Teachers' attitudes and students' opposition. School misconduct as a reaction to teachers' diminished effort and affect

Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 860e869

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Teachers’ attitudes and students’ opposition. School misconduct as a reaction to teachers’ diminished effort and affect Jannick Demanet*, Mieke Van Houtte Ghent University, Department of Sociology, Research team CuDOS, Korte Meer 3-5, 9000 Gent, Belgium

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 18 November 2011 Received in revised form 10 February 2012 Accepted 27 March 2012

Recent decades have seen many studies dealing with the effects of teacher expectations. While most have focused on students’ cognitive outcomes, we relate teacher expectations to student deviancy. We expect low expectations to be associated with students’ feelings of futility and less teacher support, which, according to respectively strain theory and social control theory, give rise to misconduct. Multilevel analyses of data (2004e2005) from 11,844 students and 2104 teachers in 84 Flemish secondary schools suggest that, in schools where teacher expectations are low, students report less perceived teacher support, which is associated with higher rates of self-reported school misconduct. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Teacher expectations School misconduct Strain theory Social control theory

1. Introduction Educational researchers agree that teacher attitudes can have a profound impact on students’ educational growth (e.g., USA: Brophy & Good, 1970; Jussim & Harber, 2005; Rosenthal, 2002; France: Trouilloud, Sarrazin, Martinek, & Guillet, 2002; Belgium: Agirdag & Van Houtte, 2011; Van Houtte & Van Maele, 2012; UK: Rubie-Davies, Hattie, & Hamilton, 2006). The best known of these is the pioneering study by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) that established the ‘Pygmalion’ effect. The authors describe how teacher expectations regarding students’ ability shape those students’ later educational success, irrespective of actual ability. Students whom teachers label as the “gifted” in class make the greatest progress, primarily because of differential treatment by teachers (Jussim, 1986; Rubovits & Maehr, 1971). This highly influential study intensified researchers’ interest in the consequences of teacher expectations. Generally, this kind of research agrees that when teachers have low expectations of some of their students, these students make less academic progress (Hinnant, O’Brien, & Ghazarian, 2009; Jussim & Harber, 2005). While the bulk of the research on the effects of teachers’ attitudes has dealt with students’ cognitive outcomes, fewer studies have focused on behavioral responses. However, it can be supposed that certain teacher attitudes may trigger behavioral reactions from * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ32 (0)9 264 91 90; fax: þ32 (0)9 264 69 75. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Demanet), Mieke.VanHoutte@ UGent.be (M. Van Houtte). 0742-051X/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2012.03.008

students in class. In particular, students can be expected to show disruptive behavior when they perceive that teachers have low expectations of them. It has been suggested that teachers’ attitudes shape their treatment of students in two ways (Jussim, 1986; Rosenthal, 2002). First, when their expectations of some students are low, they spend less effort and time teaching these students (Jussim, 1986). When this reduced effort is perceived by students, it can be expected to engender feelings of goal blockage, which might, according to general strain theory (Agnew, 1985, 1992), lead to feelings of strain and ultimately to acting out by students in class. Secondly, lower expectations result in less supportive teacherestudent relations (Jussim, 1986; Rubovits & Maehr, 1971). According to social control theory, these less cohesive bonds relate to deviancy in youngsters (Hirschi, 1969). Hence there are theoretical reasons to expect that low teacher expectations, when perceived by students, result not only in less academic progress, but in an active oppositional behavioral response from students as well. Examining the association between teacher expectations and students’ school-disruptive behavior adds not only to our knowledge concerning the effects of teacher expectations, but is relevant for school deviancy research as well. While studies have dealt with the role of teachers in preventing school misconduct, most focus on the teacherestudent relationship as the main determinant of student misbehavior. These studies show that when teachers make sure that students feel supported, and, more generally, feel at home in school, students are less likely to break the school rules (e.g., Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011a; Freidenfelt Liljeberg, Eklund, Väfors Fritz, & af Klinteberg, 2011; Jenkins, 1997). However, little is known

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about the role of teacher attitudes and expectations in student deviancy. While previous research relating teacher and student characteristics focused either exclusively on teacher or student data (e.g., Baker, Grant, & Morlock, 2008; Hallinan, 2008), the current study relates teacher-reported data to student-reported data. More specifically, we examine the relationship between teachers’ selfreported expectations of students, and students’ self-reported school misconduct. Methodologically, this is possible by considering individual teacher attitudes as manifestations of a teacher culture at school. As such, these attitudes can be related to student characteristics through a multilevel framework, in which the teacher culture is added as a school-level feature, and the student outcome as an individual-level feature (see also Van Houtte, 2004, 2011). Consequently, we do not focus on expectations individual teachers have about individual students, but rather on the effect of the teacher culture e that is, beliefs teachers in the same school share about their students in general (see also Van Houtte, 2004). Previous research has shown that the level of school deviancy displayed by students varies between schools and that school-level factors can be introduced to account for these differences (Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011b; Eitle & Eitle, 2003; Gottfredson, Gottfredson, Payne, & Gottfredson, 2005). Given the theoretical reasoning linking teachers’ expectations and students’ school misconduct, we propose that between-school differences in misconduct can be explained by teachers’ differential expectations. Hence our first research question is whether school-wide teacher expectations relate to students’ chances of misbehaving at school e taking into account students’ gender, socio-economic status, grade, ethnicity, track, and prior achievement (see Section 4.3). The second is whether an eventual association between school-wide teacher expectations and school misconduct is mediated by the students’ sense of academic futility, as held by strain theory (Agnew, 1985, 1992), or by students’ perceived teacher support, as suggested by social control theory (Hirschi, 1969).

substantial variability in the strength of the self-fulfilling prophecy within and across classrooms. For example, the effects of teacher expectations would be strongest in the classes with the most differential treatment of students by teachers (Brattesani, Weinstein, & Marshall, 1984; Kuklinski & Weinstein, 2001). Thus, while there is still some debate concerning the magnitude of this self-fulfilling prophecy effect, the relation between teachers’ expectations and students’ later achievement is not disputed (Jussim & Harber, 2005). There is no question, then, that teachers’ attitudes have a profound impact on students. However, it is not only important to look at cognitive outcomes: as students interact with teachers on a daily basis, it is likely that teachers’ attitudes also shape other aspects of their lives. Some studies have focused on these noncognitive outcomes: Hallinan (2008) investigated the effect of students’ perceptions of teachers’ expectations on their liking for school. She hypothesized that students would like school more when they could live up to the expectations of their teachers, but found that these expectations did not impact students’ school liking. As the author notes, however, this could be due to the rather crude measurement of teachers’ expectations. In a related study, Hinojosa (2008) looked at punitive responses to pupils as outcomes of teacher expectations. She found that students who reported higher teacher expectations had a smaller chance of in- and out-ofschool suspension, and speculated that students are more attached to school when they feel that teachers have high expectations of them. This higher attachment may reduce students’ likelihood of misbehaving, and consequently, of punishment. However, this reasoning remains purely speculative, as the study did not focus on school misconduct as an outcome. Thus although some noncognitive student outcomes have been investigated, no study has yet analyzed students’ disruptive behavior as an outcome of teacher expectations. However, there are theoretical reasons to expect that if students perceive that teachers have low expectations of them, they might act out by showing active oppositional behavior.

2. Background

2.2. The role of teachers’ expectations in school misconduct

2.1. The impact of teachers’ attitudes on students’ outcomes

The Pygmalion effect involves five phases (see Brophy & Good, 1970, pp. 365e366): 1) teachers form differential expectations of students’ performance; 2) they treat their students differentially based on these expectations; 3) children respond differentially to the teacher because of this treatment; 4) in responding to the teacher, each child tends to exhibit behavior which complements and reinforces the teacher’s particular expectations of him or her; 5) ultimately, this results in differential student achievement. A crucial mechanism in teacher expectancy effects, therefore, is the existence of differential student treatment. In the early years after the Pygmalion study was published, researchers asked whether differential teacher expectations were expressed in treatment of students (for a useful review, see Jussim, 1986). This led to the affecteeffort theory, which states that teachers’ differential expectations are manifested in differential affect and effort toward students:

In their highly influential book, Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) presented evidence regarding self-fulfilling prophecies in education. Specifically, they contended that students bring certain characteristics to the school context, which are e mostly unwittingly e used by teachers as an indication of their later educational success. Rosenthal and Jacobson’s (1968) main contention was that teachers’ expectations determine their behavior toward students, which can actually result in raising students’ performance. The Pygmalion study raised considerable controversy and originated much research on the effects of teacher expectations (e.g., Hinnant et al., 2009; Hughes, Gleason, & Zhang, 2005), most of which focused on students’ cognitive outcomes (for reviews, see Brophy, 1983; Jussim & Harber, 2005). It is now widely believed that teachers’ expectations indeed correlate with students’ educational growth, yet the question remains whether this is mostly due to a self-fulfilling prophecy e namely, that teachers’ inaccurate expectations cause differential educational growth e or to the fact that teachers accurately predict students’ later academic success (Jussim & Harber, 2005). In a recent review of the literature on expectancy effects, Jussim and Harber (2005) maintain that teacher expectations are mostly accurate. Hence, expectations would predict later student outcomes, but not cause them. However, there is evidence for the existence of a self-fulfilling prophecy, although its statistical effects have generally been small to moderate (Jussim & Harber, 2005). Researchers have also suggested that there may be

“There is considerable evidence now that the two most important factors mediating the effects of teachers’ favorable expectations are affect and effort. Affect refers to the tendency of teachers to provide warmer, more pleasant socioemotional climates for students for whom they hold more favorable expectations. Effort refers to the tendency to teach more material to students for whom they hold more favorable expectations.”(Rosenthal, 2002, p. 35 - italics in original) Students’ perceptions are crucial as well, since: it is only when they perceive differential treatment by teachers that they can be

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expected to behave accordingly (Brattesani et al., 1984; Jussim & Harber, 2005). Perceptions are especially important in predicting students’ likelihood of school deviancy. Way (2011), for example, showed that the effects of teachers’ practices on students’ schooldisruptive behavior were mediated by students’ perceptions of teachers and their authority. Consequently, we can expect the relation between teachers’ attitudes and students’ deviancy to be mediated by students’ perceptions of differential treatment. More specifically, we expect students’ feelings of academic futility and perceived support from teachers to act as mediators. For this, we draw on general strain theory (Agnew, 1985, 1992) and social control theory (Hirschi, 1969). A classic explanation of deviant behavior is offered by strain theory (Cohen, 1955; Merton, 1938). Strain theory attributes deviancy to people’s inability to achieve conventional goals e for example good grades or a good job e by legitimate channels (for a review, see Froggio, 2007). When individuals perceive goal blockage, they feel strained, which eventually leads them to abandon legitimate channels and turn to deviant behavior (Merton, 1938). Agnew (1985; 1992) revised classical strain theory to create his general strain theory, adding pain-avoidance behavior as an important source of strain. Hence individuals feeling blocked from escaping bad situations also feel strained. Certain environments can provide both sources of strain, including schools (Agnew, 1985): some school characteristics, such as tracking systems (Van Houtte & Stevens, 2008), or socio-ethnic composition (Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011b), have been shown to cause strain. Another characteristic which may relate to strain is teachers’ classroom behaviorenotably, their investment of teaching effort, since it is likely that lowered teaching effort is perceived by students. Previous research has shown that teachers’ classroom behavior affects students’ behavioral and emotional engagement (Skinner & Belmont, 1993). If teachers invest less time and energy in teaching, students are more likely to withdraw from learning activities, both emotionally and behaviorally. We suggest that when students see teachers putting less effort into teaching them, they feel blocked in realizing their full academic potential. Eventually, this goal blockage results in feelings of strain, so that they act out against the teacher they believe is blocking them. Furthermore, we posit that teachers’ behavior determines whether the classroom becomes an aversive context: students who notice that their teachers expect little of them may see school attendance as pointless (Miller, 1980). In other words, students with feelings of goal blockage and blockage of pain-avoidance behavior may have a higher sense of academic futility. Feeling academically futile indicates a feeling of having no control over educational success or failure (Brookover, Beady, Flood, Schweitzer, & Wisenbaker, 1979; Brookover & Schneider, 1975; Brookover et al., 1978), and that students feel strongly that the school system is working against them, so they have to be lucky to succeed (Miller, 1980). This sense of academic futility has been connected to teachers’ expectations (Brookover et al., 1978; Miller, 1980). If subtle cues convince students that the teacher does not think they can be successful, their sense of academic futility is increased. A relation has also been established between a sense of futility and school misconduct: researchers have shown that a greater sense of academic futility is associated with higher rates of deviancy (Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011b; Van Houtte & Stevens, 2008). Therefore we can expect that when teachers put less effort into teaching students, students have a higher likelihood of feeling academically futile, which increases the likelihood they will actively oppose teachers by showing disruptive behavior. Another influential classic explanation of deviant behavior is offered by social control theory (Hirschi, 1969). Social control theory holds that all individuals are inclined to deviancy but that having

strong social bonds to a community, or to significant others in the community, prevents breaking that community’s rules. Hirschi (1969) applied his view to adolescents, asserting that they must have strong bonds to school, parents and peers in order to behave properly. The preventive effect of strong social bonds on deviancy has been replicated in many studies (Finn, 1989; Hirschfield & Gasper, 2011; Jenkins, 1995). Dornbusch, Erickson, Laird, and Wong (2001) showed in a longitudinal study that school attachment reduces the overall frequency, prevalence, and initiation of deviant involvement, and that this association held across males and females, different community contexts and regardless of ethnic groups. In an influential study, Finn (1989) proposed the participation-identification model, which highlights the role of identification with and participation in school in preventing school dropout, and, as dropout is linked to other problem behavior (see Finn, 1989, p. 118), also school misconduct. The preventive effect of establishing strong social and emotional connections at school on student deviancy is thus well-established in research. In a review of the conceptualization of school bonding, Libbey (2004) notes that perceived teacher support was the most common theme in scales developed to measure school bonding. Thus it is clear that teachers play a major role in shaping students’ attachment to schools, consequently, studies have investigated the preventive effect of perceived teacher support on deviancy (Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011a; Freidenfelt Liljeberg et al., 2011). These studies agree that when students feel supported by, and attached to, their teachers at school, they are less likely to engage in misconduct (Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011a; Baker, 1998; Freidenfelt Liljeberg et al., 2011; Skinner & Belmont, 1993). For example, Freidenfelt Liljeberg et al. (2011) showed in their longitudinal study that attachment to teachers was one of the strongest factors preventing students from being delinquent. In another study, Demanet and Van Houtte (2011a) found that students who perceived more support from their teachers were less likely to break school rules, and that this could even counterbalance deviance-yielding peer effects. The authors conclude that in order to prevent misconduct, it is important that teachers make their students feel supported at school. Hence, it is established in research that teachers’ affect toward their students has important implications for deviancy. We can thus hypothesize that if lower teacher expectations result in less supportive teacherestudent relationships, as proposed by teacher expectancy research (Jussim, 1986; Rubovits & Maehr, 1971), these lower expectations may also lead to student deviancy. 3. The current study Most studies that have linked teacher attitudes to non-cognitive student outcomes have focused exclusively on students’ accounts: associations are established between students’ accounts of teachers’ expectations and students’ outcomes (Hallinan, 2008; Hinojosa, 2008). This reliance on a single informant has also been commonplace in the research linking the quality of teacherestudent relationships to student deviancy, in which studies have related teachers’ accounts of the quality of their relationships with students to teachers’ perceptions of students’ misbehavior (Baker et al., 2008), or linked students’ accounts of their perceived support from teachers to their self-reported misconduct (Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011a; de Wit, Karioja, & Rye, 2010). However, research has shown that surveying a single informant (teacher or student) when measuring different concepts might create problems of shared-method variance: using the same method on the measurement of two variables e in this case, the same individual is surveyed e can yield inflations of intercorrelations and effect sizes, creating a bias in the results (Hawker & Boulton, 2000). Furthermore,

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research has established that students’ and teachers’ accounts of each others’ attitudes and behavior might differ, for example with respect to teachers’ behavior, and students’ emotional engagement and behavior (Skinner & Belmont, 1993). Moreover, it has been shown that teachers’ and students’ accounts of deviancy at school tend to differ (Farrington, Loeber, Stouthamer-Loeber, Van Kammen, & Schmidt, 1996). Thus relying exclusively on either’s accounts may result in biased estimates. To overcome these problems, a better strategy is to relate teachers’ accounts of their own attitudes to students’ accounts of their own misconduct. Van Houtte (2004, 2011) has proposed a way to link teachers’ to students’ accounts: when teachers’ attitudes are seen as manifestations of a teacher culture at school e that is, beliefs that are shared by the teachers at schoolethey can be related to students’ characteristics through a multilevel framework. In such a framework, then, a measure for teacher culture may be added as a school-level feature, and, hence, its impact on an individual-level feature may be assessed. Especially in secondary schools, it makes sense to consider the impact of the wider teacher culture on students’ outcomes (see also Cooper, 1985), as students in secondary schools are taught by a variety of teachers during the school year. From a theoretical point of view as well, it is logical to consider teacher culture. Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968, p. 19) discussed the possibility of “collective self-fulfilling prophecies”, in which these prophecies originate from beliefs shared by members of a group, rather than held by an individual. Thus expectancy effects may originate from beliefs shared between teachers in a school, in other words, from a teacher culture. In this study we focus on teachers’ shared beliefs regarding the teachability of their students. Teachability as a concept denotes whether teachers believe their students have certain traits of the “ideally teachable student” (Kornblau,1982, see Section 4.2.2), and is a valid indicator of teacher expectations (see also Agirdag & Van Houtte, 2011). Previous research has shown that these beliefs regarding students’ teachability are shared among a school’s teachers to form a school-wide culture of student teachability (Agirdag & Van Houtte, 2011; Van Houtte, 2004). Studies have established that levels of deviancy vary between schools, indicating that school-level features are a determinant (Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011b; Eitle & Eitle, 2003; Gottfredson et al., 2005; Klem & Connell, 2004). Given the theoretical reasoning presented above, we hypothesize that school-wide teacher expectations may influence students’ school misconduct; more specifically, that students who enroll in schools with a lower teachability culture have a larger chance of misconduct. Secondly, we hypothesize that the relation between teachers’ shared expectations of students’ teachability and students’ misconduct is mediated by students’ feelings of academic futility and the perceived support received from teachers.

choose the research they take part in on a first-come, first-served basis. Analyses in which we compared our sample to the Flemish school population, based on information attained through the Flemish Ministry of Education, showed that the participating schools did not differ from those that opted out in terms of school sector, size, curriculum, or student composition. Hence no systematic biases occurred, and the 85 schools in the sample are representative of the Flemish situation (Van Houtte et al., 2005). In the participating schools, we asked all third- and fifth-grade students present at the time of the visit to fill out the questionnaire. Students filled out the questionnaire in class, supervised by members of the research team and a teacher. A few students were not present, due to absence or field trips. A total of 11,945 students completed the questionnaire, of which 11,872 (response rate: 87%) proved valid: 6081 in the third grade, 5791 in the fifth grade. As part of the FlEA, a questionnaire was also distributed among all third- and fifth-grade teachers in the selected schools. A total of 2104 teachers (response rate: 60%) responded to the questionnaire (see also Van Maele & Van Houtte, 2009). However, in one school, no teachers responded to the questionnaire. As we use aggregated data to estimate effects of teacher beliefs, and multilevel analysis does not permit missing values at the school level, we had to remove this school and its students from our analyses. Hence the analyses are performed on a total of 11,844 students across 84 schools. The questionnaires were not anonymous because we needed to couple other data provided by the school with the students’ responses. Ultimately we removed all names, so all analyses were performed on anonymous data.

4. Methods

4.2.2. School-level variables Teachers’ beliefs regarding students’ teachability were assessed on a scale inspired by Kornblau’s Teachable-Pupil-Survey (Kornblau, 1982). This five-point scale was made up of 31 items, encompassing students’ “school-adjusted behaviors” (such as “concentrates well” and “enjoys school work”), “cognitive-motivational behaviors” (such as “intelligent” and “curious, inquisitive”), and “personalsocial behaviors” (such as “calm” and “confident”). The score for each teacher was computed by summing the items, missing ones being imputed by item correlation substitution (Huisman, 1999). This yielded a range from 39 to 146, with a mean score of 100.15 (SD ¼ 15.307; Cronbach’s alpha ¼ 0.94; N ¼ 2104). This constituted a scale measuring individual teachers’ ideas about their students’ teachability. As we wanted to assess the role of a school’s teacher culture of teachability, the next step was to aggregate these individual beliefs to the school level. A common way to do so is by

4.1. Data The data are part of the FlEA (Flemish Educational Assessment), gathered in the 2004e2005 school year in 85 Flemish secondary schools. We used multistage sampling. At first, we selected proportional-to-size postal codes, size being defined by the number of schools within each postal code, information provided by the Flemish Ministry of Education. From the 240 postal codes, we selected 48 at random. This resulted in the desired overrepresentation of larger municipalities. Next we selected all regular secondary schools in the chosen postal codes that provided a third and fifth grade (corresponding to grades 9 and 11 in the US system), yielding a response rate of 31%. This low response rate is due to schools in Flanders being swamped with research requests. Schools

4.2. Variables 4.2.1. Dependent variable We measured school misconduct using a scale inspired by Stewart (2003, pp. 602e604), consisting of 17 items. Students were asked how often they performed deviant acts such as being late for school, cheating on tests and doing drugs during school hours. They could answer using a 5-point scale, ranging from never (1) to very often (5). Scores were summed to a scale (Cronbach’s alpha ¼ 0.75; N ¼ 11,533) ranging from 17 to 85 (mean ¼ 30.04, SD ¼ 8.47, see Table 1). It has been shown that self-reported measures are not ideal for measuring deviant acts (Crosnoe, 2002), but these nonetheless remain the most common method of gathering such information (e.g., Gottfredson et al., 2005; Stewart, 2003). We interpolate missing values by item correlation substitution (Huisman, 1999): a missing item is assigned the value of the most highly correlated item. As is common for delinquency measures (Crosnoe, 2002; Stewart, 2003), the dependent variable is significantly skewed (1.58, SE ¼ 0.023) toward its lower end (see Section 4.3).

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Table 1 Descriptive statistics for variables: frequencies (%), means (M), standard deviations (SD), Cronbach’s alpha, and N. Variables

%

Dependent School misconduct School level Teacher culture of teachability Ethnic composition SES composition School sector Public

SD

Cronbach’s alpha

N

0.75

11,533

30.04

8.47

99.79 16.05 4.83

10.35 21.51 1.22

84 84 84

461.55

285.27

84 83

9.99 20.25

3.20 3.52

5.21

2.10

50.00%

School size Student level Sense of futility Perceived teacher support Gender Girls

M

51.40%

SES Grade

0.74 0.74

11,587 11,593 11,815 11,111

Third grade

51.20%

11,844

Immigrant

11.10%

11,842

Vocational

21.90%

Ethnicity Track Prior achievement

calculating the mean value for each school (Van Houtte, 2004; Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv, & Sanders, 1990). However, we could not simply assume that this aggregated measure grasps something really shared at the school level. To ascertain whether teachability beliefs are indeed shared by the teachers who teach in the same school, we used the index of “mean rater reliability” (Glick, 1985; Shrout & Fleiss, 1979), which is based on the intra-class correlation (ICC) in a one-way analysis of variance. The ICC measures the degree of resemblance on a measure between micro-units belonging to the same macro-unit (see Snijders & Bosker, 1999, p. 16), and, henceforth, we use it in this instance to measure the extent to which teachers in the same school tend to think alike. The ICC is calculated by (Between Mean Square-Within Mean Square)/Between Mean Square. If this value is greater than 0.60, then we can state that beliefs concerning student teachability are shared by the teachers from the same school, and that it is legitimate to speak of a teachability culture at the school level (see also Van Houtte, 2004). For the measure of teachability, this ICC was 0.92 (F ¼ 13.013; p < 0.001), showing that beliefs regarding students’ teachability are indeed shared by the teachers from the same school. The measure of the culture of teachability had a mean of 99.79 (SD ¼ 10.35; see Table 1). We measured ethnic composition by the proportion of immigrants at school. We asked the administrators to estimate this; however, 12 (14.12%) of the 85 administrators did not respond. Additionally, we computed the proportion of immigrants in each school using individual-level data (see below). The correlation of 0.88 (p < 0.01) between the two measures validates this aggregated measure. The 84 schools in the sample cover the entire range of ethnic composition, from 0% (6 schools) to 88.20% (1 school). The mean of this measure was 16.05 (SD ¼ 21.51; see Table 1). SES composition was measured by calculating the mean of the SES (1 ¼ unskilled manual labor; 8 ¼ professionals and large proprietors) of the students per school. The schools in this sample ranged from 2 to 6.72, with a mean of 4.83 (SD ¼ 1.22; see Table 1). School sector is a dichotomous variable (0 ¼ private school, 1 ¼ public school). It is important to note that in the Flemish educational system no distinction is made between public and private schools with respect to state support. In the data, 50% of the schools are public, which is a slight overrepresentation of the Flemish situation. This is because we oversampled larger municipalities. School size was measured by asking the administrators for the number of students in school (mean ¼ 461.55; SD ¼ 285.27). However, one of

69.42

9.22

11,844 10,685

the administrators did not respond to this question, so we obtained data from only 83 of the 84 schools in the analysis. 4.2.3. Student-level variables To measure students’ sense of futility we used a scale consisting of five items (inspired by Brookover et al., 1979). We note that Brookover & Schneider (1975); Brookover et al. (1978; 1979) saw this sense of futility as an aspect of school climate. However, they measured it at the individual level. Therefore, we hypothesize that sense of futility can be seen as an individual characteristic. This has proved to be a workable assumption in the past (see Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011b; Van Houtte & Stevens, 2008). Examples of items are: “People like me will not have much of a chance to do what we want to in life” and “At school, students like me don’t have any luck”. Students had five possible answers, ranging from absolutely disagree to totally agree (1e5). We computed missing items by item correlation substitution. The answers were summed, yielding a range of 5 through 25 (Cronbach’s alpha ¼ 0.74, N ¼ 11,587; see Table 1). As in previous studies (Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011a; Van Houtte & Van Maele, 2012), perceived teacher support was measured by a subscale of the Psychological-Sense-of-SchoolMembership scale (PSSM; Goodenow, 1993). The scale consists of seven items, such as “Teachers in this school respect me”, and “Teachers in this school are not interested in students like me”. Students could choose from five answers, ranging from absolutely disagree to totally agree (1e5). Scores across the items were summed, yielding a scale ranging from 7 to 35 (Cronbach’s alpha ¼ 0.74; N ¼ 11 593). In this sample, the mean was 20.25 (SD ¼ 3.52; see Table 1). With respect to gender (0 ¼ boy, 1 ¼ girl), the sample was evenly divided: 51.4% were girls (see Table 1). The SES was measured by the occupation of the father or the mother (Erikson, Goldthorpe, & Portocarero, 1979), or, if they were unemployed, their last profession. If both worked, we used the highest ranked profession as the SES of the family. The respondents in the data covered the entire range of SES (1 ¼ unskilled manual labor; 8 ¼ professionals and large proprietors). The mean was 5.21 (SD ¼ 2.10; see Table 1). Grade was also evenly distributed: 51.2% of the students attended the third grade. We assessed ethnicity using multiple questions. The principal criterion was the birthplace of the maternal grandmothers. If this was missing (1%), we considered the nationality of students’ mothers and fathers, as most immigrants are second- and

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third-generation citizens and have Belgian nationality. As is common practice in European research, only West European birthplaces and nationalities were considered as native descent (e.g., Timmerman, Hermans, & Hoornaert, 2002). Additional criteria in case of missing data regarding nationality (father: 4%, mother: 3.3%) were the language spoken at home (other than Dutch), religion (Islam), and the student’s name (e.g., Felouzis, 2003). This resulted in a dichotomous variable (0 ¼ native, 1 ¼ immigrant); 11.1% (see Table 1) were immigrants. We also distinguished students who attend a vocational track (1 ¼ vocational track). Among the respondents, 21.9% attended the vocational track (see Table 1). Students’ prior achievement was measured by GPA (Grade Point Average) from the preceding school year. To grade their students, Flemish high schools use a percentage, hence, grades range from 0% to 100%, 50% being the passing grade. In the data, GPA ranged from 41% to 100%, with a mean of 69.42% (SD ¼ 9.22; see Table 1), corresponding grossly to a ‘C’ in the US high school system. We should note that as no standardized tests (for example, state administered tests) exist in Flemish education, it is hard to compare measures of academic achievement across schools (Stevens, 2007). Furthermore, as this is a self-reported measure, it could contain biases due to memory problems and cover-up strategies. As a result, it has a large number of missing values (9.8%). However, as noted in Section 4.3, it was necessary to include the measure in the analyses to eradicate possible selection effects based on students’ academic achievement. 4.3. Data analysis As shown above (see Section 4.2.2), teachability beliefs were shared between the teachers from the same school. Hence, it was possible to test the impact of the schools’ teachability culture on students’ misconduct by means of multilevel analysis (Snijders & Bosker, 1999). However, we should make clear that we rely on cross-sectional data and that multilevel analysis remains a correlational technique. Hence, we note from the outset of this study that we cannot make any causal claims. As is common for delinquency measures (Crosnoe, 2002; Stewart, 2003), the dependent variable was significantly skewed (1.58, SE ¼ 0.023) toward its lower end. Using alternative techniques, we tested whether this affected our results.1 The same picture emerged whether we used linear models or more complex nonlinear ones. For ease of interpretation, we present the linear multilevel results in this article. First, we estimated an unconditional “null” model to determine school-level variance in the dependent variable. Only where there is significant school-level variation in school misconduct is it possible to estimate the effects of school-level measures. In the first model, the measure of teachability culture was added. In all the analyses we controlled for several variables at the school and individual level. At the school level, we controlled for ethnic and SES composition, as these have been shown to be related to misconduct (Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011b; Eitle & Eitle, 2003). Moreover, previous research on the degree to which teachers in schools shared teachability beliefs showed that teachability cultures are more homogeneous in schools with a higher SES background and with more ethnic minority students (Van Maele & Van Houtte, 2011a). We should point out that a high correlation existed between the two compositional features (r ¼ 0.777; p < 0.01). Given that other studies have established the effect of ethnic composition on school deviancy in addition to the effect of SES composition (e.g., Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011b; Eitle

1 We used HLM6 to perform an overdispersed Poisson model with constant exposure, which yielded the same basic image as the linear multilevel model. This mechanism produced the same basic results as the ones shown in Table 3.

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& Eitle, 2003), we chose to use these variables simultaneously, although the results should be regarded with caution due to possible multicollinearity. Furthermore, we considered school sector and school size (see also Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011b; Stewart, 2003). However, as was discussed in Section 4.2.2, for school size we obtained information from only 83 of the 84 schools used in the analysis. As using this variable would mean that we lost an additional school, and the results of the analyses performed on 83 schools showed that school size exerts no influence on school misconduct (g* ¼ 0.000; SE ¼ 0.001; p > 0.05), we eventually omitted this variable from all the analyses. At the student level we controlled for the socio-demographic characteristics of gender, SES, grade and students’ ethnicity. We also took into account whether students followed a vocational track, as research has found that students in lower tracks show more misconduct (Akiba, LeTendre, Baker, & Goesling, 2002; Van Houtte & Stevens, 2008). The Flemish school system can be categorized as “explicit school-level tracking to different school types catering to specific student groups”, using achievement as the selection criterion (Trautwein, Ludtke, Marsh, Koller, & Baumert, 2006, p. 789). The different tracks are commonly classified hierarchically, with vocational tracks lowest. Attending a vocational track in Flanders is rarely a positive choice, and vocational students are all too aware of their low status in society, yielding more anti-school attitudes, more feelings of futility, and more misconduct (for an extended discussion of the Flemish tracking system, see Van Houtte, Demanet, & Stevens, 2012). Because of this, it was important to account for attendance of a vocational track in the analysis. In the second model, we investigated whether an association between teacher culture of teachability and misconduct stood when students’ prior achievement was taken into account. This was necessary to account for eventual selection effects. In the third model, we added the measure for students’ sense of futility. In the fourth and final model, we added students’ perceptions of teacher support. These subsequent steps enabled us to determine whether the eventual association between teachers’ culture of student teachability and misconduct was due to, respectively, students’ sense of futility or perceived teacher support. As is common in multilevel analyses, all but the dichotomous variables were grandmean centered to ensure model stability. 5. Results To investigate whether the school context matters with respect to school misconduct, we estimated an unconditional “null” model. This provided us with the variance components at the school and individual level (see Table 2). We were particularly interested in the proportion of variance occurring at the school level, computed as the between-school variance component divided by the sum of between-school and within-school variance (s0/(s0 þ s2)). Of the total variance in school misconduct, 7.2% (s2 ¼ 67.029; s0 ¼ 5.180; p < 0.001) occurred between schools, warranting the estimation of multilevel models. Table 2 HLM unconditional model characteristics: variation between schools in school misconduct. Characteristic

Value

Intercept Parameter variance Within school Between schools HLM reliability estimate Proportion of variance between schools

30.161*** 67.029 5.180 0.864 0.072***

Note. HLM ¼ hierarchical linear modeling. c2 (83, N ¼ 11 844) ¼ 886.329. ***p  .001.

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Table 3 Association between teacher culture of teachability, students’ sense of futility, perceived teacher support, and school misconduct. Results of stepwise multilevel analysis. Variables

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Model 4

Intercept

28.863*** (0.566)

29.064*** (0.542)

28.826*** (0.535)

28.829*** (0.515)

0.021 0.052 (0.013) 0.435 0.063 (0.308) 2.010*** 0.119*** (0.347) 0.132*** 0.161*** (0.028)

0.001 0.003 (0.013) 0.283 0.041 (0.272) 1.752*** 0.103*** (0.327) 0.061* 0.075* (0.030)

0.006 0.016 (0.013) 0.295 0.042 (0.263) 1.665*** 0.098*** (0.308) 0.056 0.068 (0.029)

0.007 0.018 (0.012) 0.218 0.031 (0.253) 1.685*** 0.099*** (0.311) 0.041 0.050 (0.027)

3.011*** 0.178*** (0.226) 0.129** 0.032** (0.043) 1.164*** 0.137*** (0.109) 0.648 0.024 (0.410) 1.097** 0.053** (0.374)

2.642*** 0.156*** (0.224) 0.165*** 0.041*** (0.049) 0.982*** 0.116*** (0.119) 0.763 0.028 (0.428) 1.593*** 0.077*** (0.345) 0.174*** 0.189*** (0.013)

2.646*** 0.156*** (0.223) 0.203*** 0.050*** (0.048) 1.059*** 0.125*** (0.120) 0.744 0.027 (0.412) 1.339*** 0.065*** (0.325) 0.154*** 0.167*** (0.014) 0.354*** 0.134*** (0.037)

2.521*** 0.149*** (0.211) 0.213*** 0.053*** (0.046) 1.005*** 0.119*** (0.113) 0.641 0.023 (0.398) 1.373*** 0.066*** (0.329) 0.138*** 0.150*** (0.013) 0.174*** 0.066*** (0.039) 0.470*** 0.195*** (0.032)

9.559*** 1.513*** 0.030 0.372** 4.604 3.417***

8.003*** 1.343*** 0.054 0.561** 4.806* 2.033*** 0.007*

8.397*** 1.386*** 0.048 0.581** 4.190* 1.660** 0.008* 0.052***

7.751*** 1.108*** 0.038 0.478** 3.845* 1.748*** 0.007* 0.059*** 0.034**

School level Ethnic composition

g g*

SES composition

g g*

School sector

g g*

Teacher culture of Teachability

g g*

Student level Gender

g g*

SES

g g*

Grade

g g*

Ethnicity

g g*

Vocational track

g g*

Prior achievement

g g*

Sense of futility

g g*

Perceived teacher support

g g*

Variance components Intercept Gender SES Grade Ethnicity Vocational track Prior achievement Sense of futility Perceived teacher support

U0 U1 U2 U3 U4 U5 U6 U7 U8

Note: The unstandardized (g) and standardized (g*) gamma coefficients are presented, with standard errors appearing in parentheses, and variance components (U). *p  0.05, **p  0.01, ***p  0.001,  p ¼ 0.055.

The teacher culture of student teachability influenced students’ self-reported school misconduct (see Table 3, model 1): students in schools with a higher teachability culture were less likely to show school misconduct (g* ¼ 0.161; p < 0.001). The standardized coefficient (g*) showed this association to be moderately strong. However, it remained to be tested whether this association stood when the students’ academic achievement was taken into account. Controlling for students’ prior achievement (see model 2), the association between teachability culture and misconduct diminished, but remained significant (g* ¼ 0.075; p < 0.05). Not surprisingly, the prior achievement of students was related to school misconduct (g* ¼ 0.189; p < 0.001). So, even regardless of students’ prior achievement, teacher culture of teachability was related to

students’ misconduct. In model 3, we tested the mediating impact of students’ sense of academic futility. This variable, as expected, had a positive relation with school misconduct (g* ¼ 0.134; p < 0.001). Furthermore, it diminished the coefficient of teachers’ culture of teachability somewhat (g* ¼ 0.068; p ¼ 0.055), but the latter stayed borderline significant. In model 4 we tested the mediating impact of students’ perceived teacher support. This variable was rather strongly associated with school misconduct (g* ¼ 0.195; p < 0.001), more so than prior achievement (g* ¼ 0.150; p < 0.001). Moreover, students’ perceptions of teacher support mediated the association between teacher culture of teachability and misconduct (g* ¼ 0.050; p > 0.05): it seems that students are more deviant in schools where teachers have less favorable beliefs regarding their teachability, due to the lower perceived teacher support in such schools. Although not the primary concern of this study, we observe that students in public schools, male students, those with a higher SES, those in the fifth grade, and those in the vocational track had a significantly higher likelihood of being deviant at school (see Table 3, model 5). These results correspond with previous research (Demanet & Van Houtte, 2011a; Van Houtte & Stevens, 2008; Stewart, 2003; Tygart, 1988). 6. Discussion Following the pioneering study on the Pygmalion effect by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968), many researchers have questioned the impact of teachers’ attitudes on student outcomes. Although there still exists some debate concerning the magnitude of the selffulfilling prophecy of teachers’ expectations, researchers agree that those expectations correlate with students’ subsequent educational growth (Jussim & Harber, 2005). Most studies on the effects of teachers’ expectations have considered cognitive student outcomes, while non-cognitive outcomes have received scant attention (for exceptions, see Hallinan, 2008; Hinojosa, 2008). In this article, we present a theoretical framework which leads us to hypothesize that teachers’ expectations also affect students’ misbehavior at school. Research has suggested that teachers’ differential expectations give rise to differential treatment of students in two ways: students perceived as low-achieving receive less effort and less affect from teachers (Jussim, 1986; Rosenthal, 2002). Starting from general strain theory (Agnew, 1985, 1992), we expected decreased teaching effort to lead to feelings of futility in students, eventually resulting in more misconduct. From social control theory (Hirschi, 1969), we expected lower levels of affect in teacherestudent relationships to cause more school misconduct in students. While earlier research focused exclusively on student accounts (Hallinan, 2008; Hinojosa, 2008), this study is unique in linking data from teachers regarding their expectations to data from students on their sense of academic futility, perceived teacher support, and self-reported misconduct. In concordance with earlier research (Van Houtte, 2004), our results suggested that teachability beliefs are shared among a school’s teachers. Thus it is possible to investigate whether a teachability culture explains between-school differences in school misconduct. The results show that school-wide beliefs among teachers regarding students’ teachability are associated with misconduct in students. Regardless of students’ prior achievement, those attending schools where teachers consider students to be less teachable have a higher likelihood of being deviant. Furthermore, the results suggest that feelings of futility correlate with students’ misconduct as general strain theory suggests: students who feel that they lack the power to influence their own scholastic attainment have a higher likelihood of breaking school rules. However, this is only partly responsible for the association found between

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teachability culture and misconduct. When students’ sense of futility is taken into account, a lower teachability culture is still associated with more misconduct among students. This means that even those students who do not feel academically futile, but who attend schools with a less positive teachability culture, have a higher likelihood of acting out with disruptive behavior. Further analyses suggest that the relation between teachability culture and misconduct is mediated by students’ perceptions of teachers’ support. We find evidence that those who attend schools where teachers’ beliefs concerning student teachability are low school-wide feel they receive less affect from teachers, which associates with more deviancy among these students. These crosssectional results seem to coincide with our hypotheses based on social control theory. If our theoretical deductions based on social control theory are correct, these findings entail an important contribution to the literature on teacher expectations, as they suggest that lower expectations may not only result in decreased cognitive growth among students (Hinnant et al., 2009; Hughes et al., 2005), but through diminished affect may also lead to active opposition from students. As we have no longitudinal design, this process-oriented interpretation of our results remains tentative. These results support previous longitudinal findings (Skinner & Belmont, 1993), that show that teachers react less supportively to students perceived as less academically engaged. In the words of Skinner and Belmont (1993, p. 573), teachers seem more readily to magnify students’ initial engagement than to compensate for it: instead of paying special attention to those who seem to need it, teachers more readily support students whom they perceive as teachable. Furthermore, endorsing our expectations based on social control theory (Hirschi, 1969), these findings might be interpreted as confirming the pivotal role of teachers’ support in preventing misconduct, an interpretation which is backed up by previous longitudinal research (e.g., Freidenfelt Liljeberg et al., 2011). Research shows that feeling supported by teachers has other beneficial effects, for example on liking school (Samdal, Nutbeam, Wold, & Kannas, 1998) and academic achievement (Klem & Connell, 2004). Put together, these findings seem to suggest a cycle of student failure (see also Skinner & Belmont, 1993): students perceived as achieving less in class receive less teacher support, which eventually diminishes their opportunity to excel in class, and raises their chances of actively breaking the school’s rules. In turn, students’ academic and behavioral engagement affect subsequent teacher attitudes, and thus the cycle continues. Our results, however, go beyond these previous findings by showing that a school-level effect of teachers’ expectations exists: students attending schools where teachers share the idea that students in general are less teachable, seem to have a higher chance of encountering difficulties in building supportive relationships with teachers, which associates with a higher likelihood of breaking school rules. It is noteworthy that these associations are established regardless of students’ prior achievement, meaning that this applies both to students who performed well and to those who had lower grades the previous year. This study highlights the importance of focusing on collective teacher beliefs in determining expectancy effects on students, which may prove to be an important contribution to the Pygmalion framework. It is important to note the limitations of the current study. First, we should repeat that, as this is a cross-sectional study, we cannot make any causal claims. We should note that it is possible that a certain amount of student misconduct results in a lower teachability culture. Indeed, scholars focusing on teacher expectations have found that the majority of these are accurate (Brophy, 1983; Jussim & Harber, 2005). However, both accurate and inaccurate teacher expectations can be expected to affect students’ outcomes (Jussim, 1986, p. 431). Research has shown that teachers’

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expectations are partly dependent on students’ actual behavior in class, but in turn shape their subsequent behavior and engagement (Skinner & Belmont, 1993). Consequently, we can expect that teachers’ beliefs about student teachability can perpetuate or even engender more school misconduct, whether these beliefs are accurate or not. Hence the relation is likely to be bi-directional. Secondly, the relationship between supportive teacherestudent relationships and school misconduct is likely to be bi-directional as well (Hirschfield & Gasper, 2011). For instance, students who are deviant at school are more likely to feel disconnected from their teachers (Karcher, 2002). Because we lack longitudinal data we cannot ascertain which direction is dominant. We propose that subsequent longitudinal research focuses on the dialectic relationship between teacher expectations and students’ attitudes and misbehavior at school. A second limitation of this study is the way in which we have operationalized teacher expectations. By considering school-wide attitudes, we could not go into detail concerning the effects of individual teachers. A further objection against this operationalization of teacher effects is that we cannot distinguish between individual students or different groups of students within the same school: teacher culture of teachability is a collective idea about the teachability of students as a group, and as such, pertains to all students at a school. It would be beneficial to have data from each teacher on his or her expectations for each student. However, this method of data collection would be very extensive and demanding of teachers, and may not be feasible in secondary education (see also Van Houtte, 2011, p. 84). Moreover, as discussed earlier, we contend that operationalizing teachers’ expectations by means of a teacher culture at school has its merits. Researchers note the existence of the Pygmalion effect at the group level, resulting in collective prophecies (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). Furthermore, in secondary schools, it is more logical to investigate the role of teacher cultures than that of individual teachers’ expectations, because students are confronted with a number of different teachers during one school year. A third limitation is that we could not account for teachers’ actual behavior in class. We tried to account for this by investigating students’ feelings of futility and perceived teacher support as indicators of teaching effort and affect, but it would be better to incorporate actual observations of teaching behavior and its relationship to the teachability culture in the school. Some issues remained unaddressed in this paper, which could be accounted for in future studies. First, scholars have stated that previous research on teacher expectations and possible moderators in the relationship with student outcomes remains limited by subject matter (Jussim & Harber, 2005) as most studies focus on a very limited number of subject courses. Although the data in the current study was not restricted to certain subject matters, it was not possible to account for the impact of the subject given. Hence, we propose that future studies focus on a possible moderating role of the subject given in specific classroom settings. Secondly, the teachability culture is only one of the organizational characteristics of a teaching staff. Previous research showed that other organizational features, such as the collective responsibility of the teaching staff (Lee & Smith, 1996), or the level of trust teachers invest in students (Van Maele & Van Houtte, 2011b; Forsyth, Barnes, & Adams, 2006), may have an impact on students’ cognitive growth. It may well be that such teacher beliefs, when perceived by students, affect these latter’s outcomes much in the same way as teacher expectations do. Consequently, we call for research to take into account these collective teacher beliefs when assessing students’ chances for disruptive behavior at school as well. The findings of this study have implications for educational practice. Supporting previous research on teachers’ expectations, the results suggest the importance of teachers’ awareness about the

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(unintended) consequences of their attitudes toward students, as expectations not only impact students’ educational growth, but their behavior in school as well. Since decades, research based on the Pygmalion framework has urged teacher education programs to raise awareness among trainee teachers of the beliefs and stereotypes they bring into the classroom, as teachers usually are not aware of the images they have of students or the interaction patterns they maintain with them (cf. Jones, 1989). However, despite decades of research into the matter, contemporary studies e and indeed the current studyekeep pointing to the existence of the phenomenon (Hughes et al., 2005; Jussim & Harber, 2005). Clearly, the issue is not as straightforward as it seems. The current study may provide some insight into why this is the case, as it points to the existence and the important role of a teacher expectancy culture at school. For individual teachers, it may prove very difficult to change the tide in a school where school-wide expectations for the students are low. Furthermore, when individuals enter a new social group, they mostly get socialized into the prevailing norms and beliefs held in that group (Merton, 1949). Consequently, we may expect that, in spite of all the good intentions of teacher education programs, a newly trained teacher entering a school may be socialized into the prevailing teacher culture in that school. This socialization most likely takes place in informal situations, for example, in the teachers’ lounge, where teachers share their experiences from the classroom and talk about their students (Ben-Peretz & Schonmann, 2000; Hargreaves, 1992). Indeed, research confirms that the teachers’ image of their students’ academic ability is most likely already formed before they even enter the classroom to meet their students face-to-face for the first time (Ball,1981; Jussim,1986). The inability of teacher education programs to prevent teacher expectancy effects, therefore, may be due to the existence of teacher cultures in school. The question remains, then, whether individual teachers are really powerless to counteract the influence of the teacher culture at school. We expect they can change the situation, as previous research has shown that, when teachers reflect about their classroom practices and ways of dealing with different groups of students, expectancy effects may be reduced (see e.g., Timperley & Phillips, 2003). In other words, when mediating variables can be identified, these can be targeted by intervention strategies to reduce expectancy effects. In that regard, it is noteworthy that the current study points to the perceived teacher support of the students as an important mediating factor. This means that, whatever the nature of the teacher culture at school, when individual teachers provide students with a sense of support, this may help to reduce the impact of the wider teacher culture. Hence, the key in tackling negative expectancy effects at school e at least in reference to school misconduct e may lie in the socioemotional environment and the way teachers develop relationships with students in their classrooms. It is important that teachers are made aware that they should develop supportive relationships with all their students, even though they may perceive that many do not appear to concentrate in lessons, or to be intelligent or even curious, or are difficult to handle in lesson situations. To break open the cycle of student failure which was discussed above, it is especially important that students for whom teachers have low expectations are made to feel valued at school. 7. Conclusion This study is unique in linking data from teachers regarding their expectations to data from students on their sense of academic futility, perceived teacher support, and self-reported misconduct. We go beyond earlier studies that have focused either on the teachers’ or the students’ side of the story. Furthermore, we build on teacher expectation research, which so far has mostly dealt with

cognitive student outcomes, by pinpointing students’ behavioral reactions to teachers’ expectations. By doing so we show that, in schools where teachers report lower levels of student teachability, students are likely to report less perceived teacher support, which is associated with higher rates of self-reported school misconduct. This raises the need for teachers to be aware that all students, even those for whom they hold low expectations, should feel supported by their teachers. It is only then that students can be expected to abandon their misconduct, and get back on track to become good learners. Role of the funding source This research was not funded by an external source. Hence, there was no sponsor involved in determining the study design, in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, in the writing of the report, and in the decision to submit the paper for publication. References Agirdag, O., & Van Houtte, M. (2011). Pygmalion goes to organizational-level: a multi-method study on the mediating role of self-fulfilling prophecies in explaining the impact of school segregation. Paper presented at the 10th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Geneva (Switzerland), September 7the10th 2011. Agnew, R. (1985). A revised strain theory of delinquency. Social Forces, 64, 151e167. Agnew, R. (1992). Foundation for a general strain theory of crime and delinquency. Criminology, 30, 47e87. Akiba, M., LeTendre, G. K., Baker, D. P., & Goesling, B. (2002). Student victimization: national and school system effects on school violence in 37 nations. American Educational Research Journal, 39, 829e853. Baker, J. A. (1998). Are we missing the forest for the trees? Considering the social context of school violence. Journal of School Psychology, 36, 29e44. Baker, J. A., Grant, S., & Morlock, L. (2008). The teacher-student relationship as a developmental context for children with internalizing or externalizing behavior problems. School Psychology Quarterly, 23, 3e15. Ball, S. (1981). Beachside comprehensive: A case-study of secondary schooling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ben-Peretz, M., & Schonmann, S. (2000). Behind closed doors. Teachers and the role of the teachers’ lounge. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Brattesani, K. A., Weinstein, R. S., & Marshall, H. H. (1984). Student perceptions of differential teacher treatment as moderators of teacher expectation effects. Journal of Educational Psychology, 76, 236e247. Brookover, W. B., Beady, C., Flood, P. K., Schweitzer, J. H., & Wisenbaker, J. M. (1979). School social systems and student achievement. Schools can make a difference. New York: Praeger Publishers. Brookover, W. B., & Schneider, J. M. (1975). Academic environments and elementary-school achievement. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 9, 82e91. Brookover, W. B., Schweitzer, J. H., Schneider, J. M., Beady, C. H., Flood, P. K., & Wisenbaker, J. M. (1978). Elementary-school social climate and schoolachievement. American Educational Research Journal, 15, 301e318. Brophy, J. E. (1983). Research on the self-fulfilling prophecy and teacher expectations. Journal of Educational Psychology, 75, 631e661. Brophy, J. E., & Good, T. L. (1970). Teachers communication of differential expectations for children’s classroom performanceesome behavioral data. Journal of Educational Psychology, 61, 365. Cohen, A. K. (1955). Delinquent boys. The culture of the gang. New York: The Free Press. Cooper, H. (1985). Models of teacher expectation communication. In J. Dusek (Ed.), Teacher expectancies (pp. 135e158). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Crosnoe, R. (2002). High school curriculum track, and adolescent association with delinquent friends. Journal of Adolescent Research, 17, 143e167. Demanet, J., & Van Houtte, M. (2011a). School belonging and school misconduct: the differing role of teacher and peer attachment. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 41, 499e514. Demanet, J., & Van Houtte, M. (2011b). Social-ethnic school composition and school misconduct: does sense of futility clarify the picture? Sociological Spectrum, 31, 224e256. Dornbusch, S. M., Erickson, K. G., Laird, J., & Wong, C. A. (2001). The relation of family and school attachment to adolescent deviance in diverse groups and communities. Journal of Adolescent Research, 16, 396e422. Eitle, D., & Eitle, T. M. (2003). Segregation and school violence. Social Forces, 82, 589e616. Erikson, R., Goldthorpe, J. H., & Portocarero, L. (1979). Intergenerational class mobility in 3 Western European SocietieseEngland, France and Sweden. British Journal of Sociology, 30, 415e441. Farrington, D. P., Loeber, R., Stouthamer-Loeber, M., Van Kammen, W. B., & Schmidt, L. (1996). Self-reported delinquency and a combined delinquency seriousness scale based on boys, mothers, and teachers: concurrent and predictive validity for African-Americans and Caucasians. Criminology, 34, 493e517.

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