ABSTRACT How do teachers, coaches, counselors, and parents reach conclusions about the abilities of those whose skills and performances they are attempting to influence? If a student does well only when assisted or clued by the teacher, will the teacher rate the student's intelligence higher or lower than the intelligence of a student who is relatively unresponsive to help, but does quite well without it? These questions have been addressed in an unsystematic and inconclusive way in previous studies. This research is designed to pose these and similar questions, looking at such factors as (1) the degree of convariation between clues chosen by the teacher, and successes registered by the student and (2) the particular goal or orientation of the teachers. Preliminary studies show that intellectual ability is evaluated very differently when the purpose of instruction is raised. Such appraisals (in the form of teacher expectancies) can be extremely important in guiding teacher behavior and, often, creating self-fulfilling prophecies.
