For many years, educational researchers have been interested in whether teachers communicate different expectations to students they believe to be high achievers than to those they believe to be low achievers. Studies in the area of expectation communication indicate that teachers are transmitting a variety of expectation messages to the students in their classrooms. The question that remains unanswered, however, is whether students are receiving these messages, and whether some groups of students are more aware of, or susceptible to, teacher expectation communication than others. This teacher-initiated qualitative study focuses on student perceptions of teacher expectation communication at O'Farrell Community School, a restructuring inner-city magnet school serving an ethnically- and linguistically- diverse group of sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students in San Diego, California. During semi-structured interviews, 48 students at the school were asked to describe teacher/adult expectation communication which conveyed high- and/or low-expectations for their own achievement and behavior, and for the achievement and behavior of their classmates.
