Teachers’ Expectations As Perceived By Students and Its Effect on Their Motivation, Academic Self Concept and Academic Achievement

Abstract

The main rationale of this study was to inspect teachers’ expectations as perceived by students and its effect on their motivation, academic self concept and academic achievement of government general secondary schools of Bahir Dar special zone, Ethiopia. Path analysis was used to analyze the quantitative data and percentage and narrative description was used to analyze the qualitative data. The path analysis results showed that students’ perceptions of their teachers’ expectations had statistically significant direct effects on academic self concept and motivation; academic self concept, in turn, affected motivation and academic achievement of students significantly. The influence of motivation on achievement failed to reach a level of significance. Students’ perceptions of teachers’ expectations had a statistically significant strong direct effect on academic self concept and significant yet low effect on motivation of students. The qualitative results also proved that students’ perceptions of teachers’ expectations affected students’ motivation to learn, their academic self concept and academic achievement. Lastly, based on the results of the study implications were discussed and recommendations to alleviate the problem were forwarded.

Key words: Teachers’ expectations, Students’ perceptions, Motivation, Academic self- concept, Academic achievement.