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Positive Expectancy, the positive use of the Self-fulfilling Prophecy, is the necessary condition for a positive thinking teaching/coaching model to work successfully. The leader, the parent, the coach, must have a firm and fervent belief that the process and the players will succeed and be willing to go the extra mile to ensure its success. We are going to get what we expect so lets expect correctly.
The psychology books are full of the effects and power of Positive Expectancy. People in leadership roles have expected good things to happen and they did. (There also is Negative Expectancy when we have expected bad things to happen and they did.) In schools and in business, we talk about halo effects and Hawthorne effects. There are the true stories of teachers mistaking children's locker numbers for I.Q. scores and creating good results from "slow learners" and administrators changing the lighting in the workplace and workers increasing their production because they felt the bosses cared about their environment.
The most famous positive expectancy research with kids is documented in the book, Pygmalion in the Classroom. The researchers, Rosenthal and Jacobson, conducted a simple and beautiful study. In the Spring of 1964, they administered a group test to a number of children in kindergarten and in grades one through five. They informed the teachers that this was a test to determine a child's ability to acquire new information. Without evaluating the tests and at random, they selected about 20 percent of the children and labeled them "potential academic spurters." In an informal way, at the pre-school workshops and in chance meetings in the halls, they informed the teachers of the Spurters that these children could be expected to show unusual intellectual gains in the year ahead.
At the end of the year, the Spurters showed a significantly higher achievement growth than the non-selected children. In addition, the teachers described the Spurters as having a better chance of being successful later in life, as being happier, more curious, and more interesting than the other children.
The teachers did not spend more time with the Spurters nor did they talk a greater amount of time with them. The explanation seemed to lie in the quality of the relationship between the teacher and the individual children. Somehow, by voice, touch, facial expression, and posture, the teachers communicated their expectation of success for each child who in turn seemed to have gained a more positive self-image and a higher expectation of being successful in the learning tasks.So, lets add this to the interpersonal, communication relationship that we have with our kids.
Lets expect our kids to do well, to practice hard, to deal with winning and losing appropriately, and in all other phases of the game. So, we can treat our kids as growing, learning, improving people by using honest, positive comments or we can do all that dumb hollering, cutting down, and demeaning stuff. Its our choice.
Oh, yes, that negative expectation thing will not exist in our operation.
I cant leave this concept without paying tribute to my fellow Illinoisan, Carl Sandberg. He was able, as he was so often, to put this concept into the daily life of people like you and me. So lets let his wise farmer give us a lesson on Expectation:
Who was that early sodbuster in Kansas? He leaned at the gatepost and studied the horizon and figured what corn might do next year and tried to calculate why God ever made the grasshopper and why two days of hot winds smother the life out of a stand of wheat and why there was such a spread between what he got for grain and the price quoted in Chicago and New York.
Drove up a newcomer in a covered wagon: "What kind of folks live around here?" "Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?" "Well, they was mostly a lowdown, lying, thieving, gossiping, backbiting lot of people." "Well, I guess, stranger, that's about the kind of folks you'll find around here."
And the dusty gray stranger had just about blended into the dusty gray cottonwoods in a clump on the horizon when another newcomer drove up: "What kind of folks live around here?" "Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?" "Well, they was mostly a decent, hardworking, lawabiding, friendly lot of people." "Well, I guess, stranger, that's about the kind of folks you'll find around here."
And the second wagon moved off and blended with the dusty gray cottonwoods on the horizon while the early sodbuster leaned at his gatepost and tried to figure why two days of hot winds smother the life out of a nice stand of whea Carl Sandberg
Children have many great expectations and it's the master parent, teacher, coach who helps them to realize their expectations. The correct use of the power of Positive Expectancy will help them on their journey.
Peter S. Pierro, EdD parentscoachesasteam.com
Dr. Peter Pierro is a coach/parent concerned about how our children learn in our schools and how our young athletes are treated. He’s a graduate of Northern Illinois Univ. in Psychology, History, and Education. He played professional softball, baseball, college basketball. He coached jr./sr. high school basketball, women's softball, boys baseball, and was league commissioner. He has worked with the Amateur Softball Assoc. and the Oklahoma Soccer Assoc. He taught in elementary, junior high, and high schools. He has been a Professor at Elmhurst College and Oklahoma Univ.
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