To see whether teachers expectations for students can become self-fulfilling prophecies, fifteen first graders were given a

Question:

To see whether teachers’ expectations for students can become self-fulfilling prophecies, fifteen first graders were given a standard IQ test. The children's’ teachers, though, were told it was a special test for predicting whether a child would show sudden spurts of intellectual growth in the near future (see 156). Researchers divided the children into three groups of sizes 6, 5, and 4 at random, but they informed the teachers that, according to the test, the children in group I would not demonstrate any pronounced intellectual growth for the next year, those in group II would develop at a moderate rate, and those in group III could be expected to make exceptional progress. A year later, the same fifteen children were again given a standard IQ test. Below are the differences in the two scores for each child (second test – first test).