Teacher+Expectations+and+Beliefs

Dr. Christine Rubie-Davis Christine Rubie-Davies is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland. A former primary school teacher, her primary research interests are in teachers’ expectations and beliefs and their intersection with student beliefs. She is particularly interested in class-level expectations, i.e., the idea that some teachers have high expectations for all their students while others have low. Christine also explores ethnic and cultural issues and is currently involved in a study of ethnic identity in New Zealand. Christine is the recipient of a New Zealand Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award (2007), is a Fellow of the Assocation for Psychological Science (US), and recently won a University of Auckland Early Career Research Award. She has published extensively in national and international arenas.

The beliefs that teachers hold about students can have a powerful effect on the ways in which teachers interact with students and on the opportunities they provide for student learning. In this workshop you will be briefly presented with some New Zealand research related to teacher expectations of white, Maori, Pasifika and Asian students in New Zealand. You will have an opportunity to discuss these findings with your colleagues and explore their educational implications. Bring your laptop and you can also test your own ethnic bias!

//Your Comment// The data presented confirms many commonly held stereotypes. There were also a few suprises. Does this also translate to our expectations of family/whanau?. From a special school perspective, do we have expectations that relate to specific disabilities that influence our expectations? GH