Teachers' attitudes and students' opposition. School misconduct as a reaction to teachers' diminished effort and affect

Recent decades have seen many studies dealing with the effects of teacher expectations. While most have focused on students' cognitive outcomes, we relate teacher expectations to student deviancy. We expect low expectations to be associated with students' feelings of futility and less teacher support, which, according to respectively strain theory and social control theory, give rise to misconduct. Multilevel analyses of data (2004–2005) from 11,844 students and 2104 teachers in 84 Flemish secondary schools suggest that, in schools where teacher expectations are low, students report less perceived teacher support, which is associated with higher rates of self-reported school misconduct.

► Teacher expectancy research has mostly focused on cognitive student outcomes.
► We examine school misconduct as student outcome of teacher expectancies.
► We expect student sense of futility and teacher support to act as mediators.
► We find lower teacher expectations to yield more school misconduct.
► Teacher expectations impact students' perceived teacher support, affecting deviancy.