Social ideologies and gifted education in today's schools

The myth that children are born gifted and therefore can make it on their own is the belief that most affects the perceptions of the public regarding the gifted student and, too often, the actions of educators. From such a belief comes much of the antagonism toward providing differentiated learning experiences for gifted students and the notion that excellence and equity are separate and contradictory concepts. As a result, the limits to support for gifted learners reflect a lack of accurate knowledge, not a lack of commitment to children. Members of society and even educators still hold beliefs and attitudes that result in actions that are often damaging to the optimal growth of bright children. Data relevant to these beliefs suggest a view that is more in keeping with current biological and genetic research. It is this perception—the interactive and dynamic development of intelligent—that provides the basis for this article. The issues of equity, democratic ideals, and human rights must be reemphasized as they relate to gifted learners. To make a positive difference in what all human beings can be and how much of their potential they can develop and enjoy, we must start by dispelling the limiting ideologies society now holds. There is a need for schools that value uniqueness and talent in all children and that respect and nurture giftedness wherever it is found. By an understanding and use of the data now available this challenge can be met.     

Education towards self‐actualization and interdependence

This study examined whether gifted students in Texas who had learning disabilities were being identified for gifted programs. Results from a survey of gifted program coordinators (n = 388) demonstrated that few school districts (n = 75) reported selecting gifted children with learning disabilities for gifted programs. However, districts that did modify their selection process in order to include these children as well as school districts that identified more than 5% of their students for gifted programs were the most likely to include children with learning disabilities.     

Family Processes and Psychosocial Problems of the Young Korean Gifted

It is widely known that Korean parents have a high aspiration for providing opportunities of higher education and high expectations for their children’s academic achievement. Young Korean gifted children with ages from four to ten years did not show many psychosocial problems. However, some showed such problems as distractibility and inattentiveness, aggressiveness, helplessness, or psychiatric symptoms, when parents exert pressure, fathers are not involved in education, or parents do not discipline children’s behavior. Korean young gifted children showed high motivation for learning, when parents provide support, help, and supervision on TV watching. Based on the results, it was suggested that parents provide support for learning, rather than pressure on learning, and discipline their children’s behavior when they are young. In addition, fathers need to be more involved in their children’s learning in order to prevent psychosocial problems of the young gifted.     

Public Speaking: Reducing Student Apprehension and Improving Oral Skills

In this article, the author compares the potential academic and attitudinal gains of a gifted and talented population using different instructional methods. It has been found that instruction for identified high-achieving students must be different than that of general education students. Gifted and talented students cannot maximize learning opportunities unless they are appropriately challenged and motivated to learn. When gifted learners are lethargic and disinterested in learning, better-matched instruction is needed. Using contract activity packages with a gifted and talented population will support high-end learners in the classroom. During this project, the contract activity packages method of instruction provided the children with choice, flexibility, and challenged them at a higher level than they experienced through traditional lessons.     

The effect of inquiry‐based learning on the achievement goal‐orientation of grade 10 physical sciences learners at township schools in South Africa

Due to apartheid policies, Black African learners in South Africa have been severely disadvantaged in school science. Despite policy changes to redress these historical imbalances, Black African learners continue to underperform in science. Previous research has identified motivation as a key factor that impacts performance. Achievement goal orientation is a construct of motivation that explains learning behaviour. In an attempt to address the problem of learner motivation, this study investigated the effect of inquiry‐based learning on the achievement goal‐orientation of grade 10 physical sciences learners at historically disadvantaged township schools in South Africa. In South Africa, the term “township” usually refers to under‐developed urban areas that were historically created for “non‐whites” during the apartheid era. The findings showed that the experiment group of learners who experienced inquiry‐based learning significantly gained in mastery goal orientation, while the control that were taught through a traditional direct didactic approach had an insignificant change in their mastery goal orientation. From these results, it can be concluded that inquiry‐based learning does support a mastery goal orientation in learners. This orientation is regarded as desirable because mastery approach goals could support positive outcomes in conceptual learning, leading to an improvement in science achievement of learners.     

Effects of planning on task load,knowledge, and tool preference: a comparison of two tools

Self-regulated learners are expected to plan their own learning. Because planning is a complex task, it is not self-evident that all learners can perform this task successfully. In this study, we examined the effects of two planning support tools on the quality of created plans, planning behavior, task load, and acquired knowledge. Sixty-five participants each worked with two versions of a planning tool. In one version, learning plans were actively constructed by the learners themselves; the other version provided learners with an adaptable computer-generated plan. The results indicated that the quality of learner-created plans was lower than computer-generated plans. Furthermore, participants reported a higher task load when they constructed the plans by themselves. However, participants gained more structural knowledge about the learning domain when they actively created plans. There was not an apparent preference for one of the tools if participants were to create a plan for someone else. However, if they were to use the plan for their own learning, participants preferred to actively create their own plans.     

Annemarie Roeper: The Voice of Gifted Children

A methodology for teaching conversational Spanish to gifted preschoolers is described with specific examples. The results of this project indicate that the children were enthusiastic learners, excellent at pronouncing Spanish, and could remember and use new vocabulary after two to three class sessions. The parents reported that their children enjoyed learning Spanish and used their Spanish outside of the classroom.     

Developmental Change in Notetaking during Scientific Inquiry

This paper addresses the development in children’s and adults’ awareness of the benefits of writing through the analysis of change in notetaking while engaged in scientific inquiry over 10 weeks. Participants were given a notebook that they could choose to use. Our results indicate consistent differences between the performance of adults versus children and also across time. First, there were clear differences in the number of participants who chose to take notes. Second, not only did adults write more notes than children, but also the adults’ mean number of notes slightly increased over time, whereas children’s notes actually decreased in frequency. Third, children and adults differed in the types of notes they took. These results are interpreted in terms of participants’ awareness of what needs to be noted in a scientific task and why it needs to be noted, and they suggest implications for educational practice. First, because learners often have inaccurate representations of the task demands and their own future state of knowledge, they do not perceive the utility of notetaking. Second, because of these misperceptions, learners do not refer back to their notes and thereby miss feedback that would spur the refinement of their metacognitive (particularly metastrategic) knowledge and strategy use. Educators need to design opportunities for students to engage in activities that increase metacognitive knowledge of their own cognitive abilities and the demands of the task.     

Identification of gifted students with learning disabilities in a Response‐to‐Intervention era

The identification of children who are twice‐exceptional—those who are gifted and have concomitant learning disabilities (LDs)—has historically posed a number of challenges for school psychologists and other school personnel. With the reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act and the shift to the use of a Response‐to‐Intervention (RtI) model to identify students with LDs, the task of identifying those who are twice exceptional is even more daunting. This article proposes an integrated model for the identification of gifted children with LDs that blends standardized assessment methods with practices consistent with RtI. This balanced approach brings together the best of both worlds to more accurately identify twice‐exceptional students and better meet their educational needs. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Changes over time and transfer of analogy-problem solving of gifted and non-gifted children in a dynamic testing setting

This study examined differences in transfer of analogical reasoning after analogy-problem solving between 40 gifted and 95 average-ability children (aged 9–10 years old), utilising dynamic testing principles. This approach was used in order to examine potential differences between gifted and average-ability children in relation to progression after training, and with regard to the question whether training children in analogy problem-solving elicits transfer of analogical reasoning skills to an analogy construction-task. Children were allocated to one of two experimental conditions: either children received unguided practice in analogy problem-solving, or they were provided with this in addition to training incorporating graduated prompting techniques. The results showed that gifted and average-ability children who were trained made more progress in analogy problem-solving than their peers who received unguided practice experiences only. Gifted and average-ability children were found to show similar progression in analogy problem-solving, and gifted children did not appear to have an advantage in the analogy-construction transfer task. The dynamic training seemed to bring about no additional improvement on the transfer task over that of unguided practice experiences only.     

Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined. Kaufman,S. B. (2013)

Word Class is a method of modifying a spelling curriculum to meet the academic needs of gifted learners. This strategy combines a self‐selected approach to spelling instruction with thinking skills. Word Class enables gifted learners to make choices about their learning and engage in creative, high level thinking. It also teaches thinking skills and provides gifted learners with more authentic thinking and writing experiences.     

Supporting Professionalism,Diversity, and Context Within a Collaborative Approach to Gifted Education

Educators concerned about gifted learners are moving toward an evidence-based perspective focusing on children with exceptionally advanced learning needs who require flexibly responsive educational attention. This article describes two system-wide implementation experiences, one in a mixed urban/rural public school board and the other in an urban board of affiliated parochial schools, designed to meet the educational needs of diversely competent students. The authors discuss the intersecting roles of consultants, teachers, administrators, and parents, and some creative applications they have implemented that illustrate a respect for (a) teachers' professionalism, (b) individual developmental diversity, and (c) context-specific opportunities and constraints. The authors discuss ways that this flexible collaborative approach to integrating consultative processes into board-wide practices addresses the diverse educational needs of gifted learners, and also encourages high-level outcomes in learners not formally identified as gifted.     

Understanding teacher design practices for digital inquiry–based science learning: the case of Go-Lab

Designing and implementing online or digital learning material is a demanding task for teachers. This is even more the case when this material is used for more engaged forms of learning, such as inquiry learning. In this article, we give an informed account of Go-Lab, an ecosystem that supports teachers in creating Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILSs). These ILSs are built around STEM–related online laboratories. Within the Go-Lab ecosystem, teachers can combine these online laboratories with multimedia material and learning apps, which are small applications that support learners in their inquiry learning process. The Go-Lab ecosystem offers teachers ready–made structures, such as a standard inquiry cycle, alternative scenarios or complete ILSs that can be used as they are, but it also allows teachers to configure these structures to create personalized ILSs. For this article, we analyzed data on the design process and structure of 2414 ILSs that were (co)created by teachers and that our usage data suggest have been used in classrooms. Our data show that teachers prefer to start their design from empty templates instead of more domain–related elements, that the makeup of the design team (a single teacher, a group of collaborating teachers, or a mix of teachers and project members) influences key design process characteristics such as time spent designing the ILS and number of actions involved, that the characteristics of the resulting ILSs also depend on the type of design team and that ILSs that are openly shared (i.e., published in a public repository) have different characteristics than those that are kept private.

     

Strategic and nonstrategic factors in gifted children's free recall

The present experiment contrasted the recall of gifted and nongifted middle-school children for sets of categorically related items. Subjects were given a single free-recall trial on each of two lists consisting of category-typical and category-atypical words. The typicality of the items for one list was based on each subject's unique typicality ratings, whereas the typicality of the items in the second list was based on adult norms. A preliminary category-rating task indicated that gifted students were somewhat more similar to adults in their ratings of category typicality than nongifted children. Recall was comparable between the gifted and nongifted subjects for typical items, but greater for the gifted subjects for atypical items. The latency between the recall of unrelated words was faster for the gifted than the nongifted children. Subjects were classified as strategic or nonstrategic on the basis of clustering and interitem latencies. Gifted subjects were less apt to be classified as strategic than nongifted subjects on the typical items of the self-generated list; there were no differences in the classification between the gifted and nongifted children for all other contrasts. These results were interpreted as indicating that the cognitive advantage of gifted relative to nongifted children is more apt to be in terms of nonstrategic rather than strategic functioning.     

从国外特教对象的演变看我国特殊教育的改革

近代世界特殊教育经历了从思想到实践的过程;中国特殊教育经历了从照搬到创新的过程.特殊教育对象也在不断分化,最终形成了特殊需要儿童的概念,这就要求实施全纳教育,满足所有儿童的教育需要.当代特殊教育对象演变趋势表现为以学习障碍儿童教育为重点;重视超常儿童教育;加强生计教育;促进终身教育体系的完善;开展全方位的一体化教育服务.通过对特殊教育对象演变的分析,对中国特殊教育改革的启示为努力扩大特殊教育对象;贯彻因材施教原则;提供生计教育;进一步发展超常儿童教育;正确认识一体化项目中的特殊儿童;改革师资培训制度;做好特殊儿童家长工作.     

Mystery to mastery: Shifting paradigms in gifted education

We provide here a brief historical analysis of a movement in progress from a belief‐based “mystery” model to an evidence‐based “mastery” model of giftedness and talent development. We have observed that educators concerned about exceptionally capable learners are moving from a categorical notion of “the typical gifted child” with somewhat mysteriously defined attributes and learning needs, toward the perspective that some children have exceptionally advanced learning needs that require more flexibly responsive educational attention. We discuss factors that differentiate the two models, and observe some benefits of the shifting paradigm, arguing that by conceptualizing gifted education as providing a dynamically responsive educational match for students who otherwise experience a mismatch with the curriculum normally provided, the mastery model is socially, educationally, and politically more defensible. We discuss some practical implications of this shift in perspective.     

Children’s acquisition and use of the control-of-variables strategy: effects of explicit and implicit instructional guidance

Direct instruction is a proven effective method to strengthen children’s ability to design unconfounded experiments using the control-of-variables strategy (CVS). Recent research suggests that task segmentation can also promote children’s use of this strategy. The present study investigated this assumption by comparing the relative effectiveness of both instructional approaches in elementary science classes. Children in the direct instruction condition (n = 22) were taught the CVS prior to investigating a multivariable inquiry task. Children in the task structuring condition (n = 23) were not, but received a segmented version of the inquiry task that addressed the variables in successive order. Children in the control condition (n = 22) investigated the multivariable inquiry task without additional support. Comparison among these three conditions revealed that task structuring equals direct instruction in effectiveness to promote children to use the CVS and draw valid inferences, and that either type of guidance is more effective than unguided inquiry learning. However, as children’s knowledge of the CVS improved as much in either condition, more practice seems needed for children to take full advantage of both instructional approaches.     

Open plan

This study reports on an investigation into the impact of strategy-based English language instruction (SBELI) on the language proficiency of gifted learners. The participants were students who were identified as gifted and thus received additional out-of-school training for a few days a week in Adana Science and Arts Centre. Their ages ranged from 10 to 13. One experimental group (n = 17) and one control group (n = 17) were designed to explore the possible English performance differences between the learners who were exposed to SBELI, which included 11 language-learning strategies for eight weeks, and those who were not. Data were collected through proficiency exams, written accounts of participants in the experimental group, think-aloud protocols and an open-ended questionnaire. The findings obtained revealed that SBELI produced a positive impact on the language proficiency of the gifted students and enabled them to enhance their already established attitude to make their language learning quick, easy, effective and enjoyable.     

远程教育学习者学习心理及满意度研究--以云南广播电视大学远程开放教育学习者为案例分析

对云南电大远程学习者在参加远程教育学习前后的学习心理、学习行为、学习满意度及其学习需求调查结果表明，远程教育的大多数学习者感到满意，有较大的收获，但也存在对远程教育认识不足，学习能力参差不齐，难以与教师和同学展开充分交互，未能获得充分的学习支持服务等许多困难。因此，加强对学习者的教育培训，建立高效完善的学习支持服务系统，满足学习者需求，提高学习满意度是中国远程教育发展中面临的一项十分紧迫的任务。