Hi all,
I've assigned the excert from Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968) Teachers'
expectancies:Determinants of pupils' I.Q. gains. Psychological Reports, 19,
115-118. that's reproduced in Pettijohn's Sources Notable Selections in
Psychology book. One of my better students e-mailed me a question about a
line he found particularly difficult to understand. While I think I know
what was meant from the context, I also found the sentence extremely
difficult and thought that it may have been misprinted. I''ve e-mailed the
student back with my interpretation of the section, but wanted to see if any
of you had any other input or perhaps even access to the original source.
The sentence in question reads "Prior research on the unintentional
communication of expectancies in experimentally more carefully controlled
interactions suggests that this question will not be easily unanswered
(Rosenthal, in press)" The preceeding sentence was "The most important
question which remains is that which asks how a teacher's expectation
becomes translated into behavior in such a way as to elicit the expected
pupil behavior." These occur on page 171 in the Pettijohn book as the next
to the last paragraph of the selection.
What I told my student is:
The part of the sentence that reads "Prior research . . . interactions" and
the citation of "Rosenthal (in press)" means that Rosenthal had performed
another study in which he had observed how the teachers' interacted with the
students after being given expectations about their ability. The second part
of the sentence appears to simply mean that from that study Rosenthal had
not found any clear differences in how the teachers treated the students and
assumed that it would be hard to figure it out. I agree that the phrasing
is strange; it sounds like it should read "easily answered" not "easily
unanswered." It could simply be that the word was copied incorrectly when
the article was edited for your Sources book. Or it could be that this was
a phrase that was once commonly used and went out of style before my time.
I like the latter interpretation because it makes me feel really young for
the first time in a while. Thank you.
Any comments?
Ann Calhoun-Sauls
Belmont Abbey College
Belmont, NC 28102
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