Labeling, Social Learning, and Positive Deviance: A Look at High Achieving Students

Protective Factors for Deviance: A Comparison of Rural and Urban Youth

“…Ecological systems play a vital role in student's perceptions of school safety, but microsystems have more direct effects on the individual than do ecological systems (Bronfenbrenner 1977;Schoenberger, Heckert, and Heckert 2015;Tedor 2015;Vogel and Keith 2015). At this level, social and physical interactions during school can influence perceptions of school safety.…”

Energy access transitions in South Asia: a study of positive deviance and the enabling mechanisms for social change at the community level

“…Several sociologists have made substantial inroads to advance the field of positive deviance in particular, typically adopting one of two strategies: to expand and refine the concept of positive deviance theoretically, for example, Ben-Yehuda (1990), Dodge (1985), Heckert (1998), Spreitzer andSonenshein (2004), or to take existing social theories and apply or test them against empirical cases representing positive deviance. Examples of scholars employing this latter strategy include Wolfzorn et al (2006), Heckert and Best (1997), Shoenberger et al (2012), Shoenberger et al (2015).…”

“…We selected these definitions from articles in our database that made an explicit effort to define the term, whilst also aiming to capture the evolution of the concept within each corpus over time. In a similar fashion to deviance literature more generally (Shoenberger et al, 2015), theoretical definitions of positive deviance have historically been framed from one of either two perspectives; normative or reactivist. A normative perspective relates to conformity with social norms, while a reactivist perspective relates to the reactions, evaluations or labels of peers.…”

“…The few efforts to advance the concept of positive deviance theoretically have been typically pursued through several different strategies: refining the concept theoretically, for instance by proposing a typology of deviance (Heckert and Heckert, 2002), or employing existing social theories to test how well they explain empirical cases of positive deviance (Shoenberger et al, 2012). These strategies remain in their infancy amongst deviance literature (Shoenberger et al, 2015) and future possibilities are plentiful for extending positive deviance conceptually to better understand the nature of and conditions that bring about this uncommon yet important social phenomenon.…”

“…Third and not least, an elaborated empirical research agenda framed from new problem areas will strengthen the theoretical case for positive deviance, balancing out the current emphasis on the negative and support a general theory of social deviance. Shoenberger et al (2015) offer some guidance on how such an empirical research agenda on positive deviance may be achieved, while studies such as Andrews (2015) exploring positive deviance in public sector reform demonstrate the endless possibilities of the types of cases that may be explored.…”