# Do expectations hold true?

The two following accounts explore what research revealed about children in two different communities when they went to school.

The street children of Brazil

A few years ago, educational researchers became interested in the “street children” of Brazil. These were children who lived in slum areas or had no home at all. The researchers discovered that these children made very poor progress in school and performed particularly badly in Mathematics. The children would sit solemnly at the back of the class and rarely participate. In the opinion of the teachers, the children’s poor background was responsible and they did not see how they could help them.

The research team then went to visit these children in their homes or on the streets where they lived. All were involved in buying and selling of some kind. Many of them were able to mentally calculate currency exchanges for a variety of South American currencies. The researchers found these children engaging very successfully in complex mental arithmetic, way beyond the level expected in the school curriculum.

Wilfredo Rodríguez. Street Children of Brazil (CC BY-NC-ND)

When the team talked this through with the children, they discovered that they were using highly effective problem-solving techniques, but of a very unusual kind. Such techniques were not part of the school Mathematics syllabus at all! But there is always more than one way to solve a problem, and this could have been a starting point for the teacher to involve the "street children" in the class by acknowledging their unique way of solving the problems set. This could help all the children think of different ways to solve the same problem. In this way, the children would feel much more part of the school and gradually be encouraged to participate more fully and actually have their potential realised.

In the school context, therefore, expectations of Mathematics achievement for these children were low, and that was borne out by subsequent school level attainment. Yet, in another context, these children were superb mathematicians!

Korean children

Educational researchers have also looked at Korean children who migrated to other parts of the world in the latter part of the 20th century. They followed up groups of such children and observed how they performed in school.

The findings are very interesting. Children who migrated to Japan — where attitudes to and expectations of Korean children were very poor — did badly at school. Children who migrated to the west coast of the USA — where expectations of Asian children were very high — did very well in school. So, children from the same sorts of homes performed very unequally in two different settings. The researchers felt that teacher expectations were the key variable here.

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