学生文化和性别问题的社会学研究

Paper代写范文:“学生文化和性别问题的社会学研究”，这篇论文主要描述的是在我们培养下一代的观念当中，我们总会凭借主观的意识对儿童进行定型和鉴定，这些定型的观念会影响到学生对于学生的态度，在性别方面，我们发现女孩在七岁时会比较的有天赋，比较容易出现学习方面的天才，但天才学生却往往很难与同龄的学生进行接触。

“Really smart people have no common sense,” asserted the woman nodding her head to the agreement of all at the dinner party. “You are too smart for your own good,” yelled the mother when her gifted child attempted to disagree with her. “School boy, school boy, school boy,” taunted the boy’s African American peers. The girl began hiding in the schoolhouse rather than going out to recess after she was teased with these epithets, “Nerd, geek, ha, ha, ha.” Then there is the public story of Jonathan Estrada, a profoundly gifted child described by Winner, E. (1997). At age 5, Jonathan refused to participate in the school based I.Q. test requested by his parents. He stated that felt insulted by the juvenile and simple requests. His school district rejected this explanation and accused the mother of inflating her child’s abilities. Another profoundly gifted child was repeatedly rejected for testing into the gifted program because he rebelliously refused to follow his teacher’s instructions. Instead, 7 years later, he was placed in a program for profoundly oppositional children.

These are all examples of popular stereotypes affecting the identification of gifted children. Stereotypes affect how gifted students are assessed, feel about themselves, develop academic and career goals, grow emotionally, are accepted socially, relate to their gender and/or culture. According to Johnson (1999), young girls begin to hide the talents and abilities as young as seven years of age. Many minority gifted students experience stereotyping from the majority community and from their own community. Fries-Britt (1998) discusses the stereotyping of African American students as disadvantaged and under-prepared. Then, Fries-Britt continues and describes the difficulty young gifted and talented students have with their peers. “Gifted Blacks experience this judgment by other Blacks that they are "acting White" and/or think they are better than their peers because of their academic interests.”(Fries-Britt, 1998, 557)

The issue of stereotyping is directly related to the concept of equal opportunity for all in a multicultural society. How does a democratic society balance the political need for a level playing field for all with the needs of the gifted members of the community and the various influences of multiple cultures? Further, Frydenberg & O'Mullane (2000) ask the question: What exactly are equal opportunity and equal outcomes?

According to Frydenberg & O'Mullane (2000), educators of the gifted should consider the issues of equality versus excellence complicated by the competition for limited resources United States researcher Winner (1997) reports that many people have a “deep-seated ambivalence about intellectual giftedness, arising perhaps from an anti-intellectual strain in American culture (de Tocqueville, 1945) as well as from America's democratic antielitist tradition, which leads to fear of hierarchies as a threat to the egalitarian American dream (Hofstadter, 1963).” (1070). Similarly, a conflict exists between the values of individuality and social justice versus elitism and privilege.

Some authorities have suggested solutions to the seeming contradiction between gifted education and egalitarian education. Winner (1997) mentions several ideas. One, all people could be treated in exactly the same way. This point of view leads to the idea that education should raise the standards for all students. It also leads to the conclusion that gifted and talented students do not need to be identified. Then there is the philosophy that each person should have an opportunity to grow to their fullest capabilities. This construct leads to identification and special provisions for gifted children. Frydenberg & O'Mullane (2000) support this viewpoint when they suggest defining a range of gifts and talents that support the values of “…individuality and social justice and eschews elitism and privilege”. (78) Talent development would then be based upon an idea of developing an encouraging and supportive environment that leads to each child developing to their potential.

The above ethical issues and political philosophies strongly influence how giftedness is defined. The characterization of giftedness determines which child is identified as gifted. Additionally, the meaning of giftedness determines what plans, programs and provisions will be made for those selected gifted students. However, Bechervaise, N. E. (1996) writes that the definition of giftedness depends upon the authority’s frame of reference. Thus, the factors influencing how a person defines giftedness could be related to cultural differences, socio-economic status, gender, race, native language, and educational advantages or not.

Gifted adults are the outcome of all issues related to identifying gifted students, the definition of giftedness and the development of programs for the gifted. Winner (2000) describes what she labels the ‘ends’ of giftedness. This can refer to the development of a gifted adult, the adult who was gifted as a child, and the potentials if appropriate resources are provided to gifted children. Winner suggests that the best possible outcome of childhood giftedness is adult innovative creativity. Presently, it appears that equality of outcomes has yet to be realized.

Currently, few gifted children develop into a life of innovation and creativity. Most childhood prodigies fail to transition into adult eminence. Winner’s view of the ideal situation is one in which the gifted child’s need is nourished and given a sense of responsibility for their gift and to society.

Along these lines, Lind (1999) writes that there are

five key affective needs of gifted adults: Acknowledging your own gifts; nurturing your identity development; giving yourself permission to be a growing, changing, imperfect person; taking advantage of and coping with overexcitabilities; and learning practical coping skills. (1)

Many gifted adults are unable to acknowledge their gifts and talents. For example, Jacobsen (1999) explains that gifted adults who enter counseling often do so for an unacknowledged existential angst related to the gulf in their lives between their potential and their actual. This identity issue is an important one because most gifted adults have learned to hide their true selves due to society’s stereotyping of giftedness. Gifted adults are often lonely and aware of their difference without being able to be specific about this. Most are ashamed of this difference.

This loneliness is exacerbated in gifted minority group members. For example, Fries-Britt‘s (1998) research found that gifted Black young adults feel more isolation, face personal decisions related to race and their relationship to the Black community. Minority gifted adults have the additional challenge of navigating multiple choices that relate to their experiences of giftedness and their culture.

Women choose a different solution to the conflict between self development and stereotyping. Research conducted by Lupart, Barva, and Cannon (2000) found that women are significantly “underrepresented in high-profile, high status fields and career - particularly those associated with physical science, engineering, and applied mathematics - and over-represented in many low-status, low-paying occupational fields such as secretarial work, nursing, and teaching.” Gifted women make career choices based upon personal values and interests, often reflecting societal stereotypes. At the same time, the women in this group who reach these stereotypical goals feel like failures.

This self acceptance is made much more difficult by the stereotyping of the gifted as ‘nerds’ and ‘geeks’ who have no common sense and are too smart for their own good. Jacobsen (1999) declares that the stereotype is not accurate. “Contrary to popular opinion and faulty expectations of nerdism, the gifted adult commonly shows unusual psychosocial maturity, popularity, charisma, trustworthiness, social adjustment and relationship competence.” (37)

Thus, while gifted adults have many personable and admirable traits, most gifted adults are unable to realize their potential, feel isolated and are lonely. Minority group members feel doubly separated from their culture of origin and society in general. Gifted adult women have more often than not chosen stereotypical gender based personal goals and feel like they have failed even when they reach them. Currently, then, the end goal or outcomes of gifted education have not been achieved.

The next question to answer would be: How can this unhappy circumstance be repaired? A beginning on this answer would involve making it possible to properly identify non-traditional gifted students. Gibson (1996) has developed eight stages to identifying nontraditional gifted students: Preliminary preparation, staff development, observations, referrals, assessments, recommendations, planning and programming, and evaluation of the identification process. The use of all these stages along with additional criteria below should help most educators include nontraditional students in gifted programs.

Currently, gifted children are identified by qualitative and/or quantitative methods of assessment. Possibilities include standardized testing, teacher recommendations, assessing the traits of the child that related to giftedness, or as suggested by Castellano (1989) multiple criteria related to a child’s functioning. These criteria could include:

(a) ethnographic assessment procedures (the student is observed in multiple contexts over time), (b) dynamic assessment (the student is given the opportunity to transfer newly acquired skills to novel situations), (c) portfolio assessment, (d) the use of test scores (performance based and/or nonverbal) in the native or English language (depending on the child's level of fluency), (e) teacher observation, (f) behavioral checklists, (g) past school performance, (h) parent interview, (i) writing samples and other samples of creativity and/or achievement, and (j) input from the cultural group with which the student identifies in the local school community.

There are difficulties with standardized testing, teacher recommendations, and assessing the traits of gifted children. As Castellano (1989) tells us, standardized tests to identify gifted students often miss minority students. These tests have traditionally been developed by members of the majority. Furthermore, Rebhorn and Miles (1999) emphasize that there is a gender gap in mathematics test scores for gifted middle school students. This gap leads to fewer academically gifted and talented girls in “…high-level mathematics and science programs.”(313). Rebhorn and Miles (1999) think that this mathematics gender gap may be related to test bias, the timed nature of the tests, the fact that fewer girls take mathematics classes and are unprepared for the tests. Consequently, standardized testing has historically led to fewer female and minority students in gifted and talented programs.

Cronin and Diezmann (2002) suggest that gifted Aboriginal students are overlooked because they often speak nonstandard English and their cultural values are different from the majority. They lack some of the early childhood experiences that have an effect upon both content knowledge and learning techniques. Learning styles may be different. Patterns of thinking may be different. Communication techniques may be different. This would affect standardized testing as well as teacher recommendations.

Teacher recommendations, per Dorbis and Vasilevska (1996), are lacking validity. Teachers normally leave out the cultural factors that could identify gifted students. Instead teachers commonly rely on the results of academic and school success. Cronin and Diezmann (2002) write that minority group gifted children may not be identified as gifted due to “…cultural, ethnic, or racial differences; language or economic difficulties; teachers' low expectations of culturally or linguistically diverse students; or teachers' failure to recognise gifted behaviours exhibited by minority students.”(13).

Rizza and Morrison (2003) researched gifted students who have emotional and/or behavioral disorders. These gifted students are most frequently viewed from the needs created by their disorder rather than their needs for talent development. Unfortunately, sometimes, the causes of these students’ behaviors are related to their giftedness. Their giftedness many not fit into the traditional classroom. As a result, some gifted students rebel and become difficult to manage. In all likelihood, these students’ teachers will be unable to see giftedness in the behavior of their difficult students.

According to Cronin and Diezmann (2002), researchers have developed 10 core culture free traits of giftedness. These are “…communication, motivation, interest, problem solving ability, imagination, creativity, memory, humour, inquiry, insight and reasoning.”(13) Gibson (1996) took these core attributes and developed an approach to the identification of gifted minority students. Cronin and Diezmann (2002) suggest that while this is one solution to the identification of minority gifted students, there still remains a need to refine these traits according to the culture of the child.

For example, Aboriginal students demonstrate their creativity and imagination through their ‘story telling and yarning’. With Aboriginal children, Gibson (1996) added an 11th attribute, intrapersonal/interpersonal ability as defined by。

…an unusually heightened understanding of self and others. Examples of the attribute included such descriptions as knowledge of own strengths, emotions and cognitive style, leader, organiser, sensitive to the feelings and needs of others, self confident, and mature for age.

Castellano’s (1989) research into identifying gifted Hispanic children also suggests additional factors. These features include an ease in learning the English language, natural leadership skills, social skills, intellectual and academic risk taking, imagination, and have good ‘street’ sense or community coping skills.

Stereotypes affect all aspects of gifted education. This paper has discussed how stereotypes influence the identification and lack of identification of nontraditional gifted students. There are social and political issues of fairness, equality and competition that complicate this identification. Inclusive definitions of giftedness are in the process of development. One factor in defining giftedness and gifted programs is clear thinking about the end goal or outcome of any program. In other words, what should society expect to happen to gifted adults as a result of special programs? All this will require alternative ways of looking at the process to apply to multicultural societies. The ideal would involve all children growing and developing to their potential.

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