Social constructions of childhood deviance by United States educators and Jordanian educators

Childhood deviance is constructed differently in different social contexts. Education is one area where it is possible to see the effects of different societies' divergent understandings of deviant behavior. This study explored the attributions and social construction of childhood deviance in the United States and Jordan, with a focus on ADHD as a specific form of deviance. It used an open-ended questionnaire to study the attitudes and practices of 46 educators of children between the ages of 8 and 11 (27 from Jordan and 19 from the US). Based on this small sample of educators, it found that in Jordan, educators construct deviant behavior as a set of specific, objectively deviant actions. Jordanian educators attributed deviance, and ADHD specifically, to the home environment. They were pessimistic about children's ability to change their deviant behavior, and they were more likely than U.S. educators to choose group work as a strategy for managing deviant behavior. They were more likely to choose group work to address ADHD than they were to address deviant behavior in general. The U.S. educators constructed social deviance as a failure to conform to the norms of one's environment. They disagreed with each other in their attributions for ADHD: About half attributed it to biomedical causes, and half to environmental causes. Despite these different attributions, all of them constructed ADHD as a form of deviance that could be altered through environmental changes. Based on these findings, recommendations for policy changes and further research were discussed.