Creating ownership in gifted and talented programs

The author explains how classroom teachers can participate in the gifted program and come to regard efforts to meet the special needs of the gifted as a shared responsibility.     

Using the coefficient of determination R2 to test the significance of multiple linear regression

This article proposes the use of the coefficient of determination as a statistic for hypothesis testing in multiple linear regression based on distributions acquired by beta sampling.     

Creating practicing professionals in gifted programs: Encouraging students to become young historians

It is our belief that the study of history can be approached from a creative perspective, the student need not merely report what has already been written. Instead, students may make an original contribution by becoming a practicing historian. Strategies and examples of ideas to motivate students toward this level of productivity will be described in detail in this articles.     

Understanding resilience in diverse,talented students in an urban high school

This article summarizes findings from a 3‐year study of 35 economically disadvantaged, ethnically diverse, academically talented high school students who either achieved or underachieved in their urban high school. In particular, the resilience of these two groups of high ability students is explored. Comparative case study and ethnographic methods were used to examine the ways in which some academically talented students develop and/or employ strategies associated with resilience to achieve at high levels. Both risk factors and protective factors are examined to explore participants’ pathways toward either positive or negative outcomes. The results of this study suggest that some protective factors helped some academically talented students to achieve at high levels. The protective factors include supportive adults; friendships with other achieving students; opportunity to take honors and advanced classes; participation in multiple extracurricular activities both after school and during the summer; the development of a strong belief in self; and ways to cope with the negative aspects of their school and urban environment; and in some cases, their family lives. Other protective factors include students’ relationships with supportive adults and their previous participation in a gifted and talented program.

Students who underachieved had specific risk factors, such as having older siblings who dropped out of school or became involved in drugs and/or alcohol. They also appeared to have developed fewer protective factors. The combination of the presence of risk factors and the absence of protective factors may ha ve impeded the ability of some underachieving students to achieve at higher levels.     

Cultural internationalism at the Cité Universitaire: international education between the First and Second World Wars

In the 1920s, French scholars and bureaucrats created the Cité Universitaire in Paris. The institution housed university students from around the world. The Cité founders formulated a model for the Cité that reflected ideological concerns in interwar Europe with a focus on pacifism, international education and cultural internationalism. The organisers of the Cité attempted to adhere to these theories to make the organisation viable in the politically strained interwar era while simultaneously demonstrating the continued excellence of French education. The French attempted to combine the goals of international education with the continued hope of national educational superiority. This article describes Germany and France as the earlier ‘national competition’ model of education. It traces the early history of the Cité as it incorporated the new international education model. Finally, it examines sports and social gatherings at the Cité, which was used as a specific venue to show examples of cooperative exchange.     

SERVING STUDENT NEEDS THROUGH WRITING CENTERS

Many community colleges have writing centers to help students develop their writing skills because the ability to communicate ideas clearly and accurately is essential for college success. Writing centers are staffed by faculty members, paraprofessionals, and peer tutors who assist students with planning, drafting, and revising essays and research projects. Many centers also offer computer programs and word processing as writing tools. These findings resulted from a study of 13 writing centers in community colleges belonging to the League for Innovation in the Community College. We used a questionnaire to collect data on the design and operation of each center. Although many similarities exist, each campus has modified such features as staffing, hours, and services to meet the needs of its student body. Usage rates indicate that students need and seek out services that can help them achieve academic success.     

Predictors of student success in Higher Education: Secondary school internal scores versus national exams

In many countries entrance to Higher Education is determined by the performance of students in secondary school and/or the scores obtained in national exams. The relative weight of these two scores on the admission decision is a relevant policy topic, given its implication on who is admitted to university. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relative predictive power of these two measures on the academic performance of students in Higher Education. It makes use of a dataset of Bachelor students from Portuguese Higher Education institutions with detailed information about their characteristics and past achievement results. The measure of academic achievement considered is the Bachelor's final average score. The main finding is that the scores given by teachers in secondary school are better predictors of subsequent performance than the access exam scores. The relevance of factors like working status, social support and gender vary with the reputation of the degree and the type of Higher Education institution, university versus polytechnic. A noteworthy result is that the added predictive contribution of parents' education is always negligible when past success measures are already taken into account.     

Teachers as readers: building communities of readers

Given the narrow scope of primary teachers' knowledge and use of children's literature identified in Phase I of Teachers as Readers (2006–2007), the core goal of the Phase II project was to improve teachers' knowledge and experience of such literature in order to help them increase children's motivation and enthusiasm for reading, especially those less successful in literacy. The year‐long Phase II project, Teachers as Readers: Building Communities of Readers, which was undertaken in five Local Authorities (LAs) in England, also sought to build new relationships with parents and families and to explore the concept of a “Reading Teacher (RT): a teacher who reads and a reader who teaches” (Commeyras and colleagues). The research design was multilayered; involving data collection at individual, school and LA levels, and using a range of quantitative and qualitative data research methods and tools. This paper provides an overview of the Phase II research. It suggests that teachers need support if they are to develop children's reading for pleasure, and enhance their involvement as socially engaged and self‐motivated readers.