<p> Research shows that biases exist in regard to teacher nominations for gifted programs in the areas of student gender, ethnicity, and SES. On the other hand, there is a lack of research regarding behavioral characteristics of the student and the impact of those characteristics on teacher nominations to a gifted program. Additionally, there is a paucity of research that has examined the collective impact of behavioral characteristics of the student in conjunction with other student attributes such as gender, ethnicity, SES, and teacher nominations to gifted programs. For purposes of this study, the behavioral characteristics discussed were positive and negative gifted characteristics found in the literature. This was a quantitative research study using survey research where participants were asked to read and respond to a case vignette. Participants were 633 elementary education teachers from two mid-size school districts in the Southeastern United States. Each participant was randomly assigned one of 16 case vignettes. Eight of the vignettes depicted a student displaying positive gifted characteristics, while the other eight depicted a student displaying negative gifted characteristics. The other student characteristics of gender, ethnicity, and SES were interchangeable among the 16 vignettes. The results of this study show that the student's behavior does play a significant role in the teacher's nomination decision for the gifted program. Results indicated students displaying positive gifted characteristics were three times more likely to be nominated to a gifted program than a student exhibiting negative gifted characteristics. When stratified by various student characteristics (i.e. gender, ethnicity, and SES), teacher nominations were significantly associated with student behavior, with students exhibiting positive gifted characteristics more likely to be nominated than those displaying negative gifted characteristics.</p>

<p> Giftedness is typically defined as above-average ability, task commitment, and creativity (Renzulli, 2012). However, this definition is socially constructed and leans on the literacy practices of the dominant culture. Understanding various contributors and barriers to giftedness (Suboknik, Olszewski-Kubilis, &amp; Worrell, 2012) can help identified students interrogate their own assumptions about their positions in the school system as well as those of teachers and peers. Since the gifted support classroom is relatively immune from the curricular pressures of the regular education classroom, it provides an ideal context for students to use various literacy practices to reflect on the complex dynamics of the public school system including the ways in which dominant literacies are valued over others generally and in regards to giftedness identification and services. </p><p> This practitioner-research study followed six gifted fifth-grade readers through a four-month long weekly Book Club as they used literacy and dialogue to reflect on, construct, and critically consider their academic identities. An inductive approach was used to generatively code responses and analyze the data. Using literature and informational text, the work supported students in using a critical lens to articulate their academic identities, consciously contemplate the expectations placed upon them in the school setting, and consider the implications of their positioning in that context. They engaged in social practices that aided in and demonstrated comprehension and agency, resulting in their re-conceptualizing the notion of giftedness. In addition, participants viewed giftedness through the perspective of culture, ethnicity, and language. Students' transaction with and dialogue surrounding various text types served as a way to challenge the socially constructed notions of giftedness and the structures that support such definitions.</p>

In recent years, research with students identified as academically gifted has focused on what processes enable these students to perform at high levels of ability. The present study was carried out in the context of exploring the role of metacognition in giftedness. A specific focus of the study was whether learning-disabled gifted students performed more similarly to their gifted or nongifted peers (i.e., learning-disabled or average-achieving) on measures of metacognition. An interview was used to assess metacognitive knowledge in reading, and the error-detection paradigm was paired with the think-aloud method of data collection to investigate metacognitive skills in monitoring comprehension while reading a text. The dependent variables were an index of metacognitive knowledge, the percentage of metacognitive statements made, the number of errors detected, and a comprehension score. A measure of prior knowledge was used as a covariate. / The subjects were 48 boys, drawn equally from both the elementary and high school grade levels, who had been identified by their respective school systems as being gifted, learning-disabled gifted, average-achieving, or learning-disabled. The design incorporated two levels of giftedness (gifted or not gifted) and two levels of learning disability (learning-disabled or not learning-disabled) at two grade levels (elementary and high school). Results of the multivariate analysis of covariance revealed a main effect for giftedness, indicating that the subjects identified as gifted performed significantly better than did the nongifted subjects. This result, coupled with the lack of gifted-by-learning disabilities interaction, showed that the learning-disabled gifted subjects performed more like their gifted than their nongifted peers on the four dependent variables. There was also a main effect for grade, with the subjects at the high school level performing better on the dependent variables than the subjects in the elementary grade level. Finally, a grade-by-gifted interaction was revealed, which an examination of the univariate analyses of variance indicated was most likely due to a ceiling effect on the measures of metacognitive knowledge and comprehension. / These results support the hypotheses that giftedness is related to the use of metacognitive skills in a comprehension-monitoring task, and that the learning-disabled gifted subjects perform characteristically like their gifted peers with respect to their use of metacognitive knowledge and skills.

This study examined whether a relationship exists between family structure (the presence of organization and rules in the household) and academic achievement among intellectually gifted students, and whether this relationship differs with respect to gender. Subjects for the study were 175 grade 8 students attending a school for the gifted and their parents (38 mothers and 33 fathers). The relationship between the responses of the subjects to the Organization and Control subscales of the Family Environment Scale and the students' grades from the previous school year was assessed using multiple regression analyses. To test for gender differences, an interaction term comprised of the variables of family structure and student gender was included in each equation. The analyses conducted did not produce any significant results. Possible explanations for the absence of significance and suggestions for future research are presented.

No description available.

This study examined the friendships between gifted and regular adolescents to determine if competition was related to the quality and stability of their friendship. Sullivan (1953) had predicted that competition harmed friendship, but this has not been tested empirically. Thirty-eight gifted and 38 regular friendship dyads from grades seven and eight were recruited from two high schools in Quebec and one in Ontario. Competition was defined in terms of competitive goal orientation. Students who competed in order to improve their performance on a task were rated as more task-oriented. Those who competed in order to show superiority over others were rated as more other-referenced. Competitive goal orientation differed for gifted and regular students. Classroom teachers, physical education teachers, and peers rated gifted students as being more task-oriented and regular students as being more other-referenced in their competitive styles across both scholastic and athletic domains. Being more task-oriented was related to having less negative friendship quality (i.e., fewer conflicts), more friendly competition, and for gifted students only, more friendship stability. Conversely, being more other-referenced was related to more negative friendship qualities and, for gifted students only, unstable friendships. Additionally, friends who reported positive friendship qualities at the end of the school year remained friends over the summer more so than friends who reported negative friendship qualities. However, during the school year, when friends saw each other regularly, the quality of their friendship was not related to whether or not they remained friends. Surprisingly, the friendships of regular adolescents had more positive qualities (companionship, help, security, closeness) than the friendships of gifted adolescents. No difference in friendship stability was found between the groups. Practical implications for teachers include avoiding forms

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

Thesis (M.S. in Psychology)--Vanderbilt University, Dec. 2007. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2007. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 289 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2007. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 46-06, page: 2973.