Exploring the Pygmalion effect: The role of teacher expectations, academic self-concept, and class context in students’ math achievement

Teacher expectancy effect (TEE) also known as the Pygmalion effect is a classic, yet still controversial phenomenon within educational psychology. In this paper, we examine TEE in a longitudinal study on a large sample (N = 1488) of Polish middle-school students and their teachers. Consistent with TEE, teachers’ higher expectations were positively related to students’ math achievement three semesters later, even after controlling for initial...