Examining the Effects of Expectancy Confirmation and Stereotype Threat on Student Academic Performance

This paper explores the literature on the effects of Teacher Expectancy Confirmation, also known as the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, and Stereotype Threat on student performance. It highlights the progression of research on these subjects and brings to attention how they might exacerbate achievement gaps along the lines of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, and other stigmatized groups within the classroom setting. While stereotype threat has long been acknowledged as an effect capable of being activated in the minds of students in the classroom, the generalizable positive effect sizes of teacher expectation confirmation have been found to be relatively small, except amongst stigmatized groups. The negative impacts of these effects are theorized to be even larger in natural situations, and may thus create large deficits amongst stigmatized groups. Research along the lines of naturalistic occurrences of these effects is suggested as well as particulars to each of these effects. The review of the literature is applied to form a list of recommendations and strategies for teachers to use to maintain and demonstrate the same high expectations amongst all students and combat the activation of stereotype threat in the classroom