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The High Cost of Low Expectations

When students struggle, it can be tempting to lower our expectations, especially when our thinking is that doing so will increase their opportunities for success. However, the opposite is true—expensively so. When we lower our expectations for the quality of work and learning students will produce, we risk setting in motion consequences that can be life limiting.

While there are times and circumstances when lowering expectations might be contemplated for any type of student, multiple research studies have shown that lowering expectations disproportionately affects our most vulnerable students. The adjustment in expectations may be well intended. We may believe that it is best for students not to feel pushed and pressed to do work that is challenging or difficult for them, especially if they come from challenging life circumstances or have a history of struggle with academic learning.

We might even believe that focusing on building strong relationships with students will lead to greater learning success than having high expectations for them. However, students need more than our warmth and caring. They also need to be exposed to interesting work, meaningful challenges, and opportunities to build competence and confidence in their learning. It is the right balance between high expectations and high levels of caring that lead to learning success.

Importantly, the cost of lowering expectations can take many forms. Some costs are associated with the way in which students will come to view themselves. Other costs can be seen in skills not developed and competencies not gained. Still others can be found in negative responses to the experiences to which students are exposed. And some of the most expensive consequences are found in the limits and sacrifices students will face if they leave us not having learned what will be necessary for future success. Let’s consider five ways in which lowering expectations can be a costly decision.

When we lower our expectations, students lower their expectations. In fact, our lowered expectations risk communicating to students that we not only do not expect high level work from them, but we also believe that they are not capable of meeting high expectations. This is a dangerous message. The most difficult student to teach is the student who believes they cannot learn. We cannot afford to communicate this message or otherwise contribute to such a perception.

When we lower our expectations, we deprive students of opportunities to face and overcome difficult challenges, persevere, and build resilience. Yet, these are key life skills students need to develop for success in life. Further, while these challenges can be uncomfortable during the times when students face them, once successfully met, they can be sources of price and new confidence.

When we lower our expectations, we deprive students of opportunities to develop critical-thinking skills and employ creativity to solve novel problems. Low expectations for learning often mean that the teacher does most of the thinking, creating, and problem solving. Yet, these activities are what can make learning interesting, meaningful, and challenging enough to invest in.

When we lower our expectations, we are more likely to expose students to superficial and uninteresting content. We risk diverting students from learning with depth and full understanding. Absent useful application, meaningful purpose, and engaging activities, students learn and recall even less.

When we lower our expectations, we risk disqualifying students from pursuing highly skilled, learning-dependent life and work roles. We dramatically increase the likelihood that they will struggle to find work for which they will qualify and which will provide adequate compensation to support them and their family.

How can we communicate high expectations for our students? Here are five actions to consider:

Consistently present students with challenges at the leading edge of their learning and development. Students need to consistently feel our nudge for them to struggle and grow.
Take extra time to establish the purpose, implications, and details of concepts and skills. Focus on generating deeper understanding rather than limiting attention to the steps and sequence of completing an assignment or finishing a task.
Focus on progress. Reaching high standards may take time and multiple learning attempts. Success is often the result of processes, practices, and purposeful effort. These are the building blocks for our attention.
Frame coaching language around the inevitability of success. We might talk with students about “when” they succeed, not “if” they succeed.
Intervene quickly when students begin to drift and underperform. We need to approach that behavior as an aberration that needs attention rather than as a reflection of the student’s potential.

Admittedly, holding high expectations for our students can be challenging. However, students rarely have the maturity and wisdom to consistently exceed our expectations. In many ways, the expectations we set and hold become the ceiling for performance and possibility for our students. We need to be certain that our expectations are high enough to protect their future.

Use Five Underlying Drivers to Build Key Learning Skills

In Your Corner, Student Learning, Thinking Frames

December 07, 2023

Use Five Underlying Drivers to Build Key Learning Skills

It goes without saying that we want our students to be motivated, take ownership of their learning, and practice persistence. Of course, we also want them to build knowledge and grow wisdom. However, these important elements of high-level learning do not usually happen by chance; instead, they emerge through the engagement of underlying elements that must be tapped and nurtured through the design of learning experiences, our instruction, and student responses.

Unfortunately, in our desire to have students demonstrate these key learning elements, we can overlook the elements that lead to their development. Of course, some students will make important connections and build key skills and dispositions on their own, but it is a mistake to assume that most or all students will accomplish this task independently. Most students need our intentional focus and measured support to build the learning bridges they need to succeed.

By designing learning experiences focused on underlying or driving elements, we can increase the likelihood that students will make connections and build the skills we seek for them. Here are five outcome examples and contributing drivers on which we can build:

Want ownership? Offer choice. The process of making a choice implies favoring one approach, activity, or object over others. As a result, we form a relationship with the object of the choice. When students are given meaningful choices in what and how they learn, they naturally take greater ownership of the result.

Learning design: We might allow students to decide how they will approach a learning challenge, what materials they will use, and how they will demonstrate or document their learning.

Want students to gain knowledge? Encourage curiosity. Curiosity is how we learn much about life and the world around us. When what we learn is in response to something about which we are curious, we are also more likely to invest in learning and we are more likely to retain and use our new knowledge.

Learning design: Students are naturally curious, but they may not initially be curious about what we want them to learn. However, we can stimulate curiosity by designing relevant questions that students find compelling, sharing a story or experience that students find engaging, demonstrating a useful application, or presenting a dilemma or mystery that students find difficult to resist.

Want to build wisdom? Support reflection. Memorization and repetition can increase recall, but wisdom requires a deeper process. When we reflect on an experience or learning activity, new insights and understanding emerge. When we connect new learning to what we already know, we are more likely to understand its significance, appreciate its value, and can decide where and how to apply it in life.

Learning design: When we want students to develop a deep understanding or achieve new insights regarding what they know or have learned, we can have them pause and reflect. We might invite students to think about the significance of what they have learned and how it might inform the way they think about a circumstance or challenge. We can buttress their reflection by providing open-ended questions and encouraging students to ask their own questions, followed by discussion and analysis.

Want students to be motivated? Tap their interests. Interest takes various forms. It may emerge from a student’s natural inclinations, or it may reflect a student’s perception of utility or a useful purpose. Motivation is a willingness to invest energy and attention in response to interest. Engagement follows when motivation transitions into action.

Learning design: We can begin new learning activities by tapping elements or experiences in which students are already interested. For example, we might draw on student interest in sports, technology, pop culture, or some other topic with which students already have a positive connection. We also might plan an activity or pose a question that will stimulate students to seek new knowledge or skills. Of course, we can build interest through extrinsic incentives or even threats of consequences for a lack of investment, but the impact will likely be temporary.

Want more persistence? Have students set goals. When we identify a goal, we create a focus for our efforts. Meaningful goals function as magnets for attention, energy, and effort. The presence of goals also supports students to measure their progress and achievement. When students focus on accomplishment of the goals they themselves set and own, they also become more persistent in their pursuit and more resilient in the face of challenges and setbacks.

Learning design: Students may be unfamiliar and inexperienced with goal setting related to academic learning. They are more likely to have experience with learning goals that others have set for them. To stimulate and model goal setting, we might share with students how we set goals for our instruction or our own learning. We can also tap student goal-setting experiences in other areas of life such as athletics, the arts, video games, or earning money. The key is for students to set goals that are meaningful, challenging, achievable, and owned by them. We can provide support by providing feedback, coaching, and sharing evidence of progress.

Building knowledge and wisdom, stimulating curiosity and interest, and nurturing ownership and goal-setting skills are key elements in our work with students. However, these outcomes are dependent on our attention to—and leveraging of—the underlying drivers that lead to their attainment.

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