OCC 3006 Ethical and Legal

Aspects of Rehabilitation
Education and moral
ANGUS NOV 2021
Intended Learning Outcome
 At the end of the lecture, students are expected to be able to:
 List the importance of education
 Elaborate the meaning of equality and equity in education
 Evaluate the moral concern for education for gifted children
 Criticise the injustice created by meritocracy
Complete Secondary Education
 in rich countries, only three-quarters of children from the poorest families complete secondary education,
compared to 90% of children from the richest families
 But in poor countries
Inequalities in Education
 Inequalities of income are compounded with other inequalities of gender, ethnicity, disability and geography to form
a suffocating web of exclusion.
 In a poor rural area of Pakistan, girls are three times as likely as poor boys to have never attended school.
 In India, the median number of years of education girls from the poorest families receive is zero, compared to 9.1 years for
girls from the richest families.
 Inequalities in Education undermines social mobility; it ensures that if you are born poor, you and your children will
die poor.
 Education segregated by class, wealth, ethnicity, gender or other signifiers of privilege and exclusion; this cements
inequality.
 Segregated patterns of schooling build segregated communities, driving a wedge between the haves and the have-nots, right at
the start of life.
Equality in Education
Reducing poverty.
Boosting opportunity for all.
Bringing society together.
Supporting democratic societies.
Equality in Education
Universal
Free
Public
Investment in teachers
Relevant
Accountable to families and citizens
The more the education
Equality for reaching their full learning
potential……
● Race
● Culture
● Gender
● Religion
● Ethnicity
● Sexual orientation
● Immigration status
● Individual experiences
● Socio-economic status
Is Equality in Education enough?
EQUALITY IS:
● Generic
EQUITY IS:
● Group-focused
● Equal ● Adaptable
● Individual-focused
● Fair
Support to SEN students

Extratime for assessment

Adaptative devices
Any more?
Education to Gifted Students
 Distributive justice (Deutsch, 1985)
 Equity

 Equality

 Need

 the value of need might be the right value for distributive justice in
situations where the needs of gifted students are not met
a gifted student can feel unmotivated and may even underachieve because of a
school environment that is not challenging
Inclusive Education for Gifted Students
(Tirri and Laine, 2017)
 Is gifted student omniscient?
 global giftedness vs uneven profiles are far more common (twice-exceptional students)
 Classroom Teachers Have the Time, the Skill, and the Will to Differentiate Adequately?
 Decentralization in curriculum design
 Ungraded school which allows pupils to advance in their studies with a flexible
schedule.
 Meritocracy:
moral concern in
modern society
Meritocracy and inequality: moral
considerations
 meritocracy, which implies a system of rewards
 people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their status at birth.
 obvious and profoundly moral to contemporary society: we all get what we deserve.
 the term was popularised by Michael Young’s The Rise of Meritocracy, has become an
utterly everyday feature of the political landscape.
 an iconic concept with the rise of equal opportunities and anti-discrimination agendas, in which
recruitment purely on the virtue of ‘merit’ became requisite
 Yale Law School professor Daniel Markovits: our meritocracy requires an endless, stress-filled, life-
consuming competition even among the winners.
Meritocracy, Elitism and Inequality The Political Quarterly, Volume: 91, Issue: 2, Pages: 397-404, First published: 30 March 2020, DOI: (10.1111/1467-923X.12828)
Meritocracy, Elitism and Inequality The Political Quarterly, Volume: 91, Issue: 2, Pages: 397-404, First published: 30 March 2020, DOI: (10.1111/1467-923X.12828)
 The CSI-W model
(Dijk, Kooik, Karanika-Murray, Vos, Meyer, 2020)
Meritocracy a myth (Dijk, Kooik, Karanika-
Murray, Vos, Meyer, 2020)

 The individual level

 KSA
 the assumption that opportunities and rewards are the result of job performance / a function of an individual’s capabilities.
 capabilities manifest themselves via KSAs that are learned: various opportunities and rewards (e.g., promotion and receiving
training) lead to the further development of KSAs (Tomaskovic-Devey, 1993), those with more initial opportunities and
rewards are likely to accumulate more KSAs and, hence, more subsequent opportunities and rewards.
 Motivation
 disadvantaged groups can be expected to have experienced more negative kicks and have less initial opportunities and rewards.
 such lower levels of motivation negatively affect performance, subsequent opportunities and rewards, and ensuing motivation
levels.
Meritocracy a myth (Dijk, Kooik, Karanika-
Murray, Vos, Meyer, 2020)

 The dyadic level

 The stereotypes and status beliefs mechanism
 the assumption that differences in performance, opportunities, and rewards between individuals
originate from evaluators’ assessments of and responses to a target individual’s competence and
associated status. i.e., attributed respect, prominence, esteem, and influence.
 competence attributions are influenced by stereotypes and status beliefs of social
groups.
 who are subject to negative [positive] competence stereotypes and status beliefs tend to be
undermined [supported] in a variety of ways, causing them to perform worse [better] and causing
others to evaluate their performance as worse [better], which decreases [increases] their
opportunities and rewards and, in turn, confirms and reinforces status and competence attributions.
Meritocracy a myth (Dijk, Kooik, Karanika-
Murray, Vos, Meyer, 2020)

 an individual’s social capital is expected to represent an important source for learning

knowledge and skills that can enhance performance
 social capital determines the extent of access to colleagues and networks outside one’s own
network or sphere of influence, which can enhance personal opportunities.
 Homophily: birds of a feather to flock together
 The reciprocity mechanism: networks are initially diverse may become more homogeneous over
time
 members from historically disadvantaged groups are less likely to be able to contribute equally
compared to members from advantaged groups.
 capital correlations: several forms of capital that affect each other and exacerbate societal
stratification.
Meritocracy a myth (Dijk, Kooik, Karanika-
Murray, Vos, Meyer, 2020)
 segmentation creates differences between core and peripheral organizations
 social group membership is known to affect an individual’s access to organizations and occupations:
 Core organizations and occupations are more likely to be dominated by members of advantaged groups
 winner-take-all structures
 there is an imperfect substitution among different performers: exclusive approach to talent management
by providing a limited pool of employees with more resources
 top performers to receive disproportionately more opportunities and rewards.
 members of historically advantaged groups are more likely to be among the top performers compared to
members of historically disadvantaged groups
 winner-take-all structures tend to contribute to the accumulation of social inequality through work overtime.
Meritocracy a myth (Dijk, Kooik, Karanika-
Murray, Vos, Meyer, 2020)

 A meritocratic ideology makes members less suspicious about causes other than merit
that drive performance differences
 gives evaluators the impression that their judgments are fair and balanced and in no
need of correction
 increases the likelihood that the performance of historically advantaged members is
rewarded more positively than the performance of historically disadvantaged members
 opportunities and rewards are distributed unevenly across members of different social groups,
causing social inequality to accumulate through work overtime. 
 Brainstorming
Is meritocracy exist in Hong Kong?
If no, shall we promote the ideology of meritocracy?
If yes, what should we do?
Reference
 Cheung, R.S.H., Hui, A.N.N. Cheung, A.C.K. (2020). Gifted Education in Hong Kong: A School-Based Support
Program Catering to Learner Diversity. ECNU Review of Education, 3(4). 632-658.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2096531120967447
 Dijk, Hv., Kooik, D., Karanika-Murray, M., Vos, AD., Meyer, B. (2020). Meritocracy a myth? A multilevel
perspective of how social inequality accumulates through work. Organizational Psychology Review. 10(3-4). 240-
269. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041386620930063
 Mijs, J.B., Savage, M. (2020). Meritocracy, Elitism and Inequality. The Political Quarterly 91(2).
doi:10.1111/1467-923X.12828
 Tirri, K., Laine, S. (2017). Ethical Challenges in Inclusive Education: the Case of Gifted Students. Ethics, Equity,
and Inclusive Education: International Perspectives on Inclusive Education, 9. 239-257. doi:10.1108/S1479-
363620170000009010