The Eighth International Literacy & Education Research Network Conference on

SPETSES, GREECE
4-8 July 2001

Dr Helen Timperley

Senior Lecturer, School of Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Changing Teachers' Expectations About the Achievement of Low Income Children

Abstract

Low expectations and teachers' assumptions about the learning potential of students from low income homes is well established as a barrier to raising the achievement of these children. In this paper, I examine what led to the teachers in three schools changing their beliefs about the causes of low academic achievement from external factors, such as the children's skill deficits, to school-related factors, such as the contribution of their own teaching practices. These change processes are contrasted briefly with those in a fourth school in which the teachers continued to blame external factors. The three conditions identified as critical for changing beliefs and expectations included the salience of discrepant data, the presence of an external agent to assist with the interpretation of that data, and the availability of information on alternative practices.

Bionote

Helen Timperley is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Auckland. Over the last three years she has been involved in evaluating a major intervention undertaken by the New Zealand Ministry of Education in 35 schools in two low income districts. She has published extensively on this work and other related issues about school intervention.

Presentation Type
30 min. Paper

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Country
New Zealand