Rhona Weinstein Professor

Research Biography

Rhona S. Weinstein studies the development of child and youth achievement, motivation, and social competence in the context of classroom and school processes. Her work focuses on the mediators of self-fulfilling prophecies in schooling and its implication for the prevention of school failure and for classroom and school change. Special interests include child populations at particular risk for low expectations, such as poor, ethnic minority, and immigrant children, children with special needs, and girls with regard to math and science. Weinstein's research focuses on two related areas:

Expectancy effects in schooling and beyond.
Our basic research focuses on the dynamics of educational expectancy effects in the classroom and in schooling. In particular, we study child processes that mediate the confirmation or disconfirmation of teacher expectations, such as children's awareness and understanding of teacher expectations, its impact on academic, social-emotional processes, and peer status, child differences in susceptibility to teacher expectancy effects (e.g., resilience), the moderating effects of parental versus teacher expectations, cultural differences in expectancy effects,and causal modeling of cumulative effects of expectancy processes over time.

Interventions to Break the Cycle of Low Expectations: Preventing School Failure.
Applying our research findings to intervention, we have developed a collaborative model of school and classroom change that promotes and supports high expectations for all children, particularly those at risk for negative self-fulfilling prophecies in schooling. Implemented at the high school setting, we have studied program impact at multiple levels as well as implementation processes, such as institutional factors that support or constrain changes in the expectancy climate of high schools. Work is beginning on an elementary school intervention.

Current student research projects include:factors that impact dis-identification with schooling at the elementary school level; cultural differences in parental expectations and actions to promote children's achievement; immigrant youth adaptation in high school, family and schooling factors that promote resilience in children with attentional disorders.

Representative Publications:

Weinstein, R.S. (2006). Reaching higher in community psychology: Social problems, social settings, and social change. American Journal of Community Psychology, 37, 9-20.

Cappella, E., & Weinstein, R.S. (2006). The prevention of social aggression in girls. Social Development, 15, 434-462.

Gregory, A., & Weinstein, R.S. (2004). Connection and regulation at home and in school: Predicting growth in achievement for adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Research, 19, 405-427.

Weinstein, R.S. (2004). Reflections on becoming a community psychologist. In J. Kelly & A. Song (Eds.). "Six community psychologists tell their stories: History, contexts, and narrative." Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community, 28, 125-147.

Weinstein, R.S., Gregory, A., & Strambler, M. (2004). Intractable self-fulfilling prophecies: Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education. American Psychologist, 59, 511-520.

Ozer, E.J., & Weinstein, R.S. (2004). Urban adolescents' exposure to community violence: The role of support, school safety, and social constraints in a school- based sample of boys and girls. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 33, 463-476.

McKown, C., & Weinstein, R.S. (2003). The development and consequences of stereotype-consciousness in middle childhood. Child Development, 74, 498-515.

Donohue, K.M., Perry, K.E., & Weinstein, R.S. (2003). Classroom instructional practices and children's rejection by their peers. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 24, 91-118.

McKown, C. & Weinstein, R.S. (2002). Modeling the role of child ethnicity and gender in children's differential response to teacher expectations. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32, 159-184.

Weinstein, R.S. (2002). Overcoming inequality in schooling: A call to action for community psychology. American Journal of Community Psychology, 30, 21-42.

Weinstein, R. S. & McKown, C. (1998). Expectancy effects in "context": Listening to the voices of students and teachers. In J. Brophy (Ed.), Teachers' and students' expectations. Volume 7 of Advances in Research on Teaching. JAI Press.

Ozer, E. J., Weinstein, R. S., Maslach, C., & Siegel, D. (1997). Adolescent AIDS prevention in context: The impact of peer educator qualities and classroom environments on intervention efficacy. American Journal of Community Psychology, 25, 289-323.

Weinstein, R. S. (1996). High standards in a tracked system of schooling: For which students and with what educational supports. Educational Researcher, 25, 16-19.

Butterworth, B., & Weinstein, R. S. (1996). Enhancing motivational opportunity in elementary schooling: A case study of the Ecology of Principal Leadership. The Elementary School Journal, 97, 57-80.

Weinstein, R. S., Madison, S. B., & Kuklinski, M. R. (1995). Raising expectations in schooling: Obstacles and opportunities. American Educational Research Journal, 32, 121-159.

Weinstein, R. S. (1994). Pushing the frontiers of multicultural training in community psychology. American Journal of Community Psychology, 22, 811-820.

Alvidrez, J. & Weinstein, R. S. (1993). The nature of "schooling" in school transitions: A critical re- examination. (Special issue). Prevention in Human Services, 10, 7-26.

Weinstein, R. S. (1993). Children's knowledge of differential treatment in schooling: Implications for motivation. In T. M. Tomlinson (Ed.), Hard work and high expectations: Motivating students to learn. National Society for the Study of Education Series. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.

Weinstein, R. S., Soulé, C. R., Collins, F., Cone, J., Mehlhorn, M., & Simontacchi, K. (1991). Expectations and high school change: Teacher-researcher collaboration to prevent school failure. American Journal of Community Psychology, 19, 333-363.

Weinstein, R. S., Marshall, H. H., Sharp, L., & Botkin, M. (1987). Pygmalion and the student: Age and classroom differences in children's awareness of teacher expectations. Child Development, 58, 1079-1093. 

RHONA WEINSTEIN Research Biography, November 1999