TITLE:
The Chinese Secondary In-Service Teachers’ Attitudes toward Academic Brilliance, Athleticism, and Studiousness of Their Students
AUTHORS:
Fei Zi, Hao Wu, William Y. Lan, Bonnie Cramond, Wei Liu
KEYWORDS:
Quantitative Methodologies, Secondary, Definition and/or Conception of Giftedness/Talent, Attitudes, Academic Brilliance, Athleticism, Studiousness, Asian
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.12 No.1,
January
28,
2021
ABSTRACT: This study used Tannenbaum’s (1962) research model to examine Chinese secondary teachers’ attitudes toward their students and investigate whether they had anti-intellectual beliefs and gender stereotypes compared with their counterparts in western nations. Totally 357 Chinese secondary teachers were recruited to rate their attitudes toward eight types of hypothesized students varying in three opposite pairs of characteristics: academic brilliance/average, studiousness/nonstudiousness, and athleticism/nonathleticism. The results indicate that the Chinese teachers viewed students who were both academically brilliant and athletic as the most favored type of students, followed by those who were either academically brilliant or athletic. The teachers showed the least preference toward the students who were average in academic brilliance, nonstudious, and nonathletic. This study did not show overt anti-intellectualism among Chinese teachers, but revealed teachers’ perfectionistic attitude and implicit anti-intellectualism since that the athletic-brilliant students were ranked vastly higher than nonathletic-brilliant ones. Chinese teachers also showed gender stereotypes. They held relatively more positive attitudes toward male students and tended to believe that female students were more likely to achieve academic brilliance by studying hard.