Students are more likely to achieve when you believe in them.

There is a famous study in Education Psychology that you may have heard of, called the “Pygmalion Effect Experiment”.

In a primary school like yours, at the beginning of the year, scientists gave students an intelligence test. Teachers were misled to believe that the test identified a few students who would be especially successful. In reality, those students weren’t special, they were randomly selected.

At the end of the year, the randomly selected students significantly improved their intelligence scores compared to their peers! The only thing that changed was their teachers’ expectations.

The Pygmalion Effect Experiment showed that teacher expectations worked as a self-fulfulling prophecy. When a teacher believes a student can achieve, that student is more likely to achieve.

Grouping low-performing students together harms high- and low-achievers.

You may have heard of PISA — The Program for International Student Assessment?

Standardized tests are how countries assess the skills and knowledge of their own students. Standardized tests are also how we assess the education systems of entire countries.

PISA scores enable countries (as well as educators) to compare the impact of different education strategies.

One tactic that has been shown to harm standardized scores across the board is tracking. Tracking is the practice of grouping students by aptitude or ability. It is commonly used in secondary schools to separate university-bound students from those preparing for tradesmanship.

Believe it or not, both the students sent to vocational school and the students sent to prepare for university perform worse when separated.

Takeaways:

• Don’t choose favorites (especially don’t let students believe you have any)

• Don’t build long-standing groups of students based on aptitude or ability — avoid long-standing groups in general

• Every student is high-ability and low-achieving. Celebrate every win, but make it known that you believe every student can achieve great things, and they are just getting started

• Your input matters more than anything else

• Every student matters, they are not equal, but your treatment should be

• Expect baseline outcomes at minimum, believe that all students can be excellent