Hui Song

Per. 6
Track Hours 1-8
Source A:
APA Citation:
Ainsworth-Darnell, J. W., & Downey, D. B. (1998). Assessing the oppositional culture explanation for
racial/ethnic differences in school performance. American sociological review, 536-553.

Source Validation: The paper has research over how attitudes of different cultures/races affect
how well a person does in school.
Origin of Source: I found this source while browsing Google Scholar.
Intended Audience: Members of the psychological research community.
Arguments Made: The study focused mostly on the African American point of view, trying to
evaluate the claims of a similar study that came to the conclusion that African American
students struggle in school because they werent motivated. This study, however, included a
control that was the attitudes of white students. The study concluded that African Americans
were actually more motivated than white students were, and that the reason for the struggle of
African American students involved something else. The author gave three possible reasons for
this: Abstract vs Concrete Attitudes, Values vs Material Conditions, and Positivity Bias.

Source B:
APA Citation:
Kao, G. (1995). Asian Americans as model minorities? A look at their academic performance.
American journal of Education, 121-159.

Source Validation: This research paper provides a plethora of data on why Asians seem to do
so much better than other minorities as well as white students.
Origin of Source: I found this source while browsing Google Scholar.
Intended Audience: Members of the psychological research community.
Arguments Made: The findings showed that although certain types of Asians do better at
school, there are also some that do considerably worse. For example, Pacific Islanders are
disadvantaged in school, while Southeast Asians do considerably better despite a similar
background. It also found that Asian students have less communication with their families than
white families even though it has been found that family communication has effects on the
grades of white students.
Source C:
MLA Citation:
Ericsson, Anders, and Robert Pool. "Malcolm Gladwell Got Us Wrong: Our Research Was Key to
the 10,000-hour Rule, but Heres What Got Oversimplified." Saloncom RSS.
Salon, 10
Apr.2016. Web. 14 Sept. 2016.
Source Validation: This article is an excerpt from a book that was co-written by the researcher
who conducted the experiment on the 10,000 hours of practice rule found in my summer
reading Outliers.
Origin of Source: I found this source while researching the 10,000 hour rule.

Intended Audience: General public, especially people who have read Outliers.
Arguments Made: Anders Ericsson states that Malcolm Gladwell had over generalized his
research for the sake of sounding appealing to the common reader. Ericsson asserts that the
most successful people actually practiced far more than 10,000 hours and that the 10,000 hours
myth was only the average amount of time. He also asserts that some of the points Gladwell
made, such as the amount of performances the Beatles gave before becoming famous, are
invalid because of possible inaccuracies in documentation, and the difference between practice
and performances. One more aspect called into question by Ericsson, the amount of practice
needed for different fields.
Source D:
APA Citation:
DiMaggio, P. (1982). Cultural capital and school success: The impact of status culture participation on the
grades of US high school students. American sociological review, 189-201.

Source Validation: This paper provides research on how living in a high culture setting
(enjoying the classic definition of the arts) can affect how well a person does in school.
Origin of Source: I found this source on Google Scholar.
Intended Audience: Members of the sociology research community.
Arguments Made: The study concluded that high culture association at an early age is not as
important as previously thought by Gruenberg (earlier study). However, that finding only applied
to adults, as the paper would later state that socialization at an early age would diminish with
age. This in turn meant that the cultural implications of high culture helped high school students
achieve higher grades. The problem with the experiment brought up by the paper, was that no
data had been yet collected on how high culture affects college students, job seekers, and
people seeking to get married.
Source E:
MLA Citation:
Lahey, Jessica. "Introversion and Class Participation - Quiet Revolution." Quiet Revolution
Class
Participation Lets Talk About It Comments. Quiet Revolution, 02 June 2015.
Web. 15
Sept. 2016.
Source Validation: This article provides valuable insight on how to apply different teaching
methods in the classroom as well as giving an example of a person who didnt understand
temperament before and how to teach them.
Origin of Source: Found this source while searching for the effects of introversion in the
classroom.
Intended Audience: Teachers struggling to understand their students and readers who had
read her previous article.
Arguments Made: Initially, the author made the mistake of confusing anxiety and shyness with
introversion in a previous article she had written. Upon receiving a plethora of criticism,
however, she reached out to people whom she knew were introverts to better understand the
temperament that she was not (shes an extrovert). She mentions three specifically: Susan
Cain, Dr. Kendall Hoyt, and Katherine Schultz. Under the guidance of these three, Jessica
Lahey learned to accommodate students to better adapt to classroom participation. Furthermore

she learned to better distinguish between shyness and introversion and to better apply these
things in the classroom.
Reflection:
Source A is a rather interesting focusing on the attitudes of African Americans as a factor
in how well they do in school compared to their white counterparts. I definitely found it rather
surprising that even if African Americans were equally motivated to do well in school, they
statistically did worse than their white counterparts. I am considering speaking to my mentors
about the matter in the future. I will state that the theories brought up by the authors was very
interesting and I also plan to speak about it as well. This paper took about two hours and 15
minutes for me to read and understand due to the difficult scientific syntax present in the paper
as well as the 17 page length.
Source B was also rather similar to Source A, only this time it compared multiple types of
Asians as well as whites in terms of education. The findings were also equally surprising to
those in Source A. I definitely would like to inquire on why Pacific Islanders do worse in school,
since looking back, I realize that this phenomenon definitely seems to be present. I would like to
research more on how the culture perhaps affects this difference between Pacific Islanders and
East and Southeast Asians. Furthermore, Id like to look more into how family communication
affects students across cultures and why Asians seem to be the outliers when it comes to the
topic. This paper is similar in terms of difficulty and has more than twice as many pages as the
previous source, but has only one column of text per page (compared to two in Source A), so it
took about two and-a-half hours to read and process the information.
Source C definitely had me questioning the authenticity of Malcolm Gladwells claims in
Outliers. This was the source that was the most shocking out of the ones I had found, yet at the
same time, Im not entirely surprised. Malcolm Gladwells writing is designed to be read by the
general public, so in all seriousness, simplifying the research was inevitable. However, I do think
some clarification would be necessary for those who read the book. However, once again I will
speak with my mentors on their opinions on the matter. Given that this was more of a long
article, it took me about half an hour to read and process.
Source D was a source that included valuable information that I did not even consider
until I had found it. I had forgotten to take into account the type of culture people consume that
doesnt just come from where we were born/raised. This is definitely a topic I believe is worth
looking into with my mentors. This paper was slightly shorter in length than Source A, but it was
definitely the most difficult for me to understand. Thus this paper also took me about two hours
and 15 minutes.
Finally, Source E is a source I think is very valuable to understand in my topic, that I had
also almost overlooked. Applying knowledge about temperament to classrooms is also an
important task to consider. This page reminded me that understanding 100s of students needs
and temperaments is easier said than done. This was a medium length article that needed
referring to other articles previously written. Thus, this article took about half an hour to read and
process.