Gifted Education Commons^™

Academically Gifted Adolescents Transferring To An Independent Gifted School: Effects On Academic Identity, Vanessa A. Lancaster

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Four gifted adolescents (2 males and 2 females) explore experiences transferring from multilevel schools to an independent gifted school from low- and high-income school districts in this phenomenological study. Semi-structured interviews inform this study demonstrating how changes in school context shape academic identity. Adolescent students discuss prior school perceptions of academic ability, how transferring schools affected academic ability, and challenges they overcame transitioning to an independent gifted school. Although participants all believed that prior schools did not meet academic and social needs, their academic self-concepts were strong. Three participants felt academic ability was stronger since transferring to an independent gifted …

An Investigation Of The Combined Assessments Used As Entrance Criteria For A Gifted English Middle School Program, Colleen D. Lindsey Ph.D.

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if the four assessments for entrance into an academic middle school gifted English program were accurately predicting success, as measured by students’ grades each nine-week grading period. Some students were dismissed from the program each year because they could not maintain the required minimum average of 80%. The four entrance assessments evaluated were the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT), Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test (NNAT), STEP Writing test, and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills: Reading (ITBS). The sample consisted of 150 sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students studied longitudinally over the span of …

Adolescent Perceptions Of Family Connectedness And School Belonging: Links With Self-Concept And Depressive Symptoms Among Gifted African American And Hispanic Youth, Christian Mueller, R. Trent Haines

Gifted Children

Gifted minority students, particularly those who are African-American or Hispanic, often face significant barriers to their optimal psychosocial functioning and academic achievement. Lack of access to appropriate educational resources, reduced teacher expectations, under-identification and underrepresentation in gifted and talented programs, and outright discrimination all contribute to increased risk and reduced psychosocial and academic functioning among these youth. It is clear from the present results that sources of attachment are important for healthy functioning in gifted African American and Hispanic youth. Given the lack of presence of these students in gifted and talented programs nationwide, and the difficulty in retaining these …

Examining Associations Between Classroom Environment And Processes And Early Mathematics Performance From Pre-Kindergarten To Kindergarten, Victoria J. Molfese, E. Todd Brown, Jill L. Adelson, Jennifer Beswick, Jill Jacobi-Vessels, Lana Thomas, Melissa Ferguson, Brittany Culver

Gifted Children

One benefit of the No Child Left Behind legislation (2001) has been the increasing attention on the importance of the skills learned in the pre-kindergarten period for later academic achievement. There is a growing awareness that mathematics skills in kindergarten and beyond are influenced by the formal and informal mathematics skills acquired in the pre-kindergarten classroom. In recent years, a body of research has emerged pointing to the contributions to children’s learning from pre-kindergarten program quality as indexed by structure and process elements in the classroom. Results from this study point to three major findings. First, the growth of mathematics …

From The Editor, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill

Gifted Children

This inaugural peer-reviewed issue of Gifted Children contains two research articles. The first is work by Dr. Victoria Molfese, Dr. Todd Brown, Dr. Jill Adelson, Jennifer Beswick, Jamie White, Dr. Jill Jacobi-Vessels, Lana Thomas, Melissa Ferguson, and Britney Culver. Dr. Molfese is a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and her research is focused on young children’s cognitive development and the impact of classroom processes and child characteristics as predictors of this development. Her co-authors are at the University of Louisville. In this article, Dr. Molfese and her colleagues examine classroom process quality as a predictor of mathematics skill …

Perceived Efficacy Of Beginning Teachers To Differentiate Instruction, Michelle K. Casey, Robert K. Gable

Teacher Education

A two-phase, sequential mixed-methods design was used to assess perceptions of teacher efficacy (10 item survey, alpha = .90) to differentiate instruction for N = 36 graduates from one MAT teacher preparation program. Research questions addressed levels of self-efficacy, perceptions of preparedness, teaching tenure, and number of certifications held. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA and t-test procedures. A focus group with N = 10 purposively selected 2010 graduates and interviews with N = 2 graduates each from the 2008 and 2009 classes, and N = 2 faculty were conducted. No significant relationships were found for tenure and …

Comparison Of Academic Achievement, College Readiness, And Perception Between Students From Traditional High Schools And The Gatton Academy, Tim Gott

Dissertations

Secondary education in the United States has been evolving from the early days of Latin grammar schools to the present broad spectrum of high school structures. This study focuses on one of the latest types of high school models – specialized secondary schools. In particular, the intent of this study was to assess whether high ability students in one such program, the Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science, demonstrate between-group differences from their high ability peers in traditional high schools in the areas of academic achievement, college readiness, and perceptions on the high school experience.

To determine whether these differences …

Adult Perceptions Of The Experience Of Being Identified "Talented And Gifted" As Children: A Phenomenological Study, Bradford Summers

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This is a phenomenological study of adult perceptions of the experience of being identified "talented and gifted" as children. Data were gathered by transcribing the video recordings of adults who were students of the Talented and Gifted (TAG) education program in Fairfield, Ohio during 1978-1983. The phenomenological method was used to discover perceptions of a unique population of adults who shared life experiences during elementary and middle school. Analysis of the data resulted in the identification of four main themes: Growth, Interpersonal, Future, and Thankfulness. Three facilitating and three challenging subthemes were identified under each main theme. These were: Internal …

Factors Affecting Talent Development: Differences In Graduate Students Across Domains, Stephanie Hartzell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

There is an abundance of literature on young individuals who show early signs of talent and on older individuals who have demonstrated their abilities throughout the years. This research aims to look at those individuals who are in between, that is, graduate students who have the demonstrated potential to achieve within their fields of study. This study explored backgrounds of talented individuals in their adolescent period and their current measures of cognitive abilities. A total of 38 graduate students majoring in the areas of art (n= 12), science (n= 12), and education (n= 14) were used as examples of individuals …

Ua68/1/2 Student Awards Ceremony, Wku Potter College Of Arts & Letters

WKU Administration Documents

Program recognizing outstanding students and mentors of WKU Potter College of Arts & Letters.

Imsa25 Gala: Acceptance Of Dr. Leon Lederman’S Portrait, Stephanie Pace Marshall

Lectures, Speeches, and Talks

Thank you, Max, good evening everyone and congratulations to our honorees: Sally Walker, Eric McLaren, Cathy Veal—whom I had the wisdom to hire 25 years ago! And King Harris and the Harris Family Foundation, long-standing supporters of IMSA beginning over 20 years ago with his very, very generous father, Neisen.

2012 Imsaloquium, Student Investigation Showcase, Illinois Mathematics And Science Academy

IMSAloquium Event Booklets

"Through SIR and its partnerships, IMSA students engage in rich opportunities to pursue compelling questions of interest, conduct investigations, engage with extraordinary advisors, communicate findings, and ultimately impact society."

Why Students Are Choosing Not To Participate In Honors And Advanced Placement Classes: The Phenomenon In One Georgia High School, Susan Buice

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study is to determine the causes for high school students' decisions not to enroll in Honors or Advanced Placement (AP) courses. This study is a transcendental phenomenology whose participants are students who have been determined to be potentially successful in Advanced Placement classes by the AP Potential publication but who have chosen not to take any advanced classes. I will use an initial interest survey, individual interviews, and focus groups in order to gain knowledge from the students about their reasons for choosing not to participate in the Honors/AP classes. After coding the responses, I will …

The Long-Term Social & Emotional Outcomes Of Subject-Area Acceleration On Gifted Learners, Dana King

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This qualitative phenomenological study utilizing transcendental phenomenology methods sought to understand the long-term social and emotional outcomes associated with subject-area acceleration. The participants were high school gifted juniors and seniors from one rural high school the southeastern United States. Data was collected through surveys, individual interviews, and focus group interviews. The rich details produced by this study enabled the researcher to construct a voice for this population by analyzing overarching themes emerging from surveys and interviews. The results of this study indicated that participants experienced primarily positive social and emotional outcomes of subject-area acceleration. The study will help guide teachers, …

A Comparison Of A Gifted Education Program Among Eighth Grade Gifted Students At A Georgia Junior High School, Jerry Clark Harden

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships that may exist among mean scores on the math and reading portions of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) of eighth grade gifted students of different gender, race, and socioeconomic status. Significant changes have been made to Georgia's gifted identification procedures over the last few decades to lessen the underrepresentation of minorities and students of low socioeconomic status. However, issues still exist in the referral process, the identification process, and the performance of gifted students. Although the referral process and identification procedures have been and continue to be researched, …

The Impact Of Race And Education On Gifted Students Of Color: A Case Study Of High School Gifted Students Of Color, Rouel Cornejo Belleza

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The examination of the relationship between race and education continues today as diversity across the country increases, while achievement scores remain stagnant or decreases. Among K-12 public education students in the United States, 7% are identified as gifted with ¾ categorized as Caucasian. Gifted students of color are a minority within an already minority community. This case study explores the influences and impact of race, education, and giftedness among four gifted high school students of color. The participants shared in their understanding of the following: what it meant to be labeled as smart; relating with friends and the importance of …

Preparing Students For Careers That Do Not Yet Exist, Glenn W. "Max" Mcgee

Publications & Research

The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA), as a self-described "teaching and learning laboratory for imagination and inquiry," has a history of pursuing innovations closely aligned with the vision and framework of the National Science Education Standards. Innovations include both methods and materials for inquiry-based student instruction as well as for delivering professional development for pre-service and practicing teachers. Instructional innovations described include yearlong student inquiry and research projects (SIR), self-paced physics instruction, student-driven energy and engineering projects, instruction in innovation and entrepreneurialism, and a host of student-led outreach activities to "ignite and nurture creative, ethical, scientific minds of students …

2012 Intersession Catalog, Illinois Mathematics And Science Academy

Intersession Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Varying Formats For Two-Year-College Honors Seminars, Ce Rosenow, Katie Morrison-Graham, Erik G. Ozolins

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Honors programs at two-year colleges vary substantially in scope, size, and structure depending on an individual college’s mission, campus culture, and budget. One common curricular feature, however, is the honors seminar. Scholarly resources for creating honors seminars at two-year colleges include Luke Vassiliou’s 2008 essay “Learning by Leading and Leading by Teaching,” which provides an excellent discussion of constructing a two-seminar sequence in which the first seminar prepares the students to run a completely student-led second seminar (111). Directors wishing to develop seminars can also turn to the brief discussion of introductory interdisciplinary classes in two-year-college honors programs in Theresa …

The Tutorial Education Program: An Honors Program For Brazilian Undergraduate Students, Denise De Fleith, Aderson Luiz Costa Jr., Eunice M.L Soriano De Alencar

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The Tutorial Education Program is an honors program for Brazilian undergraduates, sponsored by the Ministry of Education. Based on philosophical principles of tutorial education in which small groups of academic talented students are guided by a tutor, the program is designed to support groups of undergraduates who demonstrate outstanding performance in their academic activities. The Tutorial Education Program provides enrichment activities in order to broaden the academic development of students with exceptional potential and abilities. Our purpose in this paper is to describe this honors program for undergraduates from different states in Brazil, focusing on the underlying philosophy of the …

Setting Them Free: Students As Co-Producers Of Honors Education, Bouke Van Gorp, Marca V.C. Wolfensberger, Nelleke De Jong

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

One of the factors that differentiate honors from regular teaching at the Faculty of Geosciences at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, is the freedom that honors students enjoy, a freedom that evokes excellence because it is focused and targeted. This targeted freedom takes three different shapes in our honors program and comes with specific challenges for both students and teachers. While the attractions and advantages of such freedom are both theoretically and practically significant, our experience has also demonstrated drawbacks that need to be addressed and resolved in creating effective honors education.

Mission, Performance Indicators, And Assessment In U. S. Honors: A View From The Netherlands, Vladimir Bartelds, Lyndsay Drayer, Marca V.C. Wolfensberger

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Amission statement that identifies the goals and aims of an honors program is a key step in program development. The NCHC’s Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program states unequivocally that a successful honors program “has a clear mandate from the institution’s administration in the form of a mission statement or charter document that includes the objectives and responsibilities of honors and defines the place of honors in the administrative and academic structure of the institution.” According to Mrozinski, mission statements are public definitions of purpose published in a college‘s catalog, website, or other planning documents and are generally …

Self As Text: Adaptations Of Honors Practice In Switzerland, Michaela Ruppert Smith

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

City as Text™, the experiential learning program developed by the NCHC Honors Semesters Committee, has been adopted and adapted by hundreds if not thousands of educational institutions throughout the United States and beyond. Having served on the Honors Semesters Committee, I exported this learning strategy to Switzerland while teaching in an International Baccalaureate Program in Geneva. I adapted City as Text™ for multi-disciplinary college preparatory students in Europe, and that adaptation might now serve in turn as a model for experiential learning in honors programs and colleges in the United States and internationally. The focus and link between the City …

About The Authors

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Eunice Soriano de Alencar, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Brasília, Brazil. For the last forty years, she has published numerous books and articles, especially on giftedness and creativity. She is on the editorial board of several journals in Brazil and abroad and is an honorary member of the Brazilian Council for Giftedness.

Honors Education And Global Citizenship, Marca V.C. Wolfensberger

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

An issue of JNCHC devoted to “Honors Around the Globe” is an important opportunity to consider the role of honors in creating international awareness and understanding. Honors faculty and administrators have become increasingly active in global cross-communication through, for instance, international involvement in the NCHC and the recent conference on “Evoking Excellence in Higher Education and Beyond” in the Netherlands that attracted participants from numerous countries. As we become more familiar with honors in all its manifestation across the globe, now is a good time to consider the value we provide in preparing students to contribute to our changing world.

Journal Of National Collegiate Honors Council Dedication

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Marca Wolfensberger has been active in honors education for the past two decades. She co-founded one of the first honors programs in the Netherlands in the early 1990s; ten years later she started connecting with individual members of the NCHC; and, after attending her first NCHC conference in Chicago in 2003, she has been a regular participant in annual honors conferences, bringing with her numerous colleagues—as many as thirty at just one conference—from the Netherlands. She has regularly published and presented on honors education both in the United States and in Europe, and this year she is an organizer of …

Honours In Australia: Globally Recognised Preparation For A Career In Research (Or Elsewhere), Deirdre Barron, Margaret Zeegers

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In this essay we consider the unique position of honours within undergraduate programs in Australian universities and the consequent implications for constructing pathways to research. A tension arises in academic disciplines that see honours as a fourth-year skilling program focused on the workplace when, at the institutional level, honours is positioned as the prerequisite for entry to a PhD. What emerges are competing pressures for advanced vocational training and preliminary research training for doctoral research. The tension is exacerbated by the need for universities to generate research cohorts in order to attract the funding that such cohorts bring to a …

The Reflective Professional Honours Programme Of The Dutch Saxion Universities, Trijntje Van Dijk

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The Reflective Professional Honours Programme of the Saxion Universities of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands centers on a profile of what graduates of the program should have accomplished in addition to their regular bachelor’s degree program. The development team for our programme first investigated what the profile should be, interviewing roughly three hundred business representatives to discover what they considered an excellent honours student profile. All the interview information was transformed into a concept profile. An Honours Council evaluated the concept, and the project team adapted it. Then the steering committee evaluated and approved it after further adaption. Finally the …

“Honours” In The United Kingdom: More Than A Difference Of Spelling In Honors Education, Margaret Lamb

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

The first edition of Jane Walmsley’s book Brit-Think, Ameri-Think: A Transatlantic Survival Guide came out in 1986. I noticed the book because she was a familiar name, a TV broadcaster, American by birth (like me), married to a Brit (like me), and had lived in England for two decades (I was well into my first decade in England). I recognized from my own experience many of the examples (often hilarious) cited by the author.

Honors In The Master’S: A New Perspective?, Stan Van Ginkel, Pierre Van Eijl, Albert Pilot, John Zubizarreta

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In Europe, there is a growing interest in honors education, not only in the bachelor’s but also in the master’s degree. The Dutch government, for instance, is actively promoting excellence in both bachelor’s and master’s degrees through honors programs (Siriusteam). Most Dutch universities have honors programs at the bachelor’s level or are developing them. Some universities have also recently introduced honors into their master’s programs, stimulated by recent publications (van Eijl, Wolfensberger & Pilot). Because honors master’s programs are a new phenomenon in higher education and are still exceptional in the United States of America, we have undertaken a research …