Programmes developed specifically for the gifted and talented pupil are not a novel idea. Yet, by comparison, the history of gifted education is a brief one. Highly gifted and talented pupils often have difficulty being challenged in a conventional classroom situation. Since classroom instruction is usually designed for the benefit of pupils who function at the level of the majority of their peer age-group, this teaching, no matter how well done, may not be appropriate for the extremely gifted pupil whose abilities differ greatly from this group. Even special programmes for gifted and talented students may be designed for a broad group of gifted students and may not meet the specific needs of the gifted child, especially ones with a special intellectual talent. While it is important to bear aspects such as the characteristics of giftedness and the attributes of the talented individual in mind, the basis of this dissertation examines what enrichment and acceleration strategies may be utilised by the English First Language (HG) teacher when presented with a preselected group of pupils who are gifted in English, utilising a composite gifted educational model as a mechanism for the development of this specific programme.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

The problem of this study was to ascertain the relationship of certain conative factors of intellectually gifted students to academic success» It involved & comparative analysis of the relationship of those conative factors of intellectually gifted students who were nominated for a program of advanced study in the seventh grade of Junior high school and of intellectually gifted students who were not nominated, this study further involved a comparative analysis of those conative factors as they related to students who were successful in an advanced study program in the seventh grade of junior high school and those students who were less successful.

The problem with which this study is concerned is the methods and techniques that are utilized by some teachers in the identification of a gifted student. This study has a threefold purpose. The first is to discuss the plight of some of our valuable human resources as manifested by the gifted in the American educational structure. The second is to present and contrast the current approaches to conserving these resources. The third is to project some possible trends in meeting the needs of the gifted segment in American schools. This study concludes that the field of teaching the gifted has been exploited by educators, and that there is very little likelihood in replacing the suggested methods and techniques entirely by new ones. Though there is little chance to replace all the suggested methods and techniques, there is sufficient room for expansion and internal renovations in the American educational mode of arrnagement.

The problem of this study was to develop a set of workable guidelines that could be implemented in the development of an industrial arts program for the superior high school student.

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High-achieving African American students are not immune to the issues that underlie racial inequalities in school achievement. There is much to learn from these students in terms of how they navigate schools and achieve according to conventional standards. Further, serious questions remain about the social and racial costs to being constructed as high-achieving against broader narratives of African American students as deficient. This qualitative inquiry uses participant interviews and document analysis to explore the Discourses on achievement and leadership produced by minority recruitment programs and the students who participate in them. Specifically, the research uses critical discourse tools to look at the narratives produced both by African American students and by (and through) program documents. It seeks to understanding where these narratives converge and where there might be tension. This research is conducted by incorporating a socio-cultural literacy and critical race theory framework. This dissertation study is at the intersection of equity and access; it problematizes progressive arguments against a segregated curriculum for high-achieving students by invoking a social justice argument in favor of leveling the playing field for traditionally marginalized students, specifically African Americans. Much of the existing literature on high achievement and African Americans takes place in traditional classrooms. Glaringly absent from the literature on achievement are the ways in which some high-performing students of color are positioned to succeed in competitive, non-school environments. Specifically, I look at minority recruitment programs because these programs teach a particular type of literacy. The study explores the degree to which students’ home literacies are being honored. Findings indicate that students’ perspectives on achievement were much more critical than those of the programs with students overtly challenging meritocracy. Students were less critical of leadership, and both programs and students offered views that privileged particular literacies of leadership. The researcher offers recommendations for MRPs that calls for programs to involve students in more critical inquiries through the use of a Critical Race English education lens.

This is a case study of the learning of physical science of a high achiever, selected on the assumption that instruction in learning strategies and styles used by successful learners may improve learning effectiveness of less successful learners. Operating in an interpretive paradigm, qualitative data was gathered by participant observation aimed at sensing the complexities of the case. A rich, holistic description is given, enabling readers to form naturalistic generalisations of their own. The data corpus spans three years and is composed of audio-recorded lessons and interviews, field notes and written material. Data collection, analysis and interpretation were done in an inductive, cyclic manner, guided by research questions about learning strategies used by the learner, instructional strategies used by the teacher, and the roles played by intrinsic factors, practical work and problem solving, in contributing to effective learning of physical science by the high achiever. The study implies that effective learning, even by the highly intelligent, involves struggle and requires the use of a variety of strategies. This fits a constructivist, rather than transmissionist, view of learning, and thus supports learner-centered transformations in South African education. The learner is interpreted to be intrinsically motivated by interest and a high regard for knowledge precision, elegance, and transferability, to use a large number of learning strategies, particularly while solving open-ended problems and performing practical investigations, in order to come to a deep understanding of physical science. The study suggests that teaching children how to learn, particularly by addressing their outlook on learning and introducing them to a variety of strategies, should be an aim of physical science instruction, and that interesting, open-ended, learner-centered tasks should be used in attempts to induce self-regulated learning. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether gifted students scored higher on reading achievement and self-esteem ratings when they worked in mixed ability (heterogeneous) groups or similar ability (homogeneous) groups while participating in cooperative learning activities. The participants were 47 fourth grade students from six intact classrooms in four elementary schools in small midwestern school districts.The Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests were used to obtain pre- and posttest scores in the area of reading ability. The test consisted of 93 items, including 45 vocabulary and 48 comprehension questions. The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory was also given to the students as a pre- and posttest measure of self-esteem. A treatment of cooperative learning activities was then completed with each class by the researcher to determine if there was a difference between the two groups.The following hypotheses were tested at the.05 level of significance:Hypothesis 1: There is no significant difference between the reading achievement of gifted students who participate in cooperative learning with heterogeneous groups of students and gifted students who participate in cooperative learning with homogeneous groups of students.Hypothesis ll: There is no significant difference in the self-esteem ratings of gifted students who participate in cooperative learning with heterogeneous groups of students and gifted students who participate in cooperative learning with homogeneous groups of students.To test the hypotheses an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used. For each hypothesis, the obtained F-ratio exceeded the F-value for significance at the .05 level. Therefore, the tests failed to reject the null hypotheses. The findings of this study indicate that students achieve equally well in reading achievement and self-esteem regardless of the grouping strategy used. / Department of Elementary Education

This study identified school and district level variables relevant to the relationship among advanced academic achievement, as defined by a score of 3, 4, or 5 on at least one Advanced Placement exam, and high school context, opportunities for social support and advanced academics, and district support for high ability students in grades K-12. Using school and district-level data from the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE), district level data on services for high ability students from the IDOE Division of Exceptional Learners, and school-level data from College Board, 49 variables are described for 339 public high schools. A hierarchical linear regression was applied to 15 independent variables thought to be most relevant to the explanation of the variance among high schools. After review, a second hierarchical regression was conducted with 9 retained independent variables explaining 80% of the variance in high performance. The retained variables included size of the graduating class, SAT average, demographic classification according to local population density, percentage of the community with less than a high school education, number of different AP exams offered by the school, ratio of the number of students scoring between 55 and 80 on the math portion of the PSAT to the number of graduates, ratio of the number of students taking SAT Subject Tests to the number of graduates, percentage of the school corporation enrollment identified as high ability, and the number of grade levels and subject areas in which advanced instruction differentiated for high ability students was offered for at least 150 minutes per week. The variables included in the first regression are delineated for the highest 34 (10%) and lowest 34 (10%) performing schools on the dependent variable to construct profiles of a high and low performing school. High performance is limited in small and rural schools. The overarching finding is that schools make a significant difference in the opportunities and development of high performance in adolescents of high ability. Future research directions are suggested and implications of the findings for policymakers are discussed. / Department of Educational Psychology