Using Foucault's dossier approach, the author uses the Chinese people as a case example to illustrate the politics of identification and identity assignment in professional social work literature in North America. The article reveals how Chinese people are essentialized, otherized, and negatively positioned as an ethnic construct. (BF)

Although the study of self-selected ethnic labels may aid scientists in their understanding of an ethnic group, the uncoordinated use of ethnic labels applied by social scientists and others can result in confusion and misinformation. A literature review yields a plethora of terms used to refer to Mexican Americans. Terms currently popular are…

In this critique of the primary school system, the author discusses such things as early identification procedures which can label a normal child "handicapped", and unnecessary competition which causes unhealthy stress--things the author feels help to generate "system-damaged" children who then require special education. (DLS)

The article examines the background and current status of attempts to define the term "learning disabilities" (LDs), and concludes that resolution of the problem by continued search for a consummate definition of LD is unrealistic. (Author)

Questions the existence of attention deficit disorder (ADD), a commonly diagnosed "disease" based on behavioral characteristics. There may be no medical or physiological basis for ADD. The National Association of School Psychologists deplores labeling children and creating categories of exclusion. Instead, educators should respond to individual…

Ways of identifying at-risk students are examined in this paper, which compares the perceptions of four groups--educational researchers, national reform groups, student and local policymakers, and teachers. The comparison is placed within the social and historical contexts of the development of educational policies for at-risk students in the late…

Presented is a sociological perspective on the labeling of children as mentally retarded which lists seven classifications of deviance, defines labeling as society's attachment of a deviant name to some action or attribute of an individual, and distinguishes between primary deviation (deviation that is not specifically labeled) and secondary…

The volume consists of papers from the 1985 symposium "Identification of the Gifted" at the Sixth World Conference on Gifted and Talented Children in Hamburg (Federal Republic of Germany). Twelve chapters have the following titles and authors: (1) "Introduction" (J. F. Feldhusen and K. A. Heller); (2) "A Conception of…

This study focuses on the impact of age on interpersonal evaluation of persons, particularly the elderly as individuals and not as a group. Using a 75-year-old target and a 23-year-old target, the experimenter predicted and found support for the idea that personal information contained in a transcript would evoke sympathy, and thereby lead…

Presented at the First National Conference on Learning Disabilities in Ottawa, Canada in October, 1977, the article discusses learning disabilities and their appropriate special educational services in Canada, focusing on the processes of categorization and labeling. (DLS)

Examined are some generic issues and problems related to the development of operational procedures for identifying learning disabled children, focusing on the formula proposed by the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped. (DLS)

Focuses on the differentiation between acute and chronic school-phobic adolescents. Discusses incidence, classification systems, case descriptions, and distinctive features of acute and chronic school phobia. Identification of appropriate treatment strategies is stressed. (Author)

A study was conducted to replicate previous findings concerning naive judges' negative immediate impressions of learning disabled children. Results indicated that while second grade learning disabled boys were judged as at least as adaptable as and less hostile than nonlearning disabled children, the opposite results were obtained with fourth…