Exceptionality in East Asia
Explorations in the Actiotope Model of Giftedness
- 304 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Exceptionality in East Asia
Explorations in the Actiotope Model of Giftedness
About This Book
The continual successes of students from East-Asia are confirmed in a variety of international tests of academic achievement and yet, despite this attainment, many scholars have realised that a substantial proportion of these students are also underachieving.
Using the actiotope model of giftedness to integrate a broad range of research, this innovative book features a number of chapters written by internationally recognised scholars in a frank and lively discussion about the origins of exceptionality in students from East Asia. With the actiotope model as the theoretical framework, the book distinguishes between trait models of giftedness and systems approaches to exceptionality. Breaking new ground in understanding the complex interactions between a learner's environment, goals, intelligence and motivations in the development of their ever-expanding knowledge and skill set, this book will:
-
- describe, with examples, a systems approach to the development of exceptionality, allowing educators and researchers the ability to track students with greater precision;
-
- influence the means by which educators identify and support students with the potential for exceptional performance;
-
- suggest possible reasons for the variability in the achievement of potentially gifted students;
-
- provide strategies to support these students;
-
- have a profound effect on the way that exceptionality and giftedness are defined and understood, not only in East Asia but also in the West.
Covering issues that have firm theoretical foundations and which are based on cutting edge ideas, Exceptionality in East Asia has significant implications for gifted education and is essential reading for scholars, undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in the psychological and social basis of exceptionality.
Frequently asked questions
Information
- The action repertoire of experts in their specialty includes actions that are more successful. A professional musician who is asked to play a new track will immediately find a much better interpretation than a good amateur musician. Similarly, chess Grand Masters, who analyze chess patterns, find much stronger turns than a novice chess player. Mathematics professors can solve complex equation systems with ease; the average person finds them very dif-ficult to understand.
- The action repertoire of experts in their specialty is far more elaborated. Chess Grand Masters, for example, have as many useful chess patterns (chunks) saved in their mind as there are words in their native language. They record more items of information, recognize the diverse relationships among them, and save those items in a more structured manner.
- Access to effective actions. Experts have sophisticated strategies, enabling them to retrieve successful actions and solutions to problems more quickly and in a more targeted manner. By contrast, the novice has access to poor choices along with possibilities for success. If you have managed to ride a bike without falling off, for example, there is no guarantee that the next time you ride a bike you will also be free of accidents.
- Analysis of problems. Before experts act, they analyze the problem extensively and create a more actionâfunctional problem representation than does a novice.
- Physical adaptations. The bodies of experts are adjusted in many ways to the requirements of their domain. To illustrate, this applies not only to the different muscular systems of weightlifters, table tennis players and radiologists, but also to the specialized regions of their brains, which are enlarged in connection to their activities.
- Strategies. Experts use more suitable strategies to arrive at a solution. Expert physicians, for example, start with the given information and work their way through to the solution of the problem. Students of physics, however, typically reverse this process and try to work their way backwards from the unknown, to the given information.
- Cognitive effort. Experts have automated an enormous number of cognitive action steps. They do not have to be laboriously constructed to solve a problem, but can simply be retrieved. Consequently, cognitive resources are available for the analysis of aspects of problems, whose solutions are unknown at this point.
- a biological adaptation that was mainly carried by the human species and is conceptually locatable in biotopes;
- a social adaptation that is mainly carried by social associations, which we can conceptually locate in sociotopes; and
- an individual adaptation that is carried by individuals, which we can conceptually locate in actiotopes.
- The component perspective (What are the elements of an actiotope? How do they interact?).
- The dynamic perspective (How do actiotopes change?).
- The system perspective (How do actiotopes remain stable, especially as they develop into excellence?).
- is part of the action repertoire of the person;
- pursues an aim that seems reachable because of this action;
- is made possible because the situation was constituted in a way to allow this action; and,
- is selected because the person decided that the action was the most expedient in this situation from the repertoire of possible actions.
- The action repertoire is the total of individual possibilities of actions (e.g. first grade pupils typically can add and multiply in their heads, while fourth grade pupils can also calculate the same operations in a notational way. Hence, the latterâs mathematical action repertoire is more comprehensive.).
- Goals, which are targeted conditions by the individual through actions (e.g. learning targets, social aims, professional goals).
- Environmentâthe material, social and informational environment with which an individual actively interacts (i.e. within the actiotope) as well as the external environments of an actiotope.
- Subjective action space, which are the possibilities of actions considered by the individual (to reach the aims, the most promising actions in this situation are chosen from the personal action repertoireâe.g. in a basketball match Mike may dribble around his opponent using the right instead of the left side; Carlos may try a bluff in his first card game for money when he has a bad set of cards; and Lian may choose an indirect mathematical proof for a mathematical theorem).
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1. The actiotope model of giftedness: an introduction to some central theoretical assumptions
- 2. Talent development as adaptation: the role of educational and learning capital
- 3. Confucianism, learning self-concept and the development of exceptionality
- 4. Pathways to artistic giftedness: developmental theory as a complement to the actiotope model of giftedness
- 5. Chinese students and mathematical problem solving: an application of the actiotope model of giftedness
- 6. Intelligence and academic achievement â with a focus on the actiotope model of giftedness
- 7. Goal orientations and the development of subjective action space in Chinese students
- 8. Social-emotional development of Chinese gifted students: a review based within the actiotope model of giftedness
- 9. The âTiger Motherâ factor: curriculum, schooling and mentoring of Asian students in an Australian context
- 10. Parental involvement within the actiotope model of giftedness: what it means for East-Asian students
- 11. Support-oriented identification of gifted students in East Asia according to the actiotope model of giftedness
- 12. Twice-exceptional students with deafness or hard-of-hearing and giftedness
- 13. Gifted education policy and the development of exceptionality: a Hong Kong perspective
- 14. The gifted and talented and effective learning: a focus on the actiotope model of giftedness in the Asian context
- Index