"It's really tough for anybody to police their own beliefs."
Robert Pianta, University of Virginia Teachers' expectations
about their students' abilities affect classroom interactions in
myriad ways that can impact student performance. How do we get
teachers to have the right expectations? Is it possible to
change bad expectations? Can teacher beliefs be changed by
giving them new sets of teaching behaviors? Pianta thinks that
to change beliefs, the best thing to do is change behaviors. -
"For the most part, we've tried to convince them that the
beliefs they have are wrong," he says. "And we've done most of
that convincing using information." - But Pianta has a different
idea of how to go about changing teachers' expectations. He says
it's not effective to try to change their thoughts; the key is
to train teachers in an entirely new set of behaviors. "If you
want to change a mind, simply talking to it might not be
enough."