Rosenthal Effect

For all our perceived intelligence of banding pupils according to their ability and teaching them at their level, at last someone who proved that by doing so, we, teachers, are indirectly "killing" them. WOW!!! This is powerful!!!

No wonder, pupils in EM3 (in primary schools) and Normal Technical (in secondary schools) are so difficult to teach because the pupils are being viewed to be less able, so they sub-consciencely prove to be less able and tend to be less motivated. During my first three years of teaching, I was assigned to teach Normal Technical Mathematics ( two classes). I want to set higher expectation, slightly more difficult questions to challenge them and bring teaching aids into class to interest them in Mathematics and relate it to real life applications. After a while, the pupils mentally switched off and started my "nightmare" in classroom management. While the so called "better" class react better. I am not saying that all are interested, but the few who have a better in Mathematics, raise up to the challenge, one of them even achieved a "1" in Mathematics which is rarely achievable in Normal Technical Steam. The rest become less motivated because they have little successes in Mathematics. After some self-reflection, I had to teach at a simpler level and greater depth and detail steps because previous knowledge will have been forgotten.

So my thinking: "since EM3 is now defunct, what happens if Normal Technical is "eliminated" and merge (We like the merger word in the private sector, with so many companies merging to be more cost efficient.) with the Normal Academic. So all have the oppotunity to fight for chance to take 'O' Levels and for those, who cannot will continue in the ITE ( Insitute of Technical Education)."

However, the meritocracy system that we have, will still like to band them into the last class, which also indirectly telling them that they are less able again. My take? Why not distribute them between the Normal Academic classes? Reseach has shown that when less able pupils are put in the same class as the more academic able pupils, these less able pupils show improvement in their results. Of course, this can happen if the more academic able pupils are still the majority, because the reverse is also true. It is very difficult for an academic able pupil in a less able classroom because the teacher will still preach at lower level, so learning is impeded.

I am not a principal of a school (yet) so my influence is limited, but hopeful this gives our teachers food for thought and slowly we can effect more positive changes to our school environment.

Teacher is to teach, and not spend time doing committee work, CCA (I love my CCA even though), EPMS (to show that I do lots of work), SEM (strategic thrust), meet parents (handle discipline matters, even though values should be taught by parents), submit suggestions to "improve" the school and working environment and lesson plans for the weekly submission to the HODs and Principals. Not forgetting the crappy stuffs like pupils allocation to their classes yearly, keying and submission of Edusave and EAGLES and in short, the tons of paperwork. Even form teachers have to key in the reason why the pupils is absent from school and collect Medical Certificates (MCs) and mark attendance. (Can we not put a ezlink machine at the school gate for the pupils to scan when they rach school in the morning to mark attendance? Or thumb print scan or iris scan? then pupils cannot mark attendance for each other.) HAHAHA.

Teacher, at the end of the year, give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done. AYE!!!