Issues in identifying gifted students: How Renzulli's model stacks up

Traditional approaches to the identification of gifted and talented students are the subject of increasing scrutiny and criticism. Several problems, limitations and issues have been noted in the literature, and as a result, new conceptualizations and procedures have been advanced. Renzulli's Revolving Door Identification Model (RDIM) is one such model which has been widely adopted. This article first gives a brief summary of the model and investigates the reasons for its popularity. It then addresses some of the more serious criticisms that have been levelled against the model. Finally, it reviews what the authors feel are the more legitimate concerns about the model as they assess its validity and utility for identifying and serving gifted students.     

给领导者的八大忠告

Whether you're running a department or a multinational corporation, the same rules should determine how you treat employees and customers. 无论你所管理的是一个部门或是某个跨国公司,在对待雇员和客户的问题上,你都应该遵循同样的法则。     

Using sense to make sense of art: young children in art galleries

This paper reflects on a collaborative project between Manchester City Art Gallery and Manchester Metropolitan University (2003–2004). The project's aim was to attract very young children and their families to the gallery. This paper will not report directly on the research methods used or the outcomes of the project but, rather, will explore questions raised about art galleries and art education in relation to young children. It will ask if it is possible to use art education as a tool for thinking about the world, rather than as a vehicle for expressing a pre‐existing and unitary self, or for representing a pre‐existing and unitary reality. Merleau‐Ponty's philosophy of perception will be used to assist in this attempt to open up current notions of art education, and the art gallery space.     

Perceptions of a Chilly Climate: Differences in Traditional and Non-traditional Majors for Women

The purpose of this study was to examine how perceptions of a chilly climate differ between students in traditionally female-dominated majors (nursing and education) versus traditionally male-dominated majors (information technology and engineering), and how these perceptions relate to students’ intentions to persist or pursue higher education in their chosen field. Students (n = 403) attending a community college completed the 28-item Perceived Chilly Climate Scale (PCCS). The primary research question asked: To what extent can scores on the five subscales of the PCCS be explained by the predictor variable set of gender, ethnicity, age, college major, and intent to leave the field? Canonical correlation analysis indicated that women found the climate chillier than men, non-white students found the climate chillier than white students, younger students perceived the climate chillier than older students, and students in traditionally female-dominated majors perceived the climate chillier than students in traditionally male-dominated majors. Intent to leave the field was not a significant predictor of perceptions of chilly climate.     

Becoming a problem: Behaviour and reputation in the early years classroom

How does it happen that some children acquire a reputation as a ‘problem’ in school? The article discusses some findings of a qualitative study involving children in the Reception year (ages 4–5). The research focused on problematic behaviour as this emerged within, and was shaped by, the culture of the classroom. A key question for the research was: what makes it difficult for some children to be, and to be recognised as, good students? Using an analytic framework derived from discourse and conversation analysis, we identify some critical factors in the production of reputation, including: the ‘discursive framing’ of behaviour; the public nature of classroom discipline; the linking of behaviour, learning and emotions; the interactional complexities of being (seen to be) good, and the demands on children of passing as the ‘proper child’ required by prevailing discourses of normal development, as coded in UK early years curriculum policy and pedagogy.     

Children and objects: affection and infection

This paper considers young children’s (aged 3–5 years) relations with objects, and in particular objects that are brought from home to school. We begin by considering the place of objects within early years classrooms and their relationship to children’s education before considering why some objects are often separated from their owners on entry to the classroom. We suggest that the ‘arrest’ of objects is as a consequence of them being understood as ‘infecting’ specific perceptions or constructs of young children. We further suggest that a focus on the dichotomy between affection/infection for and of certain objects may offer new possibilities for seeing and engaging with children, thus expanding the narrow imaginaries of children that are coded in developmental psychology, UK early years education policy and classroom practice.     

Competition,cooperation, and an adversarial model of sport

In this paper, I defend a general theory of competition and contrast it with a corresponding general theory of cooperation. I then use this analysis to critique mutualism. Building on the work of Arthur Applbaum and Joseph Heath I develop an alternative adversarial model of competitive sport, one that helps explain and is partly justified by shallow interpretivism, and argue that this model helps shows that the claim that mutualism provides us with the most defensible ethical ideal of sport is false. By replacing that view with an understanding of sporting adversarial ethics we can appreciate that the ethics of sport are more complex than has been commonly recognized.     

Making Payton's Rocket: Heterotopia and Lines of Flight

This article explores the potential of heterotopia as a way to prompt us to think differently about children's art‐making. Foucault uses the term to describe a space of difference. As something that is not easily located within a system of representation, a heterotopia is not amenable to interpretation. It is this resistance to interpretation that can ‘force us to confront the limits of our understanding’. Linking Foucault's idea of the heterogeneous with Deleuze & Guttari's concept of ‘smooth space’ allows me to think differently about representational intent. As a teacher of young children, I have habitually valued and encouraged ‘purposeful’ play. In terms of artwork this has often meant that I have assumed an overriding and usually representational ‘purpose’ that underlies the work and gives it meaning. However, in many of the junk models produced by children during my fieldwork, I glimpsed a quality of the smooth space evoked by Deleuze & Guttari's patchwork quilt where, although ‘they may display equivalents to themes [and] symmetries … there is no centre; its basic motif (“block”) is composed of the single element; the recurrence of this element frees uniquely the rhythmic values’.     

Toward a shallow interpretivist model of sport

Deep ethical interpretivism has been the standard view of the nature of sport in the philosophy of sport for the past seventeen years or so. On this account excellence assumes the role of the foundational, ethical goal that justice assumes in Ronald Dworkin’s interpretivist model of law. However, since excellence in sports is not an ethical value, and since it should not be regarded as an ultimate goal, the case for the traditional account fails. It should be replaced by the shallow interpretivist model that I begin to sketch out and defend here.