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The impact of teachers’ expectations on students’ educational opportunities in the life course: An empirical test of a subjective expected utility explanation

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  • Dominik Becker

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to integrate the idea of Pygmalion or self-fulfilling prophecy research into the subjective expected utility framework of inequality in educational opportunities. The theoretical section develops a formal model about the impact of teachers’ expectations on students’ educational transitions in sense of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the empirical section, I test this model to predict both students’ educational success (in terms of high school graduations) and their university transitions. Analyses control for selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity by means of a bivariate probit model. I find that even net of both students’ performance and motivation, teachers’ expectations show significant effects on students’ educational success ( Abitur ), but not on their university transitions. This finding is stable against several robustness checks.

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  • Dominik Becker, 2013. "The impact of teachers’ expectations on students’ educational opportunities in the life course: An empirical test of a subjective expected utility explanation," Rationality and Society, , vol. 25(4), pages 422-469, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:25:y:2013:i:4:p:422-469
    DOI: 10.1177/1043463113504448
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    Cited by:

    1. Becker, Dominik & Wessling, Katarina, 2020. "The impact of classroom, school, neighborhood, and institutional factors on teachers’ expectations," ROA Research Memorandum 004, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    2. Verhagen, Mark D., 2021. "Prediction in Educational Research: An Application to the Study of Teacher Bias," SocArXiv y6mnb, Center for Open Science.
    3. Becker, Dominik & Wessling, Katarina, 2020. "The impact of classroom, school, neighborhood, and institutional factors on teachers’ expectations," Research Memorandum 012, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).

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