Self-fulfilling Prophecy
(Rosenthal, 1966, Psychological Reports, 19, 115-118)
Robert Rosenthal had his graduate students supervise “maze-bright” and “maze-dull” rats as they learned and ran mazes. Not surprisingly, the maze-dull rats learned and ran the mazes slower. Rosenthal then told his students that the rats had been assigned to them randomly; there were no maze-bright or maze-dull rats.
Rosenthal then gave a special IQ test to students in grades 1-5 at the Oak School in California. After the students finished the tests and they were scored, Rosenthal told the teachers that in their classes the test had identified “IQ Bloomers” – those rare students who would increase dramatically in their academic performance during the next year. Each teacher was given the name of the few students who the test had identified as bloomers. The next year Rosenthal returned, and found that – especially in the first and second grades – the students identified as bloomers had in fact increased greatly on their IQ scores. Rosenthal then admitted that he had randomly chosen the names of students in the classes – his test had not identified bloomers.

In both cases, expectations that were believed by subjects resulted in a “self-fulfilled” positive consequence. In much the same way, we (honestly) tell students that we believe in them, that they know much about their school(s), and that if they are trained and motivated to create positive change, they can help to improve their schools. We give them the tools and data (from the results of surveys they conduct in their own schools) they can utilize to succeed, and in most cases they do!