INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

abilities and aptitudespatrick c. kyllonen
drew h. gitomer

affective and conative processeslyn corno

ethnicityhsiu-zu ho
jason duque raley
angela d. whipple

gender equity and schoolinghsiu-zu ho
heather a. tomlinson
angela d. whipple

ABILITIES AND APTITUDES

Abilities are cognitive or mental characteristics that affect one's potential to learn or to perform. Aptitudes are sometimes treated as interchangeable with abilities, particularly when they focus on prediction of performance in other settings or on other occasions. Cognitive abilities have been conceived very broadly (e.g., intelligence) and also in terms of specialized abilities such as verbal, spatial, memory, reasoning, problem solving, and psychomotor ability. Some authors have defined aptitudes more broadly than abilities, to include any number of individual-differences factors—affective, cognitive, and personality characteristics—that influence one's readiness or likelihood of learning or performing successfully.

During the twentieth century, there have been significant changes in conceptions of ability, moving from atheoretical models that have their basis in measurement and psychophysics to ones that are based largely on cognitive theories of human performance. Social issues continue to influence conceptions of ability and practices of ability testing. The scientific measurement of abilities has been viewed as either enabling or stifling social progress, and such controversy continues in the twenty-first century.

History

Ability testing in education began in 1905 in Paris when Alfred Binet along with his assistant Théodore Simon developed the Binet-Simon scale to solve the practical problem of reliably differentiating between educable, educable with special help, and uneducable children. Prior to the development of the scale, such classifications were made subjectively and inconsistently; thus the scale was considered a significant practical achievement. The scale consisted of thirty tests, such as "naming objects in pictures," "defining common words by function," and "retaining a memory of a picture." In historical treatments, Binet and Simon's approach is sometimes referred to as a task-sampling approach, in that the tests are essentially samples of typical educational events.

The task-sampling approach may be contrasted with another tradition in ability testing, a basic elements approach. This tradition began with Francis Galton's development of a battery of basic sensory-motor, reaction time, and memory tests. Galton believed that a general mental ability with biological underpinnings underlay performance on these tests, but to his disappointment, he found no relationship with educational or occupational levels. Charles Spearman developed a statistical method known as factor analysis, which demonstrated that Galton's hypothesis of a general ability was supported after all. Later, researchers such as Louis Thurstone and J.P. Guilford refined Spearman's notion, by adding various kinds of tests to the more basic batteries, and identifying "group factors" such as spatial and verbal ability in addition to general ability (Spearman's "g") to account for patterns of performance.

Developing conceptions of ability and aptitude have proceeded in tandem with practical applications, particularly in military, educational, and employment settings. In the military, the development of the "Army Alpha and Beta" intelligence tests during World War I, which helped efficiently sort 1.7 million World War I conscripts into job classifications (training, frontline, officer, and so forth) has been cited by Frederick McGuire as one of psychology's most influential contributions to American society. The Army Alpha, used essentially as a measure of general cognitive ability, consisted of eight subtests (oral directions, arithmetic problems, practical judgment, antonyms, disarranged sentences, number series, analogies, and information), most of which are still being used in test batteries today. During World War II and through the 1950s the number of abilities measured was expanded to include such constructs as verbal and quantitative ability, technical knowledge, and psychomotor abilities, the latter being particularly important for pilot and navigator selection. In the early twenty-first century the U.S. military services use a multidimensional test battery, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), for both selecting applicants and assigning them to training and occupational specialties.

Following the success of the Army Alpha, there was general optimism about the role ability assessment could play in "social engineering," such as providing opportunities for higher education to students based on merit rather than on birthright. An example was the Scholastic Aptitude Test (now known as the SAT) during the period between World War I and World War II. The SAT was designed, in the words of the American educator James Bryant Conant, to "reorder the 'haves and have-nots' in every generation to give flux to our social order." The composition of the SAT has fluctuated minimally over the years, consistently yielding "verbal" and "mathematical" scores, relying on tasks that are arguably work samples of academic tasks (e.g., reading comprehension) to those that are more abstract from such tasks (e.g., verbal analogies).

A third major application of abilities and aptitudes is in employment testing. The General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) was developed around the time of World War II, by a commission of industrial psychologists and measurement experts for the U.S. Department of Labor. The test measures general ability, verbal aptitude, numerical aptitude, psychomotor ability (motor coordination, finger dexterity, and manual dexterity), and general perceptual ability (spatial aptitude, form perception, and clerical perception). The GATB was designed to predict job performance. More than seven hundred validity studies have demonstrated that it does so, and consequently the test is widely used as an employment screen. A meta-analysis of these studies conducted by John Hunter and Ronda Hunter has shown that general cognitive ability is the primary determinant of job success, but that psychomotor ability is important for relatively low complexity jobs.

Modern Views

The major aptitude batteries–the ASVAB, GATB, and SAT, in the military, industrial, and educational sectors, respectively–were developed in the post—World War I period, and although still in use in the early twenty-first century, have not fundamentally changed over the years in what they measure or how they measure it. But advances in the knowledge of how people think, learn, and solve problems, since the 1970s, has triggered a reevaluation of what abilities are and how they ought to be measured.

Information processing. The information-processing view likens the individual to an information-processing system, suggesting that the parameters governing the performance of an information-processing system, such as speed and memory capacity, might be the abilities that govern human learning and performance. Since the 1960s, numerous studies have examined the relationship between mental speed and learning and performance. The conclusion has been that increased sophistication in the procedures for measurement are responsible for a slightly more favorable view than Galton had of the importance of mental speed in everyday life. Still, the work has primarily been of theoretical interest, and there have been few suggestions that mental speed is an important ability to begin routinely including it in large-scale aptitude batteries. In fact, to the contrary, the military services are in the process of removing their "speed" composite from the ASVAB because it has proven not to be a valid predictor of training success or job performance. Similarly, ETS routinely considers speed to be an irrelevant factor for most of its measures.

There has been considerable support, though, for the notion that another aspect of information processing, working-memory capacity, is central to human performance. Several studies have shown that working-memory capacity (as measured by tasks such as mental arithmetic) is indistinguishable from Spearman's "g" and therefore is the primary ability governing learning and performance. Ian Deary has suggested that Spearman's "g" is simply being relabeled to have a more contemporary-sounding title. But information-processing explanations of abilities have several advantages. One is that they allow for the construction of ability measures based not simply on previous measures, but on the understanding of how people learn, think, and solve problems. A second is that an information-processing scheme has potential use in task analysis. For example, as Susan Embretson has demonstrated, the requirements of a task can be characterized in information-processing terms, enabling the a priori prediction of item difficulty. A third advantage is that information-processing based concepts connect with wider areas of inquiry such as cognitive and brain sciences, and therefore allow for the uniting of what Lee Cronbach referred to as the two disciplines of scientific psychology, the correlational and the experimental.

Knowledge and expertise. A second perspective based on new conceptions in cognitive science might be called the knowledge and expertise view. In this view, characteristics such as working-memory capacity and information-processing speed are not viewed as fixed characteristics of an individual, but as dependent upon knowledge and skill that is developed over long periods of time. So, for example, expert chess players have the ability to recall actual chess positions with impressive accuracy and to a much greater extent than novice players. However, when chess pieces are arranged in random fashion, the two groups have equal recall. Similarly, many studies have demonstrated that processing speed is a direct function of repeated practice. These studies have demonstrated that efficient information processes are, in large part, the residue of well-organized knowledge structures that are developed over years of active engagement and practice within a domain. Further, well-developed knowledge structures in a domain make one a much more effective learner of other concepts in that domain, since there is an established knowledge organization within which to embed and connect new information.

This emphasis on domain specific expertise has profound implications for considering ability testing and ability development. The implication of the expertise approach is to assess and then facilitate the development of knowledge structures and processing skills that will support performance and learning within a domain, without significant attention paid to broad, domain-independent skills. Clearly, the debate over how much of ability is specific to or independent of particular domains continues, and has profound implications for the selection, education, and training of individuals.

Hierarchical model. A third new development might be called the hierarchical model of ability differences. This work continues the factor analytic tradition began by Spearman, and further refined by Thurstone and Guilford. The key idea behind the hierarchical model is that what had been thought to be rival hypotheses concerning the number and organization of human abilities can be now seen as compatible. Even into the 1980s one had to take a position on whether the evidence was more favorable towards the Spearman view of one general ability (along with number test-specific abilities); with Thurstone's view of eight to eleven primary mental abilities; or Guilford's 120 or 160 ability models. The hierarchical model, as developed by Jan-Eric Gustafsson and John Carroll, shows the fruitfulness of considering abilities as varying in their generality from fairly specific abilities (e.g., memory span, associative memory, and free recall memory), to broader ones (e.g., general memory and learning), to the most broad (general intelligence). In fact, this example is taken from Carroll's "Three-stratum structure of cognitive abilities," which posits sixty-seven or so "Stratum I" abilities, eight "Stratum II" abilities, and one "Stratum III" ability. Gustafsson's scheme is similar in spirit, but he did not consider nearly as many datasets as Carroll did, and so consequently his proposal may be seen as a subset of Carroll's.

Multiple intelligences. A final new development might be called the "multiple intelligences" view. There are actually two quite distinct notions that might be considered in this category, the "triarchic theory" of Robert Sternberg and the "multiple intelligences" theory of Howard Gardner. Sternberg's idea is that the field, the testing industry, and the application sectors themselves (education, industry, and the military) are preoccupied with one notion of abilities, which he playfully refers to as the "gocentric view." He also calls this analytic intelligence, and suggests that while important, success in school and in life is perhaps equally if not more importantly determined by other intelligences, namely creativity and practical intelligence. Although this work has not yet resulted in any widescale applications, preliminary work, particularly in the area of practical intelligence appears promising.

Gardner has proposed a different scheme, called "multiple intelligence theory," which identifies eight abilities–linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist intelligences. This scheme is quite popular in educational circles, perhaps attributable to its elevation of abilities other than the usual linguistic and logical-mathematical abilities, encouraging the recognition of some students for talents normally overlooked. However, the scheme is often dismissed in scientific circles because by eschewing measurement, it fails to allow for its validity to be tested. As Nathan Brody has pointed out, multiple-intelligence theory is at odds with the rest of the field in its rejection of a general cognitive ability, and with its choice of the particular eight abilities–neither empirical nor theoretical justifications for these features of the theory have been produced.

Controversies

Discussions and investigations of aptitudes, abilities, and individual differences have been fraught with controversy throughout their history. Certainly one of the most contentious issues is that of the heritability of abilities. Comparisons of monozygotic and dizygotic twins, twins reared apart versus together, adoption studies, and various other behavioral genetics studies, suggest that abilities are somewhat heritable, although the issue of by what amount remains unsettled. There is ample evidence for notably high consistency in test scores over time. A study reported by Ian Deary showed that Scottish eleven-year-olds performed remarkably similarly on an identical test of mental ability administered sixty-six years later, when they were seventy-seven years old.

Some of the reason for the intense interest in heritability seems to be inappropriately due to a misconception that to the degree that abilities are inherited, there is not much one can do to improve one's abilities. Heritability, however, is not synonymous with immutability, as can be proven with a simple thought experiment. Height is highly heritable, but has steadily increased over the twentieth century due to improvements in environmental factors such as nutrition. Similarly, as documented by James Flynn, intelligence scores have been shown to have risen quite dramatically in the second half of the twentieth century in numerous parts of the world. Early childhood intervention programs, such as Head Start, have met with mixed success, but others, such as the Carolina Abecedarian project, have shown strong and persistent gains in cognitive skills, academic test scores, and language use in follow-up studies through the age of fifteen.

Another area of some controversy in the abilities and aptitudes literature concerns the role of other factors such as metacognition, attitudes, motivation, and concepts such as emotional intelligence, in performance in school and the workplace. Concepts such as test anxiety have for a long time been cited as a threat to the validity of an estimate of a student's ability. Claude Steele has suggested that additional attitudinal factors, "disidentification" and "stereotype threat," may impair the performance of minority students in certain contexts. Motivation has long been considered an important factor in governing learning and performance success and related concepts such as goal setting, self-efficacy, and optimism are being investigated for their role in learning. Emotional intelligence refers to a wide variety of factors that may mediate the relationship between abilities and performance, or may serve as abilities and aptitudes in their own right.

A third controversy centers on the extent to which ability can even be considered as an individual phenomenon. In the situated cognition view, abilities can only be considered as they are manifest and develop within social situations. The interaction of the person with the social environment is what defines ability–it is not a construct that can be defined independent of such interaction. Much of the support for this work comes from examining very sophisticated cognitive strategies that develop without the benefit of any formal academic training or ability to demonstrate the strategies in traditional academic ways.

Further Directions

The predominant use of individual differences in abilities and aptitudes in education has been in assigning students to special remedial programs, selecting them for admission into schools (e.g., colleges), or identifying them for receiving awards such as scholarships or fellowships. Although this use will undoubtedly continue, it is likely that an increasing emphasis will be put on new uses, opening the door to additional opportunities, in the form of diagnosis, tailored educational programs, and self-assessments to facilitate more efficacious career choices. It is likely that the noncognitive ability and aptitude variables, including interests, personality, motivation, and the like, will prove particularly important for the new uses role.

Another trend in ability and aptitude testing in education is an increased emphasis on the assessment of achievements rather than the more basic abilities. Some of this is due to what some have characterized as the pernicious effects of test coaching, and is certainly consistent with cognitive conceptions of expertise. The idea is that as long as there are high-stakes ability tests, there will be a coaching industry designed to help students improve their chances of succeeding on those tests. To the extent that the tests directly reflect the achievements that are supposed to be learned in school, coaching then becomes a positive force, a productive adjunct to the school curriculum, reinforcing lessons learned in school. Another reason for this trend is that test users and the public in general have increasingly demanded tests that look more like the learning or performance activities that the tests are designed to predict. There seems to be less patience with arguments based exclusively on predictive validity statistics. One sees this in military and industry testing as well as educational testing.

A third trend in abilities and aptitude assessment is what is sometimes called "embedded assessment" or the insertion of abilities tests within the context of instruction itself. This trend fits with the general trend toward the increased use of achievement testing, but for the specific purpose of tailoring instruction to a particular individual, based on that individual's changing knowledge and understanding of a particular topic area. Richard Snow and Valerie Shute have suggested both "macroadaptive" and "microadaptive" responding on the part of a computerized ("intelligent") tutoring system. Microadaptive instruction refers to the specific reactions a tutor makes in response to its continually updated understanding of what a student knows and is learning; macroadaptive instruction refers to more global approaches to delivering coaching and feedback the tutor makes based on more general assessments of a student's abilities.

Finally, a possible future trend is increasing attention paid to what might be called "mediators" for their role in affecting abilities and aptitudes. These include factors such as nutrition, psychopharmacology, fatigue, and circadian rhythms. Nutritional explanations have begun to appear more frequently in discussions of changes in abilities, and the role of nutrition, vitamins, and glucose has been investigated but as of yet, little is known. Similarly, there have been some investigations of "smart drugs," such as caffeine, ginseng, and ginko biloba, as well as other psychopharmacological agents, particularly cholinergic enhancers. Finally, much has been learned over the past decade about the role of circadian rhythms in affecting hormonal production and concommittant behavioral effects such as fatigue and alertness over the course of the day. There has been some work suggesting that "morningness" and "eveningness" may be characteristic dispositions that mediate both cognitive abilities and personality factors.

See also: Assessment; Intelligence; Testing.

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Patrick C. Kyllonen

Drew H. Gitomer

AFFECTIVE AND CONATIVE PROCESSES

People react emotionally to their own and others' performances, often in characteristic ways. Getting a grade of "B" in a course can produce devastation in an anxious student who expected an "A." Psychologists believe that the student's temperament interacts with expectations for the course grade to produce a negative emotional response.

Characteristic emotional reactions and certain qualities of temperament are examples of psychological processes that are affective. Affective processes include all feelings and responses, positive or negative, related to emotion-laden behavior, knowledge, or beliefs. Affect can alter perceptions of situations as well as outcomes of cognitive effort; it can also fuel, block, or terminate cognition and behavior.

Affective processes intertwine with aspects of motivation and volition. In educational situations, students' motivational beliefs and judgments of their own capabilities influence their intentions and plans. Thus students who see themselves as "not good at math" will prefer other subjects and struggle in math class. Conation, an ancient psychological concept whose dictionary definition refers to purposive striving, covers the range of motivational and volitional processes that human beings display. Motivational processes underlie the decision to pursue a goal; they are the wishes and desires that lead to intentions, in turn dictated by interest and experience. Volitional processes come into play after goals and intentions are formed; these processes reflect steps to implement goals, and ways of managing resources. Modern psychology has come to see motivation and volition as category labels for distinct conative processes.

In 1980 Ernest Hilgard wrote that the main agenda for modern scientific psychology ought to be to understand the processes underlying three central human functions–cognition (perception, memory, and the processing of information), affection, and conation. Indeed, since the beginning of the twentieth century, psychology in education has been peppered with programs of research on the qualities and characteristics of people that fit into one of these three functional categories. Intelligence, for example, is cognitive, impulsivity is affective, and self-concept is conative. Within conation, some well-studied processes influence commitments and are therefore considered motivational. One example is self-efficacy, a kind of personal capability belief. Other research examines processes that people use to protect commitments already formed–for example, self-monitoring and self-rewards. When these processes occur once a commitment is made, they are volitional.

As early as the mid-twentieth century, theories began to identify the range of variables within and between categories that could be measured validly and reliably in persons. But despite much progress up to and past Hilgard's writing in 1980, more effort is needed to explain how the triad of human functions works together at the process level. Moreover, this research agenda is virtually unknown to those outside psychology, and laypeople are frequently unaware of how psychologists use these terms.

For some purposes, affective and conative processes have proven to be so interconnected that it makes little sense even to psychologists to separate them. One group of researchers, the Stanford Aptitude Seminar, invented the hybrid term, affcon, to reflect this viewpoint. Given the complicated sociocultural context in which schooling takes place today, it is hard to dismiss the importance for educators, parents, and counselors of understanding how changes in affect can influence conation and vice versa: Both play central roles in the willingness to work and quality of effort invested by students in academics.

Three examples serve to illustrate how the interplay between academic-intellectual processes and affcon processes affects objectives of educational practitioners, decision makers, and students. The examples reflect current issues as well as persistent problems.

Cognitive Engagement

A school classroom is a social context offering many opportunities for students to be distracted from their work. At the same time, the organization of a classroom demands behavioral self-control. This paradoxical combination of opportunities and demands suggests the need for creative curricular experiences that engage students fully in classroom work, making them want to succeed. The concept of cognitive engagement is a prominent goal of classroom teaching, at virtually all levels of education.

Part of what new paradigms for instruction are about is providing teachers with a repertoire of strategies for promoting cognitive engagement. Modern education reform emphasizes success as its own reward, but encourages teachers to use other incentives to move students along. Activities and experiences grounded in students' own interests, and assignments that require meaningful discussion of topics and material, help to promote cognitive engagement. Also supported by empirical research are inquiry teaching methods that make thinking explicit, and uncover hidden assumptions in content ranging from narratives to persuasive arguments. Research on teaching conducted between 1970 and the early twenty-first century makes it clear that students tune out in tired models of conventional teaching, where students listen and teachers talk.

Knowledge about which reforms and strategies work in different situations has been informed by evaluations of educational programs. Frequently, these demonstrate the insufficiency of seeking direct impact on learning outcomes such as achievement scores. Rather, achievement improves as a result of tapping into the affcon responses of students as they engage in and with schoolwork.

Student Responsibility

A student who takes responsibility for learning is self-regulated and self-motivated, intentionally directing energy toward learning tasks. Self-starters have long reaped academic rewards. Research conducted between 1980 and the early twenty-first century has uncovered the attitudes, skills, and behavior that characterize self-regulated learners, and emphasized the important role played by self-regulation skills in schooling outcomes. Researchers have also designed programs to help weaker students acquire self-regulation knowledge and skills. Counselors and teachers can use such programs to teach students responsibility. Likewise, parents can model self-regulation and strategies for doing homework.

Self-regulation and personal responsibility involve affcon processes. Careful self-management is necessary when follow-through is in jeopardy; for example, when a student experiences boredom or perceives that a task will be difficult to perform. The effortful processes that mark volition come forward then, with the sense to "buckle down." Not all academic situations demand volitional control, however. In some activities in the curriculum, learning can seem to occur with no effort, almost automatically. When a person is in the affective state that Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi called "flow," there is no need to drain volitional reserves.

Astute teachers and parents will listen and watch closely for evidence of emotional stress in school children, and encourage the highly motivated to enjoy their time between work and play. Negative physiological as well as emotional changes can result from too much pressure on children in school. Although the ability to monitor and control emotions increases developmentally, some variation remains even among adults.

Adaptive Teaching

An increasingly diverse population of students leads teachers to differentiate curriculum and instruction. Some common differentiation strategies have proven ineffective from an academic standpoint; for example, teaching to the bottom third of the class. There are also well-documented negative social consequences to other differentiation strategies, most notably the common practices of tracking and retention in grades. To accommodate individual differences in students, a teacher must do only good.

Some types of cooperative work groups, formed to reflect the heterogeneity of students within classes, produce positive affcon outcomes: Students give and receive help from peers; they learn how to organize and manage due dates; the whole group incurs rewards when individuals contribute best efforts. But even effective grouping arrangements work best in short bursts of time; motivation and affect are buoyed by flexibility. In forming cooperative groups teachers should take into account students' affect and self-regulatory styles as well as their status characteristics and levels of achievement. The importance of considering the affcon profile of students has historically been left out of adaptive teaching discussions and decisions.

Another important point to make about adaptive teaching is that good teachers have always addressed students according to attitudinal and work styles. For any given task, what a student presents in the way of interest and attitude, as well as prior knowledge, often dictates a particular explanation, example, or suggestion for improvement. Different explanations, examples, and suggestions will reach students with other interests or markedly opposite styles of behavior. Moreover, teaching adaptively means shifting with the student's own development. Hence, the teacher's dictum of "If you can't reach them one way, then try another" comes into play. Adaptive teaching not only requires a teacher to circumvent observed student weaknesses, but also to capitalize on strengths. When a student is removed from conventional instruction for compensatory purposes, there ought to be simultaneous efforts to develop an aptitude for conventional instruction directly. It is, after all, to the regular classroom that many special program students eventually will return.

Despite the growing body of research on affective and conative processes in education, many programs remain disjointed, even when constructs overlap considerably. There are important theoretical issues still contested, including the need for distinctions between concepts as interrelated as motivation and volition, and the precise nature of the connections in Hilgard's trilogy of mental functions. Some highly regarded theorists, such as Richard Snow and Julius Kuhl, offer sophisticated and situated (context-dependent) models, models that suggest the need for new language as well as new methods of practical assessment and clinical treatment. As the twenty-first century continues, work will advance in these directions, ultimately producing entirely different ways of thinking about affect and conation in education.

See also: Affect and Emotional Development; Instructional Strategies.

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Lyn Corno

ETHNICITY

As the student population in the United States continues to become more ethnically diverse, the central challenge facing education is how to provide schooling experiences that maximize the participation and academic success of all students. The representation of ethnic minority students rose from 22 percent in 1972 to 38 percent in 2000, and is expected to increase dramatically through the year 2020, when more than two-thirds of the total public-school student population will be African American, Asian American, Hispanic, or Native American. Meanwhile, comparison studies continue to show a consistent gap in school achievement for various ethnic school populations.

Derived from the Greek term ethnos, meaning people, ethnicity refers to a sense of membership in and identification with a distinct group in which members perceive themselves, and are perceived by outside observers, to be bound together by a common origin, history, and culture. Cultural features that define an ethnic group include shared expectations for behavior, such as family roles, health practices, and work and recreational activities; shared values, such as religion, politics, and concepts of achievement, beauty, time and space; and shared symbols, such as language, art, music, and modes of dress. Although broad ethnic categories such as African American, Asian American, Hispanic, Native American, and white are used conventionally in the United States, there are, in fact, important national, linguistic, religious, tribal, regional, and generational differences within each of these broad categories.

Empirical Approaches: Cross-Cultural and Cultural Process

In the social sciences, two main approaches, distinct in their assumptions, foci, and methodologies, are used to investigate the role of ethnicity and culture in education: a cross-cultural approach and a cultural-process approach. In a cross-cultural approach, ethnicity and culture are viewed as separate from human behaviors. Cross-cultural researchers focus on the influence that ethnicity and culture have on human behavior. Alternatively, the cultural-process approach treats ethnicity and culture as interdependent with social processes; in other words, ethnicity and culture influence human interactions, and, at the same time, are constructed within those interactions.

Cross-cultural researchers tend to view ethnicity as relatively stable and fixed, while cultural-process researchers tend to view ethnicity as more dynamic with its content and boundaries continually under revision and redefinition. Cross-cultural researchers usually employ quantitative methodologies, such as survey questionnaires and experiments, with a focus on the attributes of individuals. Cultural-process researchers almost exclusively utilize qualitative methodologies, such as observations and interviews, with a focus on actions and interactions in context. For example, in studying parent involvement, a researcher using a cross-cultural approach might conduct a survey on a large sample of families from different ethnic groups to assess group differences in the amount of time parents spend on a variety of activities related to their child's schooling. A researcher using a cultural-process approach might interview parents from several ethnic groups on what it means to be involved with their child's school, while also engaging in an observational study of the interactions between students and parents, in order to detail the processes through which the parents engage with their children in their schoolwork. Ultimately, the combination of both a cross-cultural approach and a cultural-process approach is beneficial for a more in-depth understanding of the role of ethnicity and culture in education.

The Achievement Gap

The results of numerous cross-cultural studies indicate that many ethnic minority students are not faring well in U.S. schools. Ethnic group differences are found in school grades, standardized achievement tests, course enrollment, grade retention rates, high school graduation, and level of educational attainment. The achievement gap appears in the early school years, increases during the elementary school years, and persists through the secondary school years. While achievement gaps narrowed between 1971 and 1999, the average scores of African-American and Hispanic students have remained significantly below those of non-Hispanic white students.

Rates of grade retention tend to be higher for African-American and Hispanic students (particularly males), when compared to other groups. High school dropout rates tend to be highest for Hispanic students, followed by African-American students. African-American males tend to be disproportionately represented in special education classes. With the exception of Asian Americans, ethnic minority students are not adequately represented within programs for gifted and talented education (GATE).

In general, Asian-American students fare well academically, displaying high levels of performance on standard achievement indicators. With respect to the educational attainment level of students, high school graduation rates since 1971 have greatly increased overall for ethnic minority youth, however the rates in 2000 were lower for Hispanic and African-American students than for Asian-American and white students. Asian-American students, in general, show higher college graduation rates, as well as higher graduate degree attainment, than white students. It may be noted that for some of the cross-cultural studies, comparisons were not made across all of the major ethnic groups due to the relatively small sample sizes of Native American students and, in some cases, Asian-American students.

A number of issues require consideration in light of these general findings of ethnic group differences in school achievement. First, many studies do not account for socioeconomic differences, such as family income, parental employment and education, when examining ethnic groups. Given that the average socioeconomic status (SES) differs substantially among ethnic groups, the failure to disentangle ethnicity and SES can lead to erroneous interpretations. SES is a significant predictor of academic success, and ethnic minority families are disproportionately represented in the lower SES bracket. Moreover, schools with the highest proportion of low-income students are more likely to have fewer qualified teachers, have substantially fewer resources (computers, enrichment materials), and be located in a neighborhood with fewer informal educational resources (such as museums and libraries). Economic pressures at home, compounded by poor neighborhoods and poor schools, makes the separation of socioeconomic factors from ethnic cultural factors even more difficult. Thus, it is imperative for future studies to examine comparability as well as account for the disparities among ethnic groups with respect to SES levels.

Many educators and policymakers often perceive technology as a promising tool for leveling inequities in educational achievement. However, studies show that children who come from lower-income families (which are disproportionately ethnic minority families) have fewer computers in the home. The provision of updated educational technology within schools is uneven at best, and this, combined with unequal access within the home, limits such computer-based activities as homework completion, research, word processing of reports, and presentations.

Second, while many comparative studies typically focus on the major ethnic groups as broad groups, it is important to acknowledge that individual differences within each ethnic group are substantial. Such categorization may give the illusion of overall cultural similarity and obscure substantial national, tribal, or other subgroup differences. For example, the broad category of Asian Americans is comprised of diverse national backgrounds, including Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Khmer, and Asian Indian. Additionally, much variation within an ethnic group is likely to exist with respect to variables such as gender, social class, generation/immigrant status, and level of assimilation.

Studies that examine differences within an ethnic group are useful for a variety of reasons. First, within-group studies may serve to weaken the uniform, and often stereotyped, views associated with particular ethnic groups. Second, studies of within-group differences in which the subgroups differ on various demographic variables would be helpful in understanding the role that variables such as generation/immigration status, level of assimilation, language, and socioeconomic status may play. Third, within-group studies may provide a further understanding of the cultural processes underlying achievement-related outcomes.

Theoretical Models Explaining the Achievement Gap

Researchers have attempted to explain the consistent achievement gap among ethnic groups from a number of different perspectives. The explanations offered may be grouped into three theoretical models. The first, a cultural deprivation, or deficit, model, explains the poor performance of ethnic minority students as the result of an impoverished and restricted home life. The underlying theory is that "culturally deprived" or "socially disadvantaged" students do not achieve because they lack a cognitively stimulating environment. Research may identify, for example, a lack of parental support, a low value placed on education, a language-poor environment, or even low intellectual capacity. The use of whites as the norm against which other ethnic minority groups are compared may perpetuate a deficit model in which ethnic minority groups are perceived as second-rate to the majority group.

The second theoretical model, the cultural difference model, points to differences in values, expectations, languages, and communication patterns between teachers and students–or between schools and families–as a source of difficulty for ethnic minority students. The underlying theory is that the social organization, learning formats and expectations, communication patterns, and sociolinguistic environment of schools are incongruent with the cultural patterns of different ethnic groups, and therefore limit the opportunities for student success. For some researchers in this area, the important differences exist at the level of interpersonal communication, where teachers and students are unable to fully understand each other. Important communicative differences may be identified at many levels, including formal language (e.g., English versus Spanish), conventions for interacting (e.g. distance between speakers, acceptable physical contact, and turn-taking rules), preferences for rhetorical style (e.g., the use of emotion in persuasion), and storytelling patterns.

A number of studies have also suggested that differences between social worlds, such as home and school, can be difficult for ethnic minority students to negotiate. For example, where U. S. public schooling tends to encourage independence, with competition and rewards for individual achievement, some ethnic groups may tend to encourage interdependence among members, with rewards for collaborative effort. Socialization practices also vary across ethnic groups, so that, for example, the parenting styles acceptable within one ethnic group may vary significantly from the parenting styles valued by schools and educators. Likewise, expectations for the role of parents in education may differ across ethnic groups, so that while some teachers expect active parent involvement at school, parents' conceptions of involvement may be altogether different. Additionally, some parenting practices may focus on social and observational learning and apprenticeship examples, and thus favor visual rather than auditory information processing. Insofar as early learning experiences may vary systematically by ethnic group, ethnicity can have important consequences for learning in (and out) of school.

Some researchers argue that the cultural difference model presumes ethnic differences to be inherently problematic when, in fact, it is the perception of differences and how people act on such perceived differences that is an important source of difficulty for minority students. These researchers typically utilize a cultural-process approach and focus on social interactions. Barriers to school success are identified by examining how students, teachers, and parents understand patterns of language use and socialization. In any case, the cultural difference model has made important contributions to understanding the relationship between ethnicity and school achievement by pointing out that children from different ethnic groups may vary in culturally patterned ways, some of which are relevant for educators.

A third theoretical model, which can be termed sociosystemic, moves outside the classroom in an effort to identify the social, economic, and political forces that contribute to the achievement gap. Researchers have come to recognize how differences in perceived economic opportunity affect the level of school engagement for ethnic minority students. For example, when students' families, peers, and community members hold beliefs that economic and social opportunities are limited, regardless of school achievement, students are far less likely to engage in meaningful ways with formal educational activities. Such beliefs may lead to a youth's active resistance to school or a "disidentification" with schooling overall (i.e., when students are apathetic or disaffected toward schooling). Some studies have identified patterns of differences within ethnic minority groups, where school achievement varies according to the conditions of one's minority status. Specifically, members of voluntary minority groups, including those who immigrated for improved economic opportunity, often do better in school than members of involuntary minority groups, such as those who were colonized or whose residency was forced (e.g., through slavery). Research utilizing a sociosystemic model has also identified schools as the places where societal pressure to assimilate is most keenly perceived–and often resisted. Many researchers and practitioners, for example, have noted that student peer groups link school achievement to the acceptance or rejection of various identities.

Each of the theoretical models on the achievement gap–cultural deficit, cultural difference, and sociosystemic–corresponds with specific policies (federal, state, regional, district, school), curricula, and teaching practices seeking to narrow the gap. Within the cultural deficit model, educators are encouraged to intervene as early as possible in children's development. Many federal and state programs, such as Head Start, focus on the compensation of deficits. From the cultural difference model, schools and teachers are encouraged to make better use of the knowledge and practices of diverse cultures and to form home—school connections. The various forms of multicultural education also derive from a basic cultural difference model, as do some bilingual education programs. Also included in this model are recent efforts to develop theories and practices of culturally-relevant pedagogy, an approach to teaching that modifies both curriculum and communication to reflect the diverse cultural practices of students. The cultural difference model appears to decrease the pressure on children to conform to mainstream culture standards, yet increase the pressure on teachers and schools to transform their practices to better reflect the diversity that is present around them.

For those with a sociosystemic perspective, repairing the achievement gap demands a commitment to an ongoing examination of the social and political systems, along with direct action to counter systemic bias. Few formal policies or programs with this model exist, although critical theory and criticalpedagogy are actively promoted within this perspective. Critical theory seeks to make systemic injustice visible and critical pedagogy encourages teachers and students to understand and contend with stereotyping, racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice.

Because of the tremendous variation within any ethnic group, it would be inappropriate to make generalizations about the needs and abilities of any individual student based solely on his or her membership in a given ethnic group. That said, there is no doubt that variation does exist along several lines, and educators should be aware of this. Perhaps most important of all, members of the teaching and learning community should be reflective of their own perceptions and actions with respect to all learners. It must be recognized that just as schools themselves vary, so do the students within them. Schools are the spaces where a great deal of a youth's development occurs, and on multiple levels, including academic achievement, identity, and social competence. In the end, ethnicity and culture must become part of the face of education in order to reflect and better serve our youth as they encounter an increasingly diverse world.

See also: Literacy and Culture; Multicultural Education; Poverty and Education; Race, Ethnicity, and Culture.

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Hsiu-Zu Ho

Jason Duque Raley

Angela D. Whipple

GENDER EQUITY AND SCHOOLING

The 1992 publication of the landmark report How Schools Shortchange Girls, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Educational Foundation, brought gender equity to the forefront of educational reform. Since then, the focus of discussions about quality education for all students has shifted from equality to equity. In the context of gender, equitable education appropriately addresses the needs of both girls and boys rather than assuming that those needs are identical. Thus, equity in education provides equal opportunities for reaching a shared standard of excellence. Simply defined, gender equity in education is the absence of gender differences in educational outcomes.

Researchers struggling to identify the origins of gender differences have examined a range of theories, including biological, psychoanalytic, social learning, and cognitive developmental approaches to gender differences. While there has been ongoing debate about the role of biology as a source of cognitive differences, educators agree that changes in educational outcomes must focus on the psychosocial aspects of behavior. Regardless of the specific causes of gender gaps, schools have a mission to ensure that all students can fully participate in and experience educational success. While acknowledging that individual differences within each gender are substantial, this analysis will focus on girls and boys as aggregate groups in an examination of similarities and differences in schooling experiences and outcomes. These differences will be reviewed in relation to mathematics, science, humanities, technology, and extracurricular activities, including differences in both attitudes and outcomes. Except where noted, the information presented here is based on data from public schools in the United States, for kindergarten through twelfth grade. Statistical findings reported are based primarily upon results from a number of large-scaled studies and reports, such as those of the American Association of University Women, the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Center for Education Statistics.

Gender Equity Pertains to Boys and Girls

Because much of the literature regarding gender in education has focused on areas where girls are underserved, some have argued that gender equity appeared to pertain to girls only. Near the turn of the new millennium, however, a few authors brought attention to the education gender gap for boys, showing that the national phenomenon of male underachievement has been nearly invisible in the gender-equity literature. Gender equity is not "for girls only," and improvement for one gender should not imply a disadvantage for the other.

Early Behavioral Outcomes

Girls and boys appear to have similar types and amounts of opportunities to help them prepare for elementary school. For example, equal numbers of girls and boys are enrolled in center-based preschool programs and receive equivalent amounts of literacy activities at home. Preschool girls perform higher on tests of small motor skills than boys, and they show fewer signs of developmental difficulties in areas such as physical activity, attention, and speech. Boys in the early grades are more likely to be identified as learning disabled, to be tracked into remedial and special education classes, to be diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder, to be involved with crimes and violence on school property, to repeat a grade, and to be suspended from school. Subsequently, boys are more likely to drop out of school altogether. Girls, on average, receive higher grades than boys in all subjects beginning in the early grades–a trend that continues throughout middle and secondary school.

Classroom Environment

Aspects of the classroom environment have been found to foster and/or reinforce gender biases. Often unintentionally, many teachers exhibit gender biases when interacting with students. For example, teachers generally give more attention to boys than to girls. Ironically, this is partly caused by the fact that girls tend to be better behaved in the classroom and more attentive to assigned tasks. Teachers' attention is often consumed by boisterous or aggressive behaviors more typical of boys. Teachers also tend to give less feedback (positive or negative) to female students. Without such feedback, girls may be deprived of valuable opportunities to evaluate their own behaviors and ideas and to learn to cope with constructive criticism. Boys, on the other hand, when reinforced for their boisterous behaviors, may fail to learn self-control, listening skills, and respect for others.

Classroom materials may also serve to reinforce gender biases in the schools. Although editors of textbooks and other instructional materials have made greater efforts to include women since 1992, female characters continue to play a smaller role than male characters in classroom materials. Moreover, when female characters are represented, they are often shown in stereotypical roles that reinforce gender biases.

Attitudes

Among the core academic subjects, some are considered typically "male," and others "female." In spite of increased female enrollment in mathematics and science courses, ideas persist that these subjects are for boys, while the humanities and social sciences are for girls. Students often act on these stereotypes in class activities by self-selecting into groups and roles according to gender norms. In science classes, for example, boys often dominate laboratory equipment, controlling hands-on experiments while girls observe and take notes. Similarly, when boys and girls work together on computers, boys tend to sit where they can more easily view the monitor and take control of the mouse. Also, computer usage is typically dominated by boys during after-school activities.

Differences remain in boys' and girls' attitudes toward academic subjects. On average, girls report liking mathematics and science less than boys, and having less confidence in their ability to succeed at these subjects. Girls also rate themselves lower in computer abilities than boys, and are far more likely to suffer from math anxiety or tech anxiety. They tend to perceive these subjects as being less useful in their lives, which may diminish their achievement motivation in these areas. Hence, fewer girls plan to choose careers in mathematics, science, or technology. Additionally, whereas boys tend to believe their success in academics is the result of ability, girls tend to attribute academic successes and failures to luck and other external factors. This attribution of success to factors other than effort may lead some girls to feel "helpless," particularly in subjects they perceive as male domains.

Mathematics and Science

Encouragingly, the gender gap in mathematics and science course enrollment is closing. At least as many girls as boys are now enrolling in algebra, geometry, precalculus, calculus, trigonometry, and statistics/probability courses. Moreover, girls receive higher grades than boys, on average, in math classes (as in all academic subjects). Nevertheless, girls consistently lag behind boys in scores on standardized mathematics assessments, including the mathematics sections of the Preliminary SAT (PSAT), the SAT, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and mathematics Advanced Placement (AP) exams. Such "high-stakes" exams are critical factors in determining college admission and scholarship awards, and lower scores can therefore limit career opportunities.

Gender differences found in science are similar to those in mathematics. In high school, girls are more likely than boys to take biology and chemistry, while about equal numbers of girls and boys enroll in engineering and geology. Physics, however, continues to be a male-dominated subject. Girls also take fewer AP science exams than boys, and they receive proportionately fewer top grades.

Humanities

Humanities, an area in which female students typically excel, receives little attention in the research about gender in education. With the shrinking of gender gaps in math and science, however, the humanities are quickly becoming an area in which the most substantial gender differences can be found. More girls than boys enroll in English, sociology, psychology, foreign languages, and fine arts. Particularly notable because of its role in standardized testing is the subject of English. Girls consistently outnumber boys in English classes, and significantly outperform them in most reading and writing assessments, with the notable exception of the AP English exam.

Technology

Many educators, administrators, and policymakers advocate technology as a tool for empowering otherwise disadvantaged groups, thus leveling inequities in educational achievement. Nevertheless, a number of disturbing gender inequities have already been observed in educational technology use. For example, female enrollment in computer science courses lags significantly behind that of males. Moreover, only a small percentage of the students taking the AP exam in computer science (17% in 1995 and 1996) is female. Many more men than women are computer educators, and women remain greatly underrepresented in computer technology careers. Such disparities are of particular concern because technology skills are increasingly crucial for high-skill, well-paying jobs.

Several hypotheses have been suggested to explain the gender gaps in technology. Social and parental expectations, along with teacher biases, are commonly suggested reasons. Differential access to computers is also thought to play a significant role in creating gender disparities. It is often reported that parents are more likely to buy computers for boys than girls. Moreover, even when given equal access, boys use computers at home more frequently than girls. Additionally, computer software may appeal more to boys than to girls. Computer-related toys and games, designed mostly by males, are marketed primarily to boys and are typically found in the "boys' aisles" in toy stores. Games, which play a significant role in computer use, are dominated by images of competition, sports, and violence, which typically appeal more to males. These games, along with other technology-based materials, may help to perpetuate gender stereotypes.

Extracurricular School Activities

Girls and boys tend to participate in different types of extracurricular activities, representing traditional areas of gender dominance. Females, for example, are more likely than males to participate in performing arts, belong to academic clubs, work on the school newspaper or yearbook, or participate in the student council or government. Females are also more active than males in community service. Males, on the other hand, are more likely than females to play on athletic teams. While girls' rates of participation in team sports have increased since 1972, equity has not been achieved.

The differences in boys' and girls' choices of extracurricular activities may have important consequences. For example, sports participation has been linked to higher academic achievement as well as greater leadership capacity, better overall health, higher self-esteem, and more positive attitudes toward school. On the other hand, participation in non-sports-based extracurricular activities has also been found to build self-esteem, leadership, and social skills; to improve general health; and is associated with higher mathematics and reading test scores.

Individual Differences

It is important to acknowledge that the gender differences described above are based on average group scores. Girls (and boys) are not a uniform group and their needs are certainly not singular. In fact, large differences exist within each gender across different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. For example, African-American girls, despite the existence of both racial and gender discrimination, have a higher self-esteem, healthier body image, and greater social assertiveness than their white female counterparts. These girls also perform better on many academic indicators than their black male counterparts. Similarly, Latino girls score higher than Latino boys in mathematics by the eighth grade, and in science by the twelfth grade–contradicting patterns for girls on the whole. However, Latino females also have the highest dropout rate of all groups of girls, with one in five leaving school by the age of seventeen.

Race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES) appear to play a larger role than gender in determining enrollment in remedial and special education classes; and participation rates are lower in all extracurricular activities for low-SES students. Furthermore, students in ethnically diverse and low socioeconomic schools have less access to technology. Finally, regional differences may also contribute to gaps in educational outcomes. Girls in rural southern regions of the country consistently perform below girls from rural and nonrural areas in other regions. Greater understanding of gender, racial, ethnic, regional, and socioeconomic class differences and needs can only improve U.S. schooling. Building on all students' cultures, interests, and ways of knowing can make schooling experiences meaningful to their lives and useful for addressing social problems. At its core, educational equity seeks to enrich classrooms, expand choices, and widen opportunities for reaching a shared standard of excellence for all students.

See also: Developmental Theory, subentry on Cognitive and Information Processing; Gender Issues, International; Moral Development; Motivation, subentry on Instruction; Single-Sex Institutions; Title IX.

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Hsiu-Zu Ho

Heather A. Tomlinson

Angela D. Whipple