I found Snyder's ideas on stereotypes involving teaching and learning to be very interesting. Snyder mentioned a study in the 1960s done by Robert Rosenthal and his colleague Lenore Jacobson. They pointed out students who would be expected to show dramatic intellectual improvements and saw how the teachers changed there teaching style towards these children. The students ended up getting more attention which furthermore increased there knowledge and therefore dramatically improved intellectually. I find this extremely interesting because it shows how just simply influencing the teachers stereotypes it changed the outcome for these children in school. This study just shows how dangerous and influential stereotyping can be because the students who are not mentioned are taught less and learn less.
Synder also discussed a study by Albert King who influenced a work place environment by telling a welding instructor that five men in his training program had higher aptitude than the other trainees. The teacher began to pay more attention and gave greater care to these trainees. And thus these trainees learned the most and were the most successful in the class. Both of these situations showed how just a little change in the relationship between the teacher and learner had a large impact on the outcome of the course. I wonder what would happen if a teacher was told that there whole class was of students/trainees of high aptitude? Would they take greater care in there teaching process and try to be more responsible towards there students/trainees? Or would they simply resort to a normal teaching process because they are surrounded by students or trainees of the same level.
Zachary Lewkowicz
-Post 6 June 14-
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