Oleh: Dadang Supardan
Intorduction
The social skill has been existed since long ago. It can be traced by the time human developing their social skills, since the era of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and ancient Greek. But it was acknowledged formally as a knowledge in the social psychology perspective, according to Lakin Philips (1985:3), during the emerge of social imitation developed by Gabriel Tarde (1842-1904) and Mary Cover Jones (1924), which for the next decade was developed by Albert Bandura (1969). In modern world, this social skill study emerged after the studies conducted by Salter (1949), Wolpe (1958), and Lazarus (1971), who were psychotherapists, and also the studies conducted by Zigler and Philips (1960, 1961) who particularly studied about social skills in some hospitals (Bellac & Hersen, 1977:143).
In the psychology perspective, the social skill is described as follows
“… an individual ability to express both positive and negative feelings in the interpersonal context without suffering consequent loss of social reinforcement… in a large variety of interpersonal contexts… involving …. The coordinated delivery of appropriate verbal and non verbal responses” (Bellack and Hersen (1977: 145).
While, in the social study perspective, social skill is described as follows
“…as responsibility, willingness to cooperate, and contribute to the group project. Within the dynamics of a small group, each member has opportunities to act as an individual, interact within others in the discussion and planning, and react to decisions and problems” (Joyce & Alleman-Brooks, 1979: 139).
According to the above description of social skill, the scope of social skill include the important of pro-social motive development which train children to a responsible people. According to Joyce & Alleman-Brooks, (1979: 139), Bellack and Hersen (1977), Kolko and Milan, (1981: 342), and Knoff, (2002), social skill development is directed to the discussion of six elements, which are: (a) survival skill at school (such as the skill of listening, following direction, overcome distraction, polite words usage skill, the courage to speak up, and the skill to respect themselves); (b) intrapersonal skill (such as: emotion control, active, sharing information and feelings, asking permission, involved in an activity, queuing, self-motivating); (c) interpersonal skill (such as: sociable, have a good personality, easy going, open and trusted); (d) cooperation skill (such as: able to attract people attention, helpful and not selfish, willing to give solution for others, able to provide alternatives answers, inclusive and sensitive); (e) problem solving skill (such as: asking for help, apologizing, accepting consequences, deciding what to do); and (f) conflict resolution skill (such as: not bother with teasing, flexible in facing disagreement, stable and mature personality in facing failure/loss, have courageous in facing accusation or any dissatisfaction, strong in facing pressure from friends).
The next problem is how is the social skill of emotional disturbance children who are social unacceptable because they have a social behavior deviation and individually not fun? Grumpy, like to fight, lonely, and other emotional behaviors. These kids have high rating in: aggresivity, hyperactivity, distractibility, impulsivity, withdrawal, and immaturity or inadequacy) which might result in school phobia, or drug abuse. How will we, as the educator, help them in developing their social skill through the social study lesson?
The gifted & talented (except the leadership gifted or social aptitude) children – even though they are considered as the “superior” – need an intensive “early intervention” to prevent their “exclusiveness”. Study result shows that the gifted-talented children are more awkward and less capable to develop the social skill and pro social behavior (Sisk, 1987; Bar-Tal, 1976). The gifted & talented children are include: (1) general intellectual talent; (2) particular academic talent; (3) creative productive talent; (4) leadership talent; (5) visual and performance art talent; (6) psychomotor talent (Gallagher, 1984:5; Hallahan and Kaufman, 1982: 375).
There is a paradox of tendency in handling the social skills development of emotional disturbance children compared to gifted & talented children. First, the Declaration of Jomtien, Thailand in 1990 of Education for All and the Education System Law regarding the ‘Inclusion Education’ resulted in a education system integration for special need education with the ‘normal’ children in the perspective of segregate to integrative approach. While the second, the education service tendency is inclusion to segregation approach – even though in social skill development perspective, they still need to develop the behavior of interaction/communication interpersonally, social, participative, and responsible in the social environment.
The Objective of Social Skills Development For Special Need Children
Terminologically, according to Hallahan and Kaufman (1982:143; Paul and Epanchin,1982:11; Sunardi,1995:3-4), the concept of emotional disturbance mostly considered similar to emotional handicap, behavior disorder, emotional impairment, and any others. These terminologies are for the children familiar to the life experiences of anger, like to fight, lonely, anti-social, drugs abuse, etc. Therefore, emotional disturbance has a wide meaning, because it covered the children behavior of: aggresivity, hyperactivity, distractibility, impulsivity, withdrawal, immaturity, and school phobia, and drugs abuse.
These children are those who chronically and obviously interact with their environment in a way which socially unacceptable or personally not fun, but they can be educated to be accepted by the society. By the enactment of United Nations Declaration in Jomtiem-Thailand (1990) and the National Education System Law (2003), we have to continuously developing the principles, the chances equality, democracy, and justice according to the Human Rights.
The Education for All is based on the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 – resulted in the world conference on Education for All held in Jomtien Thailand 1990. The conference declares that education access had to be viewed as a multidimensional challenge, with focus on the marginal groups. They agreed to reach the principal education for all children and adults in the year of 2000 (Dalen, 2002:7).
The Jomtien conference is not the only about that, it was the initial point of that strong commitment. However, there is also a strong paradox. In one side, this special need children (emotional disturbance) – have no differences compared to another normal children and have the children’s rights – their social skill are directed to the inclusive education, in line with the global education direction which is parallel with the more popular human rights issues or the pro-human movements, and the similar. This have implies that the mild special need children will have the same chance to optimization their social skill potentials. However, this effort receives many negative responds from teachers and parents, and even their peer group. In general the paradigm of social skill development for the emotional disturbance children can be pictured as follows:
Aggressivity
The aggressive behavior in this paper is excluding the positive aggressive behavior, it is a destructive activity/behavior because of the desire to hurt/injure others physically or verbally (Berkowitz, 1995:4-5; Fromm, 2001: xv-xxi). Socially, this society object this kind of behavior, but the interesting part of that kind of behavior is that it spread so fast as Bandura’s theory in the Social Learning Theory. Aggresivity study related to the social skill development does not include instrumental aggression, rather emotional aggression, considering that the aggression and violent spread through the process of individuality (Bandura, 1969;1973)
Aggression and violent in the society described the horizontal conflict, such as the English Holigan fight with the Italian supporter in the Belgium that was killed hundreds of football spectators. Recently, the social ‘brawl’ increase in Indonesia, not only in the society and school students, but also the university students. The chronic violent in the perspective of social psychology which is sadistic and dangerous is murder with mutilation, such as committed by Ryan “the serial killer”. Aggression may occur by the factor of: frustration, feeling suspected/betrayed, not conducive environment (the heat, high density, dry), some trigger factor, and some goal (instrumental aggression).
Hyperactivity
Even in the developed countries (USA and Western Europe) the prevalence of this group of children is about 3 to 5%. In addition the group of hyperactivity, impulsivity and distractibility, often grouped as one because they have similarity, which is the attention deficit disorder or concentration problem. However, they have differences toward each other.
The Common characteristics of this group is moving too much, unruly, like making doodles on the walls, soiling the bed and slovenly, excessively wandering around and climbing trees, it’s hard to sit or stay in one place, and other similar behaviors (Paul, 1982: 115). Socially, this kind of children are usually disliked by their friends because their selfishness. During play time with friends they could change the game anytime and anyway they like, which caused their peers and teachers to be unhappy (Suardi, 1995: 82).
To lead to the expected social skills, little by little can be done through learning with the following techniques: (1) behavior modification based on the principles of Operant Conditioning Skinner, (2) Biofeedback, which is a technique for controlling behavior or internal biological processes by giving information (feeding back) to a child about the condition his body and behavior, (3) Feingold Diet, which requires abstinence of variety of foods, including foods that contain dyes or artificial flavorings, even cholesterol, (4) Medications, though often cause controversy, especially drug negative effects of it. In general, the use of drugs for hyperactivity, the medication mostly use is nerve stimulants drugs such as methylphenidate or dextramhetamine.
Distractibility
Children who have this disorder often describe disturbance in attention (Sewrdik, 1987:115). The characteristic include: (1) can not finish task most of the time, (2) do not listen to the information from the teacher most of the time, (3) easily amused / distracted, (4) difficult to concentrate on one task or job that requires great attention; (5) can not stay on one activity or game.
According to Kauffman (1985), the variety of distractibility include (1) short attention span; was not able to focus their attention for relatively long time, however they are sometimes interested for hours on a particular preoccupation, (2) under selection; are the children with impaired in distinguish between the relevant and not relevant stimuli , (3) over selective attention, ie too selective in giving attention, so the things that are actually relevant to be noted will be unnoticed.
Impulsivity
In reality, children experience an impulsive disorder (which often behaves as they wish) often cause problems. The characteristic are: often act without thinking, quickly switching activities; difficult to manage work that is not because of cognitive disorder; require a lot of supervision, and cannot wait for their turn in group activities. In one study (Gumerman, 1987), apparently the impulsive children interested more in flashy images, they rarely make mistakes in the academic progress.
Wwithdrawal
This group of children has the behavior of avoiding others, both physically and or verbally. One of the reasons is because they do not have skill in responding to their environment. For example, how they make eye contact with friends, talking, playing. They are not responsive to play with friends.
Kauffman (1985) grouped this kind of children into 3, which are: (a) social isolation, they refused to hang out with his friends, (b) silent autistic, who do not have any common relation with others, as if they do not aware to what existing and happening around them. (c) not responsive to social stimulation, they have gaze aversion, or tend to avoid eye contact with their opponent.
Immaturity
This group of children is childish. The immaturity refers to the behavior that is not in accordance with their age. This behavior usually emerge becaus of mild to severe fear such as phobias.
School Phobia
Children categorized with school phobia are the children who fear of going to school. This is in contrast to truant from school. The difference is if the school phobic children are pushed to go to school they will develop anxiety, they might experience stomach ache, vomit, or other types of ailments before leaving for school. In general, this kind of disorder in children is the consequence of a traumatic experiences occurred at school.
On the other hand, the implementation of special education for gifted and talented children – Gifted and talented children are those identified by professionally qualified persons who by virtue of outstanding abilities are capable of high performance. These are children who require differentiated educational programs in order to realize their contribution to self and society (Marland, 1972: 582) – we know there are six of talents: (1) general intellectual talent, (2) special academic talent, (3) creative – productive talent, (4) leadership talent, (5) visual and performing arts talent, (6) psychomotor talent (Sisk, 1987: 8; Jojo, 1995:108).
General Intellectual Talent
General intellectual ability is generally described by the common people and educators with its relation to the high IQ test scores. The children who scored 132 of the Stanford-Binet test; 130 Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-R) test, total scale, or 130 on the verbal and the performance/capability of WISC-R are considered to have superior general intellectual ability. Theoretically, the students who have that value of scores are also expected to have excellent performance. In fact, due to various factors that related to each other, students gifted this intellectual talent might have under performance or achievement in the regular classroom. Students with general intellectual talent is often recognized by parents and educators by the high levels of vocabulary, memory, knowledge and abstract words, and other abstract ideas (Sisk, 1987 : 10).
Special Academic Talent
Students with specific academic talent are identified by their reputable achievement on a marvelous achievement or a hidden talent test. This talent may be obvious in one area, such as mathematics or language and art. Talent search sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University, through the study of Mathematic for young and adult, and The National Talent search in Arizona and Denver University and at Duke and Northwestern University to identify students with special academic talents. In the National Talent Search, students who scored 97 percent or higher on standard achievement tests were further tested in the Academic Talent Test. Many student students achieve the extraordinary levels in the test.
Creative and Productive Talent
What creativity experts said maybe true, they say that creativity emerged as the result of a more intuitive and imaginative thinking, therefore creativity often called as ‘the ideas of wild ducks’ (Clark, 1986; Amabile, 1983; Guilford, 1965). Getzels and Jackson (1962) in their classic study, Creative and Intelligence, define creative and productive thinking as the ability to produce new format along with creating common elements to be something different or new. They define creative and productive thinking as a talent to achieve a new meaning, which has a social value. Callahan (1978, 1980) had identified the characteristics of creative-productive students. William (1970), Torrance (1977), and Parnes (1975) supports Callahan’s definition (1978, 1980), which are: (1) open to new knowledge and experience; (2) open to the locus of internal evaluation; (3) the ability to play with new ideas, (3) willingness to bear risk, (4) the choice of the problem complexity, (5) tolerance for ambiguity / diversity
– Have a positive self-image, (6) the ability to ‘not on behalf of himself’ in a success work.
Creative-productive students are identified by the creativity tests such as Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) or through creative performance show. The creative-productive students are challenge for the regular classroom teacher. These students tend to do individual activity and do not follow teacher’s direction very well. They require an understanding/insight explanation, and purpose, they reject repetition of a long discussion of a subject. In addition, teachers and friends should may see these kind of children as funny and have taste of humor which resulted from their unusual behavior.
Leadership Talent
Leadership can be defined as the ability to direct or influence individuals or groups to a common decision or action (Sisk & Shallcross, 1986). The students with leadership talent demonstrate it in group and negotiation skill used in difficult situations. Teachers usually recognize them through their interest and skills in solving problems.
Marker (1982) identifies the characteristics of the leadership talent, including: (1) Demonstrate self-confidence with the stability and maturity of age, (2) have a responsible attitude, (3) seems uncomfortable when asked to show work in the classroom, (4) Favored by many friends in class or school; (5) in general, easy to get along with anyone, (6) Ability to adapt to new situations; (7) tends to dominate.
These students can be identified by instruments such as the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behavior (FIRO-B), and by their demonstrated leadership, such as acting as the leader in game, sport, team, or debates, speeches, as well as leaders and the speaker of the class.
Visual and Performing Arts Talent
The students with Visual and Performing Arts talent usually demonstrate a special talent in art, music, dance, drama, and other studies related to arts. The visual and performing arts is one of the areas that are often overlooked in today’s schools.
Torrance (1980) identified indicators of visual and performing arts talent as the following: (1) Skilled in mimicry, imitating, and expressing impression, (2) Skilled in using symbols that rely on the use of cues and body language, (3) Expressing their ideas strongly and sharp through body language;
The similar lists can be developed in other fields of art. Giftedness in the visual and performing arts can be recognized by the authority of consideration / assessment by testing talent in the art of art, when we are, as if you are using common names.
Psychomotor Talent
The last areas of giftedness has actually been removed by the Congress in 1976 by the Public LAQ 95-561. Marland report (1972) that the students included in this category are those who have to talent in using coarse / gross and fine motor development. It will include a variety of sports activities, such as gymnastics, swimming, athletics and other athletics sport such as diving, and so on. The law makers believe this psychomotor giftedness is widely developed and served by the sports school programs.
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