Prescient … and Not Always Accounted For: The Wisdom and Foresight of George A. Roeper

When George A. Roeper enlisted the aid of Dr. A. Harry Passow and other leaders in the field to help George convert his Michigan independent school to focus on gifted children in 1956, there was only one other elementary school in the country at the time devoted exclusively to gifted child education. Though his wife and school cofounder, Annemarie, later became quite well known in the field, George also wrote and spoke extensively about gifted children and their education. Those writings and speeches were rarely published but have been preserved in The Roeper School Archives. In this first in-depth examination, George’s writings display insight and prescience about the challenges and rewards of educating gifted children, touching on problems that still preoccupy the field, such as inclusive identification and motivation, all rooted in his humanistic point of view.     

Navigating the Gifted Bubble: Black Adults Reflecting on Their Transition Experiences in NYC Gifted Programs

Through the reflections of 17 Black adults who attended gifted schools in New York City, this qualitative study investigated how they transitioned into and through gifted programs as students. Findings suggest four themes: (a) Many students were referred to gifted programs during their elementary school experience either by their teachers or by their parents; (b) participants expressed having an easy transition into gifted programs in elementary because their schools and gifted programs were racially diverse and provided a welcoming school environment; (c) during middle and high school, participants noted difficulty transitioning through school as gifted students, due to being one of few Black students in their gifted programs, as well as having to attend schools outside of their neighborhood; and (d) despite this, through supportive relationships and community partnerships, they were able to find the space to survive (and thrive) in their programs. Recommendations are provided for educators to support gifted Black students.     

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.     

The Social Cognition of Gifted Adolescents

This paper reviews major research findings on social cognition in gifted adolescents. We discuss interpersonal and intrapersonal perceptions of giftedness (i.e., how gifted students view themselves, and how they perceive others’ views of them), the social coping strategies of this population (e.g., denying and hiding one's giftedness, conforming to mask giftedness, and helping others), and the gender, age, and self-concept differences shown in strategy choice when interacting with others. Results suggest that both American and Chinese gifted students employ social coping strategies to manage the visibility of their abilities in social situations, and there is a consistent link between coping strategy and self-concepts; but the findings with regard to social cognitive strategies, themselves, are conflicting. Implications of these findings and recommendations are presented.     

Ageless and Timeless: Perspectives on Giftedness Across the Life Span

Annemarie Roeper’s timeless perspectives were demonstrated throughout her long and productive life. Her prolific writings and speeches continue to influence our understanding of giftedness at all ages and stages of life, and the time I spent with her had a profound and meaningful effect on my work. Annemarie incorporated her inner view of giftedness into her definition, her collaboration with her husband George in developing the Roeper Philosophy and Roeper School, her global perspectives, and her qualitative assessment approach to understanding children and identifying those who are gifted. Direct involvement with Annemarie has been especially influential in my thinking about gifted adults, including educators and parents. The quality of agelessness that Annemarie demonstrated in the later years of her life also has been instrumental in helping me and others develop greater understanding of giftedness across the life span.     

Gifted learning disabled students

Abstract

Up to 30 per cent of gifted students display a learning disability, with 10 per cent reading at two or more years below their grade level. They are referred to as being ‐gifted learning disabled’ or as having the dual exceptionalities of giftedness and learning disabilities. For these students, their learning disability is more likely to be recognised and targeted in teaching than their gifted ability.

The present study reviews their learning characteristics and explains these in terms of an information processing model of learning. Nine characteristics are addressed: their superior general intellectual ability in at least some domains of knowledge, a global wholistic preference in thinking, a negative academic self‐concept, low resilience in learning, patterns in motivation to learn orientation, their use of metacognifion, their ability to show what they know, their uneven rates of development, their high standards and goals, and the quality of their interpersonal interactions.

The paper uses these characteristics to recommend a set of procedures for identifying these students. It examines the influence that a learning disability can have on the display of gifted knowledge and describes how dynamic assessment procedures can be used to obtain a more accurate diagnosis. It describes the two main types of general ability profiles that emerge. Procedures for assessing creativity and divergent thinking, a learning disability, aptitude in particular areas, an intrinsic motivation to learn, self‐concept, metacognition and self management of learning are discussed.

To his teachers, Adam was a conundrum. He was a very quick thinker, but not in the ways that would help him excel academically. He had excellent knowledge of a range of subjects but this didn't seem to help him achieve academic success. His answers to questions were unexpected, although, when analysed, creative. On excursions he could be relied on to see ways around obstacles that arose; his teachers valued his ‘native intelligence’ on these occasions. It was less valued in classroom contexts in which they were developing a topic with a group and Adam would interject with ideas and questions that were either ‘marginally relevant’ or ‘further down the track’. They wished he would put his energy more into improving his spelling and writing ability, that were extremely low, and bis recall of the times tables.

Ann, an eight year old, was also perplexing to her teachers. In class she was ‘off task’ and daydreamed a lot. She did not finish most tasks, frequently lost her place and made many careless errors. Her distractability meant that she was frequently disruptive. As a consequence, her level of academic achievement was low. Her teacher interpreted her inattention and impulsivity as a lack of interest in learning and her preference to avoid tasks. As well, however, her teacher noticed her comparatively high level reading ability and her advanced oral language capacity and had difficulty reconciling the two sets of observations.     

Examining the rationale for gifted education

The rationales underlying the enrichment and acceleration approaches to programming for the gifted are analyzed and compared. The focus is on how each approach views questions concerning who are the gifted and how they are best educated. Acceleration emphasizes development of specific cognitive abilities while enrichment is aimed at helping students with certain personality characteristics to organize their abilities into constructive and creative products. The Revolving Door Identification Model debate aired in an earlier issue of this journal is used to illustrate the differences that exist between proponents of enrichment and acceleration programming models.     

Mentorship: mutual benefits for ASL students and gifted students (part 1)

Postsecondary American Sign Language (ASL) students are capable of teaching short lessons related to sign language and deaf culture to gifted students in elementary school. College students who work as interest-area mentors benefit gifted students while building their own academic discipline and professional skills. In Part 1 of a 2-part series of articles, the authors explain the unique needs shared by students in gifted education programs (GEPs), the concept of interest-area mentorship, and how mentors help meet the needs of gifted students in light of National Association for Gifted Children standards. Benefits for ASL students, gifted students, and GEP teachers are discussed. College instructors also benefit, because mentoring experiences help make mentors better students and professionals. Additionally, mentoring in gifted classes facilitates recruiting of the next generation of professionals. In this case, recruiting occurs with the best and brightest: gifted students.     

The emotional development of the highly able

The highly able can be expected to be expected to be at least as well balanced as any other children, but they do have special emotional problems arising both from other people’s reactions to their exceptionality and from inappropriate education. This was investigated in a British 14-year comparative study. Children labelled as gifted were found to be from different home backgrounds and to have different emotional profiles than others of the same measured ability who had not been seen as gifted. From this and other research it can be seen that expectations of highly able children can be confusing, for example that they either have poor social relationships or are natural social leaders. Teachers and parents may over-pressure pupils to excel at all times, or raise their all-round expectations for a child, even though s/he is only gifted in a specific area. Stress may also come from always having to learn at an unstimulating level, producing boredom, apathy and underachievement. Suggestions are made for helping the emotional development and improving educational provision for the highly able.     

“Talent” and the Misrecognition of Social Advantage in Specialized Arts Education

Attention has been drawn to the persistent underrepresentation of underserved populations in gifted education programs. Though a small number of working-class students, students of color, recent immigrants, and students with limited English proficiency attend these programs, access to gifted education remains closely linked to White and upper-middle-class populations. The question remains: how, in a system that claims to be committed to achieving equity, do such disparities come to be and, furthermore, how are they justified? In this article we attempt to make sense of this phenomenon by examining how discourses of talent are mobilized within the context of a particular kind of gifted education program: a specialized arts program within a Canadian public secondary school.     

Joshua Lederberg’s legacy to bacterial genetics

Joshua Lederberg (1925–2008) was an extraordinarily gifted person. Starting his professional career at the age of 17 as a dish washer in Francis Ryan’s laboratory in Columbia University, he rose to be the President and later University Professor Emeritus at Rockefeller University, occupying chairs of Genetics at Wisconsin and Stanford Universities. He was only thirty three when he received the Nobel Prize, along with George W Beadle and Edward L Tatum in 1958. He also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science. His scientific work encompassed not only bacterial genetics but also astrobiology (exobiology, as he called it) and artificial intelligence. He was part of the Stanford team which developed the artificial intelligence software program DENDRAL. With his passing away in February 2008, the last of the founding fathers of bacterial genetics is gone. It is an honour for me to write this small article in his memory. In this article, I will focus on just two of his outstanding contributions to bacterial genetics, namely, the spontaneous, selection-independent origin of bacterial mutations and the discovery of genetic recombination and sexuality in Escherichia coli.     

The education of academically gifted students in South Korea: Innovative approaches in shadow education

Shadow education contributes to the learning and academic careers of Korean students. It benefits, in particular, gifted students who are strongly motivated and who outperform their peers academically. In this study, we explored the innovative characteristics of shadow education curricula for gifted students in terms of curricular programmes, methods, and teaching-learning materials. Also, we explored how shadow education practices meet the academic abilities and needs of students. Informed by a literature review and qualitative research methods, the results reveal how common shadow education is; effects of shadow education; and innovative elements used in shadow education for gifted students in Korea. Overall, we found that shadow education plays a crucial role in gifted education; it is a necessary component for understanding academic excellence among students in Korea. The findings are helpful for teachers, curriculum developers, and policymakers as they explore how public schooling can help to support strongly motivated and academically advanced students.     

Are teachers biased when nominating students for gifted services? Evidence from Kazakhstan

The purpose of this experimental, vignette study was to analyze whether certain demographic characteristics of students (i.e. gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status) influence secondary education teachers in referring students for gifted services in Kazakhstan. A sample of 132 teachers were randomly assigned to one of eight profiles describing a typical gifted student with particular demographics and requested to indicate how strongly they believed the student should or should not be recommended for gifted services. Results evidenced that gender, ethnicity, and SES did not influence the Kazakhstani teachers’ referrals. The implications of teacher nominations in students’ identification for gifted programs and the discussion on the role of gifted education as perceived by school teachers in Kazakhstan and elsewhere are provided.     

王昌龄送别诗的审美内涵

王昌龄的送别诗绘出了诗人特殊的人生轨迹,凸显了他独特的审美心灵品格与人生境界,具有丰富独特的审美内涵——高洁、豁朗的人格美,婉曲、深致的构思美和雄厚、遒劲的意境美。     

Strengthening Emotional Development: An Interview With Child Psychiatrist Joan Luby

Metacognition is an important component of advanced intellectual performance and, therefore, has been proposed to be more advanced in intellectually gifted than average children. However, existing research comparing gifted to average children's metacognitive abilities does not support this idea uniformly. Compared to average children, gifted children appear to have generally better declarative metacognitive knowledge and better ability to transfer strategies to situations distinct from those in which the strategy was learned. However, gifted children do not demonstrate consistently better strategy use, maintenance, or near transfer compared to average children. Nor do they display better cognitive monitoring ability compared to average children. Metacognition appears to be important to the development of high achievement in a domain. We argue that metacognitive abilities might be incorporated as additional criteria for entry into programs for the gifted beyond standard intelligence measures. Several identification methods which include metacognitive information are discussed.     

Embedded Assessment in Project‐based Science Courses for the Gifted: Insights to inform teaching all students

The present study of gifted students’ views of assessment is aimed at understanding how the employment of Embedded Assessment for Learning (EAfL) framework in science courses for the gifted affects the students’ views throughout the learning process. The participants were 86 students in three programmes for the gifted who elected project‐based science courses. The data included questionnaires, distributed at the beginning and at the end of the assessment processes in each science course, and in‐depth interviews with 12 students, which were analysed according to three main themes: general view of assessment; assessment modes; and relationships between assessment and learning. The students viewed the EAfL framework as an integral part of the learning process, and perceived it as a means of expressing autonomous learning and a range of performances; characteristics that correspond with the students’ unique needs. In addition, students addressed cognitive and social processes they had undergone. This implies that assessment which is explicitly designed to promote learning in science courses is a powerful tool for teachers as well as for students, and contributes to meaningful learning.     

How gifted students learn: Implications from recent research 1

A review of several recent investigations into the nature of how gifted students learn and the conditions under which they learn most effectively indicates that gifted learners spontaneously produce more effective learning strategies than comparison groups and benefit from the use of more complex, externally provided strategies. Implications from this research for the teacher of the gifted include the use of slower presentation rates for new information, spatial organization of prose content, and teacher provided mnemonic strategies.     

Are our president learning? Unpacking the enthymematic connections in the speech mistakes of President George W. Bush

The purpose of this paper is to explore public interpretations of President George W. Bush's speaking errors. One interpretation of Bush's speech mistakes offered in the media is that he may have dyslexia. Therefore, we explore how an enthymeme using markers of dyslexia as a sign of bad leadership has been used to frame Bush's speaking errors. We provide an analysis of an exemplar of how Bush's speech errors are represented in the media. Our exemplar is the desktop calendar George W. Bushisms: The Accidental Wit and Wisdom of Our 43rd President . We demonstrate that this text focused on common indicators of dyslexia, that is, speaking errors, to position Bush as a 'bad' and 'stupid' leader. Finally, we offer conclusions and implications that this study has for our understanding of politics and disabilities.     

‘Are we being de‐gifted,Miss?’ Primary school gifted and talented co‐ordinators’ responses to the Gifted and Talented Education Policy in England

Over a decade ago the UK government launched its gifted and talented education policy in England, yet there has been very little published research which considers how schools and teachers are interpreting and implementing the policy. By seeking the views of the gifted and talented co‐ordinators (For ease of reference, the term gifted and talented (G&T) co‐ordinator is used throughout the paper as a generic shorthand for the research participants who were either designated school gifted and talented co‐ordinators or teachers or head teachers with responsibility for policy implementation) with responsibility for addressing the requirements of the policy, the study reported in this paper explored how primary schools in England responded to the policy. Drawing on data gathered using questionnaires with a national sample of primary schools as well as follow‐up in‐depth interviews with a sample of G&T co‐ordinators, the authors report their findings. The study found that there was considerable unease about the concept of identifying and ‘labelling’ a group of pupils as ‘gifted and talented’. G&T co‐ordinators found it difficult to interpret the policy requirements and were responding pragmatically to what they considered to be required by the government. Curriculum provision for the selected group of gifted and talented pupils was patchy. The paper concludes by identifying a need for further professional development for teachers and by challenging the policy's over‐emphasis on identifying and labelling gifted and talented pupils. We posit whether the gifted and talented education policy would have been better introduced and enjoyed greater success by leaving the identification of pupils to one side and by placing greater emphasis on developing effective learning and teaching strategies instead.     

Socializing Giftedness: Toward an ACCEL-S Approach

In this response, we commend Sternberg’s Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership (ACCEL) model yet urge him to consider an ACCEL-S model that more fully incorporates society’s integrative role in giftedness. ACCEL-S builds on the highly complex and contextual view of giftedness proposed by Sternberg and transforms it into a participatory framework. Within it, the skills associated with giftedness shape but are also shaped by social context; they generate meaningful forms of collaboration as well as grow out of them. The concept of giftedness itself is transformed from a person-centric one to a distributed model in which being gifted is a relational instead of purely personal achievement.