Kent D. Harber
Kent D. Harber is the second author of the 2005 review of teacher expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies in Personality and Social Psychology Review, written with Lee Jussim. This site uses the review for its estimate of the Oak School effect and for its argument that teacher expectations are partly accurate forecasts. His affiliation and wider work were not checked, so this page is short on purpose.
Who they are
The 2005 review is a single paper with two authors, and the findings this site attributes to it belong to both. They are listed here so that the second name is not lost.
The review concluded that expectations in classrooms do sometimes bring about what they predict, that the effects are typically small and do not accumulate greatly across perceivers or over time, and that powerful effects may occur selectively among pupils from stigmatised social groups. It reported that Brophy's earlier review found self-fulfilling effects on only about five to ten per cent of pupils.
It also made a point about Rosenthal and Jacobson's original study that rarely reaches summaries: only positive expectations were manipulated, so the study says nothing about whether negative expectations cause harm.
Key papers
Jussim, L., & Harber, K. D. (2005). Teacher expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies: Knowns and unknowns, resolved and unresolved controversies. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(2), 131-155. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0902_3
Key ideas
Expectations as forecasts. A teacher who expects a pupil to do well may simply be right, which is a rival explanation to the Pygmalion effect that any study has to rule out.
Limits of this page. No biographical detail has been verified for Harber, and none is offered.
Sources
- Jussim, L., & Harber, K. D. (2005). Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(2), 131-155. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0902_3