known to the student, may become a self-fulfilling prophecy, “an expectation which defines a situation [that] comes to influence the actual behavior within the situation so as to produce what was initially assumed to be there” (Rist, 153).
Ray C. Rist’s study in the 1970s asserted that “the expectations teachers hold for their students can be generated as early as the first few days of the school year and then remain stable over the months to follow” (153). He observed a kindergarten teacher who, after only 8 days of working with her students, had separated her students into three tables, or working groups, based on their socioeconomic status (SES) and on what she assumed would be their academic abilities. Rist observed how, throughout the year, the teacher verbalized her expectations of her students, and how she constantly praised those who were in the middle-class table, as opposed to the table at which poor students who were on welfare were sitting. Rist, after observing this same group of students during their first and second grade years, saw that the original groups that their kindergarten teacher had separated them into were perpetuated as the students advanced into different grade levels, to the extent that their second grade teacher used the same classifications to label her students: the middle-class students were the “Tigers;” the students from working-class families were the “Cardinals;” and the poor students carried the name, “Clowns.” Based on the results of his study, Rist concluded that, “What had begun as a subjective evaluation and labeling by the teacher took on objective dimensions as the school proceeded to process the children on the basis of the distinctions made when they first began” (Rist, 152-153). In a case such as this, it is obvious how a teacher’s own expectations and assumptions about the academic promise that each of her students demonstrated shifted into an “objective” reality because each of the students’ subsequent teachers made the same distinctions.
There are numerous factors that cause a teacher to create a set of expectations for her students. Such expectations can be the results of firsthand information—information that the teacher knows or sees through her interaction with her students. The student’s race, gender, ethnicity, and appearance fall into this category. Teachers who are biased against a specific race, for example, will have lower expectations of students within that race. Similarly, as was seen in the example above, where Rist observed students’ classification into ability groups based on their SES, a student’s socioeconomic status creates a set of expectations from the teacher or administrator based, not on ability, but on other factors that should normally not be determinants of a student’s success. Firsthand information is also that which is obtained by the teacher through the interpersonal interaction that he sees among his students, or between himself and his students. When a teacher sees his or her students interact positively with other classmates, he develops a more positive attitude toward the student, as well—a positive attitude which carries with it high expectations. These expectations, in turn, result in a teacher’s varied behavior in order to allow such expectations to be realized. She “operationalizes her expectations of these different groups of children in terms of her differentials of teaching time, her use of praise and control, and the extent of autonomy within the classroom,” (Rist, 153) demonstrating her effort in allowing her expectations of her students to become a reality.
Such expectations can also be formed on the basis of secondhand information, or information that the teacher obtains through external sources, such as through students’ test results, previous report cards, permanent records, or evaluations from other sources, such as welfare agencies or psychological clinics. Based on secondhand information, the teacher can create expectations of her students without having yet interacted with them. A study conducted by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968), attempted to “provide empirical justification for a truism considered self-evident by many in education: School achievement is not simply a matter of a child’s native ability, but involves directly and inextricably the teacher as well” (Rist, 151). They researched the effect of teacher expectations on student performance within the classroom by administering a test which, unknown to the students nor to the teachers, was a standardized test, Flanagan’s Test of General Ability (TOGA), which is a test that had been established in 1960. The teachers were told that this test was the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition, and that it would give a strong indication of which students were academic “bloomers” or “spurters.” While there was no basis for the “results” of the test, the teachers were given a list with several students’ names on them, (names that had been chosen randomly), and they were told that these students’ test results were among the highest 20% within the school. The students whose names were on these lists were intensely analyzed by the researchers and testers, so that their “general ability” that was tested through the TOGA could be reevaluated at the end of the year. By the end of the year, when the students who were in the “top 20% of the school” were tested, their scores did, in fact, demonstrate their positive performance during the year. This research, along with others conducted by numerous educational researchers, has proven that the expectations that teachers develop of their students based on either firsthand or, as seen in this situation, secondhand information, will drive the teachers’ behaviors in order to allow their expectations to become a reality.
The expectations that teachers form of their students, in addition to being the result of labels given to the students, are also great determinants in what types of labels are given to students. A student about whom the teacher expects little academic progress may have such expectations because she has been given secondhand information that might allow her to assume that the student is “slow.” Given that information, the teacher will treat her student in a manner that is appropriate for a “slow” learner, thereby strengthening the “slow” qualities of the student and allowing the label to perpetuate within the student’s academic life—not only in that one teacher’s class, but in all his subsequent classes, as well. The circularity of the relationship between academic labels and teacher expectations results in a cycle that never ends. And to students who carry a negative label such as “slow” or “difficult,” both the label and the expectations entailed by it provide a learning experience that can be painful and even counter-productive.
While the effects of the labeling theory are powerfully demonstrated within an academic setting, they have also proven to be a reality within social and behavioral settings. In the case of social deviance, Tannenbaum (1938) comments that the offender “now lives in a different world. He has been tagged…The person becomes the thing he is described as being” (Tannenbaum, 21). Once again, the effects of labeling are demonstrated through the expectations that one has of someone else. In this case, the deviant behavior, which may have only been a minor problem initially, develops into a much more serious situation because, whereas the deviant may have initially seen himself as “a habitual norm violator,” (Lemert, 62) or a primary deviant, his need to establish for himself an identity will lead to him becoming a secondary deviant, “a person whose life and identity are organized around the facts of deviance” (Lemert, 62). Such behavior, especially if it permeates into a student’s school, will undoubtedly affect the expectations that his teachers have of him, which will consequently result in his attempt to realize those expectations.
In one’s attempts to realize the expectations that are made of him, either academically or behaviorally, a student attempts to achieve what is known as the self-fulfilling prophecy, in which what is expected of him becomes a reality simply because it has been expected of him. If a student is aware that teachers have low expectations of him because, for example, he carries the label “disruptive” or “difficult,” the student will achieve the standards that have been set for him simply because he knows that such is expected of him. These expectations that he attempts to realize are usually groundless; they may be expectations that have come about by something as trivial as appearance, yet they affect the student’s achievement because he believes that he must reach the standards that have been set for him. When these standards are low, the student does not put any effort into his work or into improving his behavior because he has been labeled “slow” or “deviant:” this label has become part of his identity, and if he would achieve or behave in a way that is beyond that label, he would essentially be losing part of his identity.
Similar to the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy is that of the Pygmalion effect. Unlike the self-fulfilling prophecy, which usually connotes one’s realization of negative qualities or expectations, the Pygmalion effect achieves the opposite, allowing a student to achieve beyond what he may have thought was possible simply because he has been told that he can. If a student who has been struggling with a certain subject for several years may want to give up, and his teacher tells him, “You will ace the test because I know you can do it!” he will achieve the Pygmalion effect by doing well. The high expectations that his teacher verbalized (or made known to him by any other means) will result in his high achievement, a result that, like the self-fulfilling prophecy, had not factual basis.
While academic and behavioral labeling has been discussed in this essay, it is also important that one understand how clinical or medical labeling can similarly affect students’ performance both academically and socially. The Journal of Learning Disabilities states that “because students with LD (learning disabilities) often experience significant difficulty in school in terms of both academic performance and peer acceptance, they are generally viewed as being at risk for low self-concept” (Elbaum, 2003). This being said, one can see how the ramifications of labeling extend in various disciplines; they are not limited solely to classroom performance, which means that the low self-concept that results from LD labeling has an effect on labeled students’ social and personal aspects, as well. Additionally, gifted students tend to show declines in academic self-concept over time (Marsh, et al; 1995), implying that as they mature, labeled students realize that they are distinguished from their peers for a specific reason, and as a result, their self-concept declines and becomes more negative. The confidence that accompanies students with a high self-concept is a key factor in motivating students to perform well in school (Cauley & Tyler, 1989), and if students do not have high expectations of their own based on their self concept, they cannot perform well in school.
The perpetual label that students carry remains with them even beyond the classroom. As young children in playgroups, they are often isolated, not usually out of their own volition, but because they carry a label that essentially transmits the message that they should be treated differently. While they should be treated according to their needs, these expectations often transpire into expectations that lack any factual basis, providing an unfair disadvantage to a child’s social development. Moreover, a student’s classification in one discipline affects his or her expectations in another discipline, as well. As a result of the distinctions made regarding such students, their academic labels also become their social labels. While a child of six years old may not have the awareness to see himself as different in being labeled “slow,” as he grows older, that label remains with him, and it becomes a means by which adults, as well as his peers, can identify him. Consequently, such a student attains a self concept of being academically, socially, or behaviorally limited, and he therefore reacts by living up to the low expectations entailed by such labels.
The effects of academic labeling display themselves in the extraordinary differences that exist in America’s education system. The labels that students are given, even if the labels are positive, such as “high-achieving” or “intelligent,” encourage labeled students to live up to what is expected of them. Similarly, students labeled as “slow” or “difficult” will work to reach the limited expectations that others have of them, thereby performing at lower levels in both academic and social settings than they would had they not carried such labels. The labeling of students, both within the classroom and outside of it, is unjust in providing such students with the opportunity to pursue higher goals in academic, as well as social, settings. They should not be told that their teachers have low expectations of them because they will attempt to realize the expectations and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Conversely, if teachers would only realize the effects of their behavior and attitudes toward their students in terms of the way their students develop academically and socially, they would provide a myriad of opportunities for their students to succeed and achieve greater heights, rather than negatively impact their students’ futures by creating limitations for them.
References:
Cauley, K. & Tyler, B. (1989). The relationship of self-concept to prosocial behavior in children. Early Childhood Quarterly, 4, 51-60.
Elbaum, B. & Vaughn, S. (2003). For which students with learning disabilities are self-concept interventions effective? Journal of Learning Disabilities, 101-109
Marsh, H.W., Chessor, D., Craven, R., Roche, L. (1995) The effects of gifted and talented programs on academic self-concept: The big fish strikes again. American Educational Research Journal, 32, 285-321.
Lemert, E. (1972) Human Deviance, Social Problems, and Social Control. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Rist, R. C. (1977) “On Understanding the Processes of Schooling: The Contributions of Labeling Theory.” Exploring Education 2nd Ed. Allyn & Bacon, 2001: 149-157.
Rosenthal, R. & Jacobson, L. (1968) Pygmalion in the Classroom. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Tannenbaum, F. (1938) Crime and the Community. New York: Columbia University Press.
