Course Definitions for EDC 210--Diversity in the Schools

ATTITUDES (FEELING - EMOTIONAL) The "I" portion of one's self-concept. They are our likes and dislikes; our affinity for and our aversion to situations, objects, persons, groups, etc.

ATTRIBUTION The result when a person causally interprets a set of information.

BELIEFS (KNOWLEDGE) The cognitive component: it is the relationship between two things or between something and a characteristic of it. (i.e., I believe in democracy; dogs have four legs.)

CATEGORY An accessible cluster of associated ideas which as a whole has the property of guiding daily adjustments.

CAREER A sequence of positions a person holds in a lifetime of which occupation is only one. School, college, employment, family, and volunteering are all part of one's life career.

CAREER DEVELOPMENT The decisions and choices a person makes of work and other life roles over the life span - a lifelong process of developing and implementing a self-concept with satisfaction to self and benefits to society - a process which is part of human development.

CAREER COUNSELING Assistance to youth and adults, using individual or group strategies designed to help individuals with decisions and choices about work and other life roles.

CAREER EDUCATION A reform movement begun in 1971 to help teachers refocus school subjects, K-14, to make them more vocationally relevant; main strategies are occupational information about 15 occupational clusters; work experience; and collaboration with business and industry.

CAREER GUIDANCE Systematic assistance provided by teachers, counselors, parents, or business administrators to students in schools to facilitate their career development; main strategies involve self assessment, options assessment, and learning a process of area decision-making. Identified largely with schools.

DIFFERENTIATED CATEGORIES Categories which are held tentatively, making allowance for variation and subdivision.

DISCRIMINATION (Behavioral) - differential treatment of individuals because of their membership in a minority group. May result from prejudicial attitudes held by an individual member of the majority, an institution, or a society, or from conformity.

EGOCENTRISM Inability to take another person's perspective. Thought is "centered on the self and creates cognitive limitations." (Piaget)

ETHNIC GROUP A group whose members are bound together by common cultural characteristics (e.g., values, ideas, food habits, family patterns, sexual behavior, modes of tress, standards of beauty, political conceptions, economic forms, and recreational patterns). Inherently ETHNOCENTRIC . Its members tend to regard their own cultural traits as natural, superior and correct (view those of other ethnic groups as odd, inferior, or immoral).

FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR The tendency for observers to perceive an actor to be more responsible for his or her behavior than the actor perceives himself/herself to be. Said differently, observers are more likely to attribute actors' behaviors to be caused by the actor whereas actors are more likely to attribute their behaviors to external situational cues. The error lies in the observers' tendency to underestimate the impact of situational factors and to overestimate the importance of internal dispositional factors.

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM Institutional racism represents a social system in which race is the major criterion of role assignment, role rewards, and socialization. After colonial contact takes place, elite monopoly of political, economic, social, cultural, and psychological resources develops, resulting in a social system which is oppressive of all minorities.

LABELS OF PRIMARY POTENCY Out of all the labels which could be attached to an individual, these labels are the most powerful and salient. (Examples: a woman doctor, a blind man, and male nurse.)

LEVELS OF ANALYSIS

1. individual/psychological
2. group/social-psychological
3. society/societal

MAJORITY Categories of people who possess access to positions of power, prestige, and privileges in a society (synonym: dominant elite, superordinate). Controls society's economic, political, social systems.

MINORITY Categories of people that possess imperfect access to positions of equal power, prestige, and privileges in a society (synonym: subordinate). Any group that views itself and/or is defined by a dominant power elite as unique on the basis of perceived physical, cultural, economic, and/or behavioral characteristics and is treated accordingly in a negative manner.

Real and/or perceived

1. Physical - race, sex, age
2. Cultural - religion, ethnicity
3. Economic - social class
4. Behavioral - deviant (deviation)

Can a minority be racist? At which analytical level?

Can a woman be sexist? Use a theoretical framework.

MONOPOLISTIC CATEGORIES Categories which are so powerful and rigid that all contradictory information is rejected.

NON-CONSCIOUS IDEOLOGY A set of beliefs that we accept implicitly but of which we are unaware because we cannot even conceive of alternative conceptions of the world, much as a fish is unaware that its environment is wet.

NULL HYPOTHESIS A hypothesis that states that there is no difference between two or more groups on some particular criterion. If the groups differ more than some arbitrary amount which is based upon the probability that something could occur by chance, the null hypothesis is rejected. If the groups differ less than that amount, the null hypothesis cannot be rejected.

OPPRESSION Oppression occurs when a group in power uses physical force or threats in a discriminatory way to control and subordinate other groups.

POWER

1. individual - the ability to mobilize your own resource to accomplish a task
2. societal - the ability to influence the behavior of others or influence control and the means to enforce that influence
3. interpersonal power - the ability to get another person to to or believe something that he or she would not necessarily have done or believed spontaneously

PREJUDICE: "HARDENING OF THE CATEGORIES" An unwillingness to change one's biased beliefs and attitudes after being presented with new contradictory information. Not to be confused with refencing.

PRINCIPLE OF LEAST EFFORT Based on the fact that, as a rule, monopolistic categories are much easier to form and to hold than are differentiated categories (either/or thinking).

PSYCHOLOGICAL CLOWNING Exaggerating an ethnic trait, (i.e., exaggerating the Black accent) and affecting the traits ascribed to one's racial group to enjoy some pragmatic reward.

RACE The perception of an individual or group which is defined as different from the elite and other minorities on the basis of perceived physical criteria. Important: race is not truly a physical group, but one which is perceived and defined as different on the basis of physical criteria (i.e., skin color, hair type, etc.).

RACIAL PREJUDICE An attitude toward an individual or a group predicated upon traits or characteristics which are, or are erroneously believed to be, racial in origin, but without any adequate foundation in fact or experiential acquaintance. A common form of stereotype response.

RACISM/SEXISM When an elite group (dominant) develops a social system in which race/sex is the major criterion of role assignment, role rewards and socialization and has the power to enforce those decisions.

REFENCING DEVICE (Yeah, but....syndrome) A common mental device which permits people to hold to their prejudgments even in the face of much contradictory evidence, admitting exceptions. (Reference to Allport as a process.)

REPRESSION Repression occurs when a group unconsciously accepts unequal treatment. It involves control imposed by a group in power through psychological acceptance by the subordinate group(s).

STEREOTYPE An exaggerated belief associated with a category, the attribution of identical characteristics to any person in a group, regardless of the actual variation among members of that group. The characteristics, habits, abilities and expectations arbitrarily assigned to people solely on the basis of group membership, regardless of their attributes as individuals. Stereotypes may be based on race, sex, age, ethnic background, income level, handicap, sexual preference or other factors.

SEX DIFFERENCE STEREOTYPES Perceptions of "typical" characteristics and behavior of males and females; views of what males and females "are like" (Kutner & Brogan, 1976).

SEX-ROLE STEREOTYPES Beliefs concerning the general appropriateness of various roles and activities for women and men.

SEX-TRAIT STEREOTYPES Psychological characteristics or behavioral traits that are believed to characterize one sex with much greater or lesser frequency than the other; sex-trait stereotypes undergird both the sex-role stereotypes and sex roles themselves (Williams & Best, 1982).

SEX-AFFIRMATIVE BEHAVIOR Attempts to compensate for the effects of past discrimination and the present unequal status of women.

SEX-BIASED BEHAVIOR Reflects bias or stereotyping but is not a violation of state or national laws regarding non-discrimination and equality of the sexes.

SEX-FAIR BEHAVIOR Treats both sexes in equal or similar ways.

SEX-ROLE SYSTEM The network of attitudes, feelings ant behaviors which result from the pervasiveness of sex-role stereotyping in the culture.

SOCIALIZATION The process by which behaviors, roles, attitudes and beliefs are transmitted to the next generation. The socializing agents (e.g., family, schools, churches, media, peers) hold stereotypic beliefs about what are sex-appropriate characteristics.

TWO-VALUED JUDGMENTS Evaluations of the world in terms of two values; i.e., something is either all good or all bad. These are a function of monopolistic categories.

WISHFUL THINKING/SELF-DECEPTION Because we believe something to be desirable, we persuade ourselves that it is true.