Inequality Seminar: Arne Boker, "Sociological Perspectives on Giftedness and Gifted Education"
Arne Boker will present "Sociological Perspectives on Giftedness and Gifted Education" from 1:30 to 3 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 10 in W113 Seashore Hall as part of the Inequality Seminar. Boker is a researcher at the University of Hildesheim, Germany.
This talk is about the sociological perspectives on giftedness and gifted education. The talk consists of two main parts. In the first part, Boker will present existing findings of sociological research on giftedness and gifted education. This mainly includes findings of researchers in the field of sociology of education since the 1960s. To render it more precise, Boker will talk about the nature-nurture debate, social inequality in gifted education programs and experiences of the – so called – gifted students. While these findings are important to disprove key ideas of gifted education scholars, the sociological approaches they are based on, do not challenge the concept of giftedness in general. Thus, in the second part of Boker's talk, he will discuss the theoretical frameworks which question the social category of giftedness. He will present the main ideas of "Goodness Personified," which are based mainly on the theoretical frameworks of Foucault and Nietzsche, and will share the first results of his PhD-project, which uses the concept of the Economy of Worth, developed by Boltanski/Thévenot (2007) and Boltanski/Chiapello (2003).
The poster for this talk is available here.
The Inequality Seminar is a seminar and speaker series that provides a forum on campus for faculty and graduate students who are interested in inequality broadly defined. It is an opportunity for faculty and graduate students to present their research and to hear about other inequality-related work from researchers on and off-campus.
The Inequality Seminar meets Mondays from 1:30-3 p.m. in W113 Seashore Hall.
If you are interested in hearing about future talks (which well be held each Monday throughout the semester), or if you have any questions about the Inequality Seminar, please contact Sarah Bruch at sarah-bruch@uiowa.edu.