This paper explores educator perceptions of gifted and talented (GT) English language (ELL) students. This study identifies barriers for identification and service for GT/ELL students and highlights ways to support students through current efforts for students who fit these criteria. Educators from two elementary schools were interviewed in this qualitative study. The schools were chosen due to their high population of ELL students. The roles of professional development (PD) and best practices for identification of underrepresented students are discussed. Five main themes emerged from interviews of educators that work with GT/ELL students. The themes are obstacles, perception, referral, professional development, and, modification.

Oil and gas industry business leaders who fail to implement adequate talent retention strategies experience reduced profits and sustainability challenges. During the first 2 years following downsizing, 67% of organizations using excuse-based downsizing reflected reduced sales and profitability, and 11% of such organizations experienced financial losses. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the strategies that successful Calgary medium size oil and gas businesses implemented to retain talented employees after downsizing. The population for the study included business leaders of 3 medium oil and gas businesses in Calgary, Canada, who had successfully implemented talented employee retention strategies. Data were collected from interviews with the leaders and from artifacts such as the company websites and social media pages. Inductive analysis was guided by the transformational leadership theory and human capital theory, and trustworthiness of interpretations was bolstered by member checking. Five themes emerged: transformational leadership, training survivors, establishing trust, rewarding and recognizing surviving employees, and competing for survivor employees with other industries. The application of the findings from this study could contribute to positive social change by providing insights for medium oil and gas business leaders on the strategy implementation for talent retention that increases workplace stability and employees supporting their families as well as contributing positively to their communities.

This research reports on the factors that a sample of teachers in a rural Primary and Secondary School perceive as being influential on the initiation and implementation of a curricular innovation. The innovation herein is the creation of a Gifted and Talented Programme to cater for identified students in this school, an area of current interest amongst educators and researchers in New South Wales and Australia. A methodology is outlined for the collection and interpretation of data on the factors involved, that may be employed by coordinators and researchers interested in curricular provision for Gifted and Talented children. In this case study school, it was found that the factors were many and varied, that they differed in their supportive or inhibitive nature in the Primary and Secondary Schools. These findings provided a foundation for subsequent planning in the initiation stages of the implementation of this innovation. This research had important implications for this School that may be of interest for future research in other schools.

This decade has seen an increasing awareness by the Commonwealth Schools Commission, the ACT Schools Authority, educators and members of the community of students who are gifted in a diversity of areas. A number of programs designed to meet the special needs of gifted students have been developed in some primary schools in the A.C.T. and it is timely that the attitudes of principals, teachers and parents were assessed. To assess the attitudes of the three populations (principals, teachers and parents) toward general attitudes about gifted students, key aspects of planning and organisation of gifted programs, classroom teachers and their knowledge and need of assistance in gifted education; and to explore whether the three populations held different attitudes toward gifted students and the provision of specific programs to meet their special needs, the Field Study candidate developed and administered a questionnaire to members of the A.C.T. Association for Gifted and Talented Children, together with principals, teachers and parents in nineprimary schools in the A.C.T. The results of the questionnaire indicated that all three groups agreed with the proposition that every child was entitled to an educational program that would assist the child to develop to his / her fullest potential. Appropriate extension programs should be run for gifted students in the local primary school, with the involvement of the resource teacher and the assistance of personnel and locations outside of the local school when it was appropriate. Some reservations were expressed toward the level of parent participation in the identification procedure, program planning and program evaluation, and classroom teachers were seen to require assistance in the areas of identification, program planning and the evaluation of programs designed to meet the special needs of gifted students. The Field Study concludes that local A.C.T. primary schools could meet the special needs of gifted students. This could be achieved by principals, teachers and members of the School Board developing and implementing special educational programs by utilising Special Project funding, additional staff and professional development opportunities which are currently available in limited amounts through the ACT Schools Authority and the Commonwealth Schools Commission.

Over the past six years, a part-time withdrawal-from-mainstream-class enrichment program for gifted and talented children has been operating at the Holt Primary School in the Australian Capital Territory. In keeping with the neighbourhood school policy of the ACT Schools Authority, the program caters only for children within the school and has included those from grades three to six. Based on Renzulli's Enrichment Triad Model, the program has a thematic approach which provides opportunities for participants to pursue both group and individual research on topics of interest to them. Identified children remain in the program for as long as possible and some have continued for as long as three years when resources have been available. This Action Research Study by the Co-ordinator of the program describes the setting up, objectives, identification methods, resources and evaluation.

Taking into account the rapidly changing of the environment nowadays and the necessity of being different between organizations, this paper tries to show how to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in companies, through talented people using talent management strategies. Here is included all theoretical framework where we will explain our understanding of talent management, talented people and the creativity as a talent. This framework gives us the tools needed to be able to analyse a real talent management strategy. During the analysis we will discover that a talent management strategy has to be fitted with the corporate strategy and with the corporate culture and also, that there are infinite ways to develop the talent management activities, it depends on the organization which develops it. For instance we are going to study two companies, Zerogrey and Google, which are very different between them but both of them have a talent management strategy.

The purpose of this study was to examine teacher perceptions of third and fourth grade African American students who might be selected for the gifted and talented program. It is the first study concerning teachers’ perceptions of African American students in an urban school district with a relatively high representation of African American students and teachers in the gifted and talented program. The results showed the improvement in African American representation in gifted and talented programs that can result from positive teacher perceptions of African American students. Since these positive perceptions may be due, at least in part, to the high proportion of African American teachers in the school district under study, these results suggest a link between an increased proportion of African American teachers, positive teacher perceptions of African American students and an improvement in African American representation in gifted and talented programs. Public educational policy should strive to increase the proportion of African American teachers. This could be achieved by modifying standardized tests used for teacher certification, which researchers have shown to be biased against minority cultures, and also by university recruitment to attract African Americans to education. The results also suggest the need for increased levels of multicultural and urban courses as a standard part of pre-service teacher education. Quality instruction in these areas can contribute toward a greater understanding among teachers of the effect of culture in the classroom and, thereby reduce the tendency to form low expectations of African American and other minority students. This indulgence in deficit thinking needs an aggressive intervention before prospective teachers enter the classroom where some may propagate the detrimental effects of low teacher expectations on another generation of African American students. Increased levels of multicultural and urban education among teachers can also help teachers understand how to interact with African American parents in a constructive manner. This is an important step in creating a school environment, which encourages parental school involvement and, thereby allows African American students readily to enjoy more the academic benefits of parental involvement. When these steps are implemented, this may lead to an increase of African American students to the gifted and talented program.

The purpose of this research is to study the mathematical problem solving processes, strategy use and success factors of middle grade gifted and talented (GT) elementary school students. This research is based on 9 mathematical problems edited by the author and divided into the following categories: ¡§numbers and quantity,¡¨ ¡§shape and space,¡¨ and ¡§logical thinking.¡¨ Seven GT students from Ta-Tung elementary school in Kaohsiung were selected as target students in the study. Besides, the seven students were translated into original cases using a thinking aloud method. Here are the conclusions: First of all, when facing non-traditional problems, GT students may use different problem solving steps to solve different problems and may not show all detailed steps for every single problem. The same types of problems may not have the same problem solving steps. Missing any single step would have no impact on the answers. Problem solving sequence may not fully follow the traditional 5-step sequence: study the problem, analyze, plan, execute, and verify, and, instead, may dynamically adjust the steps according to the thinking. Secondly, GT students¡¦ problem solving strategy includes more or less the following 19 methods: trial and error, tabling, looking for all possibilities, a combination of numbers, listing all possible answers, classifying the length of each side, classifying graphics, classifying points, adding extra numbers (the triangle problem), drawing, identifying rules and repetition, summarizing, forward solving, backward solving, remainder theory, polynomials, organizing data, direct solving, and making tallies. Finally, problem solving success factors are tightly coupled with problem solving knowledge, mathematical capability, and problem solving behavior. Problem solving knowledge includes knowledge of language, understanding, basic models, strategy use, and procedural knowledge. Instances of mathematical capability are capability of abstraction, generalization, calculation, logical thinking, express thinking, reverse thinking, dynamic thinking, memorizing, and space concept. Problem solving behavior includes the sense of understanding the problem and mathematical structure, keeping track of all possible pre-conditions, good understanding of the relationship between the problems and the objectives, applying related knowledge or formulas, verifying the accuracy of the answers, and resilience for problem solving. In addition to discussing the research results, future directions and recommendations for teaching mathematics for GT and regular students are highlighted.

The teaching of the gifted has been a core part of education itself sice it was first formalised, however despite these years of experience the academic community are no closer to understanding or recommending best practice to the thousands of teachers who deal with the challenges associated with gifted and talented education on a daily basis. This study hopes to understand teachers attitudes towards these types of children as well as those children who fall into the doubly exceptional category through qualitative semi structured interviews and focus groups. The resuls showed that while participants held positives attitudes to both types of students under study they were largly unsure as to effectively educate these children and felt that proper government and global guidelines as well as teacher training could overcome these issues.

Thesis (M. Ed.(Opvoedkundige Sielkunde))-University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-91). Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.