Guessing teachers' differential treatment of high- and low-achievers from thin slices of their public lecturing behavior

Groups of high school students and adults viewed 10-second clips of 28 unfamiliar teachers' nonverbal behavior in public lecturing to their entire classrooms, and were asked to guess how these teachers would usually behave differently toward high- versus low-achievers in normal classroom dyadic interaction. The judges did not view any teacher-student interaction. As hypothesized, the students significantly (r = 0.40) predicted teachers' differential behavior (TDB) as evaluated by the actual classroom students of those teachers, whereas adult judges could not guess TDB from the clips. The TDB guesses of the two groups of judges were unrelated to each other. Students' expertise and implicit knowledge about covariation between distinct aspects of teacher behavior likely reflects a combination of cognitive and motivational factors, not shared by adult judges.