Research has suggested that high- and low-expectation teachers tend to create very different instructional and socioemotional classroom environments (Rubie-Davies, 2007) and high expectation teachers provide students with more learning opportunities by planning and conducting their teaching differently for different students (Aydin & Ok, 2022; Rubie-Davies, 2014). In this paper, I start by considering that the use of Teacher Expectancy Research (TER) has great unfilled potential for more practical use in education, something that is also voiced by Weinstein (2018). Wang et al. (2018) recommends that future research investigates the impact of classroom behaviours and engagement. Further, Geven et al. (2021) has presented findings that suggests how the impact of influential factors on teacher expectations vary across educational contexts, but research in a Danish educational context remains underdeveloped. I address this gap and focus on students forms of participation, as an indicator of classroom behaviour and engagement. I argue how it is an important departure from a dominant research focus on student demographic traits and can contribute towards a more practical application of TER. In this paper, I ask the question; how can TER better inform classroom teaching? I believe there are two social conditions that impedes the practical usage of TER:  

Firstly, I consider the notion of “meritocratic beliefs” (Mijs, 2016) about students’ academic performance as potentially problematic. Such a belief system could be a reason for the great unfilled potential of TER as a framework for equitable conditions for learning and achievement. In a meritocratic belief system inequalities are personalized, which poses a serious problem to justice in education; it holds the learner accountable for the lack of academic performance, rather than focusing on the learning environment. In this perspective, differences in students’ academic performance are viewed as connected to their innate ability and the effort they put into school work, determining opportunities for learning and educational attainment. Mijs (2021) show how meritocratic beliefs are increasingly widespread among citizens in society, and Geven et al. (2021) suggests that teachers might consent to educational inequality, because they believe it is due to fair meritocratic principles of educational attainment.

Is academic performance all about effort? Bourdieu has suggested that a large part of the explanation can also be found in reproduction of structural, intergenerationally transferred inequalities, and empirical studies have consistently identified reproduction mechanisms in education (Jæger & Holm, 2007; OECD, 2016). Even thou recent reviews show consistent evidence that teacher expectations are biased against the gender, ethnicity or socioeconomic status of students (Murdock-Perriera & Sedlacek, 2018; Wang et al., 2018), this might not be properly acknowledged by teachers if swayed by meritocratic beliefs.

Secondly, I consider that bias in teacher expectations is often latent and need to be elicited to make teachers aware of them. I argue that variations in teachers’ expectations towards the academic performance of students across different forms of participation, could potentially elicit latent bias (if any) so it cannot be explained solely by merit. Also, bias across the gender, ethnicity or socioeconomic status of students would force the acknowledgement of structural inequalities as part of the explanation to differences in academic performance. A focus on classroom behaviour and engagement could provide teachers with an infraction point for interrupting detrimental cycles driven by their own expectations.

I conclude by presenting forms of participation observed in my study, together with a schematic of my research design and outline how I intend to investigate influential factors on the formation of teachers’ expectations and incorporate a focus on classroom behaviour and engagement. Conclusively, I stress the need for classroom teaching to be better informed by TER.

I utilize a mixed method research design, with two empirical approaches to the collection and analysis of data: 1) an observational study and 2) a statistical study based on data from a factorial survey. In the first phase of the project (1) an observational study examines forms of participation among primary school students in different teaching activities, focusing on the school subject’s Danish language and Mathematics. This enables me to operationalize and present teachers with representations of students’ participation in teaching activities, as an indicator of classroom behaviour and engagement. The observational study is conducted in four Danish primary schools selected through a stratified random sampling procedure based on available Danish national school records. Schools are sampled from this procedure, to ensure variation in the student population according to gender (Robinson-Cimpian et al., 2014), ethnicity (Bonefeld & Dickhauser, 2018; Tenenbaum & Ruck, 2007) and socioeconomic status (Geven et al., 2021), which have consistently been found to impact teacher expectations. The analysis of the qualitative data will then inform the operationalization of participation in a vignette to ensure high ecological validity in the quantitative study (Krolak-Schwerdt et al., 2018). In the second phase of the study (2), I examine variations in primary school teachers’ expectations, by conducting a vignette experiment. Here, teachers are asked to register their expectations toward the academic performance of a fictitious student. I use a factorial survey design, which consists of a vignette experiment in combination with a traditional survey (Atzmüller & Steiner, 2010). This methodological approach has shown to be especially suited for eliciting latent bias in professional judgements (Wallander & Laanemets, 2017). The vignettes are composed as descriptions of a fictitious student with certain characteristics and level of participation in a teaching activity. Participation and student characteristics are then experimentally varied across respondents in a between-subjects design, which allows for an assessment of the statistical effect of the variables on the outcome of a formed expectation about future academic performance. The traditional survey is used to gauge relevant teacher characteristics, values, and other relevant attitudes.

Following on from the analysis of the qualitative data in the first phase of my project, the paper concludes by presenting forms of participation observed in my study, with a focus on the classroom context and variations between the school subject’s Danish language and Mathematics. Next, I outline my research design and how I integrate qualitative and quantitative methods. I use this to discuss how representations of participation could be operationalized in a vignette, as part of a factorial survey design. I conclude by arguing that variations in teachers’ expectations towards the academic performance of students across different forms of participation, can potentially elicit latent bias so it cannot be explained solely by merit, and why this can strengthen the use of TER and its use for justice in education. Conclusively, I stress the need for classroom teaching to be better informed by TER.

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