Social ideologies and gifted education in today's schools

The myth that children are born gifted and therefore can make it on their own is the belief that most affects the perceptions of the public regarding the gifted student and, too often, the actions of educators. From such a belief comes much of the antagonism toward providing differentiated learning experiences for gifted students and the notion that excellence and equity are separate and contradictory concepts. As a result, the limits to support for gifted learners reflect a lack of accurate knowledge, not a lack of commitment to children. Members of society and even educators still hold beliefs and attitudes that result in actions that are often damaging to the optimal growth of bright children. Data relevant to these beliefs suggest a view that is more in keeping with current biological and genetic research. It is this perception—the interactive and dynamic development of intelligent—that provides the basis for this article. The issues of equity, democratic ideals, and human rights must be reemphasized as they relate to gifted learners. To make a positive difference in what all human beings can be and how much of their potential they can develop and enjoy, we must start by dispelling the limiting ideologies society now holds. There is a need for schools that value uniqueness and talent in all children and that respect and nurture giftedness wherever it is found. By an understanding and use of the data now available this challenge can be met.     

Effects of Inquiry-Based Teacher Practices on Science Excellence and Equity

Abstract

Within science education reforms, a pedagogical shift from a teacher-centered, textbook-based instructional paradigm to a student-centered, inquiry-based model is called for. Despite strong theoretical grounding, there is limited empirical evidence that these reforms will achieve national goals of academic excellence and equity. The author used hierarchical linear models to estimate the extent to which 5 inquiry-based teacher practices promote achievement of all students (excellence) and reduce gaps in achievement among students with different demographic profiles (equity). Findings suggest that teacher practices that improve overall academic excellence simultaneously are as likely to contribute to greater inequities among more and less advantaged students as they are to close persistent achievement gaps.     

EXZELLENZ UND EQUITY: NEUE BILDUNGSTHEORETISCHE PERSPEKTIVEN FÜR EIN ALTES SPANNUNGSVERHÄLTNIS

EXCELLENCE AND EQUITY: APPLYING NEW PERSPECTIVES IN THE THEORY OF EDUCATION TO A TRADITIONALLY TENSE RELATIONSHIP – The majority of international assessments of school performance, as well as the international standards-based education reform focus on optimising the skills of children who perform poorly in school. This article, however, places the focus on the top?performers (“excellence”) and links this with the theory of equal opportunities (“equity”). The article follows two main lines of argument. The argument relating to the theory of education deems the achievement of equal opportunities and equity likely only if and when all children start from an equal position and are then allowed to develop unequally and appropriately, according to their individual talents. The second argument highlights the tense relationship between excellence and equity with regard to school children’s varying home backgrounds, and asks how intellectual potential can best be discovered and encouraged. At the same time, the article demonstrates that the concept of accelerated learning, in differentiating between individuals within homogenous groups of learners, opens up a number of interesting perspectives and can ultimately redress the tense relationship between excellence and equity.     

Equity in education: Low priority in the school reform movement

The author argues that the educational reform movements are cyclical and that the present call for excellence can be seen in previous cycles. Noting the absence of a concern for equity in the many recent reports and studies, the author discusses the concepts of equity, equality, and excellence. Alternative reforms are proposed to enhance equity for minority and presently underachieving youth.     

Embracing equity and excellence while constructing science teacher identities in urban schools: Voices of new Teachers of Color

We explored how new Teachers of Color grappled with equity and excellence as they were constructing science teacher identities while learning to teach in a teacher education program committed to equity, justice, and excellence, and eventually teaching in urban schools where inequities and injustices persist. The theoretical framing, compiled from various bodies of literature, weaved together what we consider as essential parts of teacher identity construction and provided a lens with which to examine how conceptions of equity and excellence that the study participants were constructing meshed with their multiple identities, considerations on legitimate knowledge production, and dialectical relationships with which they grappled. Using transcendental phenomenology, we learned from and with three Black and Latinx teachers and their narratives. The teachers intertwined similarly and differently their evolving conceptions of equity and excellence into their evolving science teacher identities as they engaged in forms of contentious local practice and reflected on their experiences as science Teachers of Color teaching predominately Students of Color. Their multiple identities were meshed with histories of larger institutions—science, schooling, and society—and together these were shaping their conceptions of equity and excellence. The intermingling of equity and excellence, which was guiding the curricular and instructional decisions they were making in their classrooms, was also linked to what they considered as legitimate knowledge production in science classes and what counted as knowledge that their students needed to know at different times. The various dilemmas defined by opposing poles with which they were grappling also functioned as scales on which their coordinated equity-excellence unit of meaning was forming. Based on the study, we offer insights into practices that science teacher educators may consider as they prepare new teachers, and work with practicing teachers, to embrace and coordinate equity and excellence in their ever-developing science teacher identities.     

THE PUBLIC'S RESPONSIBILITY TO PROMOTE EXCELLENCE

Despite the many systems — political, social and cultural — in the world, achieving excellence is a common goal. It should not be confused with elitism or simply success, but involves experts, leaders, even heroes: people who set standards and serve as examples to others, in sport, the arts, business, technology. The pursuit of excellence provides motivation; it sets targets and goals, not only for nations but also for personal development. The crucial issue is that of how a society can ensure that all citizens have the chance to fulfil their potentials. What is needed is an environment in which excellence can flourish through provision of incentives, tools and equipment, teaching and support. In all of this, education plays a vital role. It must provide an appropriate climate of challenge, the necessary resources, opportunities for assessment and stocktaking and, finally, competition.     

Excellence for all children false promises! The failure of current policy for inclusive education and implications for schooling in the 21st century

This paper argues that the claims of current UK education policy, for children with special educational needs (SEN) toprovide excellence and equality of opportunity, are false. Critically examined are issues of social justice and equity in relation to the work of disability theorists and this critique is then applied to recent policy in education, in particular the Green Paper Excellence for All Children; Meeting Special Educational Needs, to demonstrate that as long as the organization of schooling, the curriculum, and assessment and testing procedures remain unchallenged, equal educational opportunity will remain amyth. In conclusion, having shown that the central energy in educational change seems to be devoted to perpetuating the status quo, thus reinforcing inequality and discrimination and precluding excellence for all children, this paper attempts toset anew agendafor the 21st century that might possibly offer agenuine entitlement for all children to an equal educational opportunity. Although the paper is centrally concerned with a critique of policy in the UK, it is believed that the implications have international relevance as they are fundamental issues relating to human rights and equity.     

再论大学招生的卓越性与公平性——兼谈中国人民大学自主招生“圆梦计划”的价值与局限

大学招生在高等教育实现“卓越性”与“公平性”的目标中起着至关重要的作用。美国的大学在招生中享有极高的自主性,它们有权制定反映本校办学特征的招生政策,并最终有效地实现大学招生的卓越与公平目标。中国人民大学积极尝试在自主招生中兼顾“卓越”与“公平”理念,今年推出的“圆梦计划”具有表率和实践作用,可以激发其他大学在招生中更加合理地追求“卓越”与“公平”。但是由于受自主招生人数的限制,“圆梦计划”受益学生人数少、候选学校有限,因而有一定的局限性。     

困境与突破：从公平的视角看成人高等教育的发展

我国成人高等教育面临着公平与发展两方面的困境与挑战。现实和理论都要求我国政府必须回答如何看待公平和发展成人高等教育的问题。发展我国成人高等教育并坚持其公平性具有重要的意义与价值。实现我国成人高等教育最大限度的公平之关键是要明确政府的责任,政府应当而且必须成为公平发展成人高等教育的保证者。     

Career guidance: The missing link in educational excellence and work transition

Conclusions We must recognize that the achievement of educational excellence is a function of student commitment to personal excellence. When we have commitment, we have individual action directed to effective decision making, planning, and preparation. This demands vocational guidance and assessment.Educational excellence, then, is shaped by and reciprocal to the confidence of students in their ability to pursue programs that challenge their abilities, provide access to opportunity, and rest upon self-knowledge and informed choice. Without student commitment, we can have reforms and change that bring us no closer than before to educational excellence. To achieve excellence, we must remember the key ingredient—the students, and their commitment to their own future.Harry N. Drier is the Associate Director for Organizational Development and Janet K. Ciccone is a Program Associate at the National Center for Research in Vocational Education at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.     

Equity Issues in Teaching and Teacher Education

Concerns about creating greater equity in education are often projected outside of teaching. Yet the creation by teachers of more equitable and inclusive educational experiences and opportunities can play an important part in wider struggles for social justice. We argue that equity must become a central dimension of teacher education to challenge the complex ways that insidious inequalities are reproduced in and through educational frameworks and practices.     

Analyzing Instructionally Focused Education Systems: Exploring the Coordinated Use of Complementary Frameworks

ABSTRACT

Public school districts have been operating under a decade’s long press to move beyond functioning as engines of access-oriented mass public schooling to functioning as instructionally focused education systems pursuing educational excellence and equity. This press has researchers developing analytic frameworks useful for examining different ways that districts are responding. Even so, limitations in individual frameworks suggest a need to explore the coordinate use of complementary frameworks to support more comprehensive examinations of districts. This analysis explores the coordinated use of a “coupling framework” and a “systems framework” to analyze efforts in two districts to improve educational quality and to reduce disparities. Findings suggests that the coordinated use of the coupling and systems frameworks supports deeper analyses of instructional organization and management than either framework would on its own, and that further incorporating quality and equity frameworks would support still-deeper analyses. From the perspective of this issue of the Peabody Journal of Education (PJE), the implication is that elaborating new institutional theory to capture micro-level variation in response to macro-level dynamics is but one challenge faced by organizational researchers in education, and that the deeper challenge lies in considering alternative world views—paradigmatic assumptions—underlying the use of singular and complementary analytic frameworks.     

University excellence: Students' academic reform beliefs

In this study of 460 SIU-C students conducted in May 1973, five topics are explored. First, to what extent do these students view the academic community as taking the quest for academic excellence seriously? Second, how do these students rate various components of the university regarding academic excellence? Third, who do these students perceive as the source of leadership in the university concerning the achievement of excellence? Fourth, how long do these students feel it will take for excellence to be effected in the university, and how much change must result for excellence to occur? Last, for excellence to be achieved, what types of qualitative changes must occur, and how will the university differ qualitatively if excellence is effected? The results of this study are discussed within a political model of the academic system, treating the university as a political system and students as quasi-citizens who possess a rudimentary academic belief system.     

Mobilisieren und Optimieren

Looking at the conflictual constitution of educational systems by equality and excellence, this paper examines the discursive formation of two political rationalities in the contemporary German educational system that are directly opposed. While early childhood and primary education discourses are dominated by a terminology of equity, tertiary education institutions such as universities are described with a terminology of excellence that has become a reference point for political interventions and institutional reform processes.Taking up the theoretical position of hegemony-theory, governmentality studies and system theory, the paper analyzes the rules of justification these hegemonic discourses refer to by employing a discourse analysis of strategic, conceptional, and institutional texts of the German education policy discourse between 2003 and 2010. The paper puts forth the thesis that mobilizing and optimizing represent the common principles of equality and excellence as rationalities of the maximal mobilization of educational ressources.     

Where knowledge construction,equity, and context intersect: Student learning of science in small groups

To provide insight into the strengths and limitations of using groupwork to promote excellence and equity in science education, the researcher investigated how students using the Complex Instruction model of groupwork constructed scientific knowledge. Eighty sixth-grade students and one life science teacher at an urban middle school participated in this study. Qualitative analysis of videotapes and interviews makes clear that group discussions rarely moved beyond observational or procedural matters, that students of high status (perceived academic ability and popularity) had greater access to their groups' materials and discourse, and that students made few connections among the contexts of school, science, and everyday life. Quantitative analyses of participation during groupwork and performance on unit tests show that high-status students had significantly higher rates of on-task talk than their middle- or low-status counterparts, and that those students who talked more learned more as well. Thus, although groupwork should not be summarily dismissed as an instructional strategy, group tasks and implementation must be further refined to adequately address the dual goals of excellence and equity: Students need greater guidance in how to talk and do science, and teachers, greater assistance in eliminating differences in student participation and achievement. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 34: 1039–1065, 1997.     

理解转型期教育公平应有的三个支点

公平与优异是教育发展追求的两大目标 ,在人类社会发展的不同阶段 ,教育公平与优异出现过四种组合形态。当前我国教育发展正处于公平与优异关系的第三种组合形态 ,教育公平程度已经有了很大提高。理解现阶段教育公平的关键是要立足于初级阶段的基本国情 ,结合当时当地的经济条件和教育基础 ,坚持历史的和发展的观点 ,遵循教育活动的自身规律     

Ranking and League Tables of Higher Education Institutions

Pointing out that globalization is a continuous process of adaptation and standardization affecting all aspects of social life in all societies, the author argues that higher education is essential for the facilitation of globalization. In the Eastern and Central European transition countries, higher education has been a main engine of transition, but it too must adapt to change, particularly to the rigors of a market economy that, among other things, requires that it be available to all and that it be financed from various sources, including tuition fees payable by all students. Also, governments must promote excellence to the extent of offering special funding to recognized centers of excellence. Higher education must be the engine that stimulates change and development throughout society.     

Discourses,decisions, designs: ‘special’ education policy-making in New South Wales,Scotland, Finland and Malaysia

This comparative analysis investigates the influence of neo-liberal and inclusive discourses in ‘special’ education policy-making in New South Wales, Scotland, Finland and Malaysia. The centrality of competition, selectivity and accountability in the discourses used in New South Wales and Malaysia suggests a system preference for neo-liberal solutions to education policy problems. The focus on excellence with equity, together with proactive approaches to student support in Scotland and Finland, however, is representative of a more interventionist government approach grounded in social democracy. It is argued that an inclusive approach is conducive to the achievement of both excellence and equity in students’ learning outcomes, whereas countries that have pursued market-driven models involving competition for places in selective institutions tend to have poorer educational outcomes and wider levels of inequality.     

Faculty peer networks: role and relevance in advancing agency and gender equity

Organisational efforts to alter gender asymmetries are relatively rare, yet they are taking place in a number of universities. In the USA, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, ADVANCE programmes implement a number of interventions to improve the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women faculty. This study focused on one common intervention, faculty peer networks, and the role they play in gender equity reform. Longitudinal and cross-sectional qualitative data indicate that such peer networks function as catalysts for women's career agency, and challenge gendered organisational practices. Two key features of the peer networks, their structure and internal dynamics, facilitate these outcomes. At the same time, peer networks are limited by design in promoting structural change and must be implemented in concert with other forms of policy and structural change to be effective mechanisms for gender equity reform.     

Recruitment of Minorities into Natural Resources Educational Programs

A look at programs aimed at making affirmative action work, at promoting some other form of equity, or at achieving equity and excellence.