Pygmalion Effect ‘Teachers Expectations’ on Secondary School Students’ Motivtion and Academic Performance

Abstract

The Pygmalion refers to a psychological phenomenon where teachers’ expectations about students’ influence their academic performance. Although it is difficult to observe the Pygmalion effect in practical classroom settings, but teachers always have positive or negative expectations from their students. Contemporary educational theories demonstrates that teachers need to have higher expectations from their students to keep them motivated and to promote healthy behaviours among students. This paper examines the Pygmalion effect on the academic performance of secondary level students. True experimental design was used to collect the evidences about Pygmalion effect on secondary level students’ academic performance. Population of the study include 570 secondary school students. Random sampling technique was applied to self the sample. Two groups were formulated (30 students’ experimental group and 30 students for control group). One group was taught 10th grade English Text book by using ‘pygmalion effect’. Teacher conveyed positive expectations to the experimental group while control group was taught by lecture strategy. Test comprising of MCQs was developed and used as instrument to record the pre-test and post test scores of both groups. Average ages of the respondents were 14 year to 19 years. Study was conducted with male secondary school students. Results of the study revealed that ‘pygmalion effect’ conveying positive expectations to students resulted in improvement of motivation level and having sessions with students to sensitize them about teachers expectations significantly affected their academic performance. Secondary school teachers need to inform students that they have positive expectations it will boost up students' academic performance and will directly increase students' level of motivation.