Katie Leach's List: Gifted

• But when schools tailor their curriculum, counseling, and mentoring solely to the median student,  they in effect waste some of our nation’s most important potential resources.
• We no longer compete for jobs and customers with our neighbors  down the street; we now compete with our neighbors all around the globe. Further, many of these individuals are highly talented,  and nearly all are intensely motivated.
• In fact, the highest-priority recommendation of the Gathering Storm report was to “fix” the nation’s public schools, for youths of all abilities—the gifted, the average, and the less gifted.
• In fact, their  survey suggests that abilities can be enhanced through development, that different talents develop at different rates and  must be addressed accordingly, and that young people need psychological strength training to help them succeed. M
• Subotnik et al. argue that ability is developed by motivation. I would go so far as to say that motivation will nearly always  beat mere ability.

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• The abilities of individuals do matter, particularly their abilities  in specific talent domains; different talent domains have different developmental trajectories that vary as to when they start,  peak, and end; and opportunities provided by society are crucial at every point in the talent-development process.
• Finally, outstanding achievement or eminence ought to be the chief goal  of gifted education. We assert that aspiring to fulfill one’s talents and abilities in the form of transcendent creative contributions  will lead to high levels of personal satisfaction and self-actualization as well as produce yet unimaginable scientific, aesthetic,  and practical benefits to society.
• Giftedness is the manifestation  of performance that is clearly at the upper end of the distribution in a talent domain even relative to other high-functioning  individuals in that domain. Further, giftedness can be viewed as developmental in that in the beginning stages, potential  is the key variable; in later stages, achievement is the measure of giftedness; and in fully developed talents, eminence is  the basis on which this label is granted.
• In fact, high-ability students in the United States  are not faring well on international comparisons. The scores of advanced students in the United States with at least one college-educated  parent were lower than the scores of students in 16 other developed countries regardless of parental education level.
• The most important of these include general and domain-specific ability, creativity, motivation and mindset, task commitment,  passion, interest, opportunity, and chance.
• Abilities matter, domains of talent have varying developmental trajectories, opportunities need to be provided to  young people and taken by them as well, psychosocial variables are determining factors in the successful development of talent,  and eminence is the aspired outcome of gifted education.
• opportunity and motivation—and is organized according  to the degree to which access to talent development is high or low and whether an individual is highly motivated or not.
• nd finally, outstanding achievement or eminence—with  its attendant benefits to society and to the gifted individual—ought to be the chief goal of gifted education.
• Renzulli argued that psychological characteristics such as task persistence, creativity, and motivation  are as important to creative productivity as is intellectual or academic ability and that these characteristics should be  sought out and cultivated in school programs.
• giftedness must be developed and sustained by way of training and interventions in domain-specific skills
• the acquisition of the psychological and social skills needed to pursue difficult new paths
• and the individual’s conscious decision to engage fully in a domain

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• Nevertheless, two primary academic concerns regarding the use of acceleration are expressed by some professionals: (a) Students may burn out if they are placed in classes that are advanced for their chronological age
• b) acceleration may lead to gaps in the knowledge of participants or poor retention of material learned at an accelerated pace
• A number of researchers, for example, have concluded that the risk of burnout is offset by an even higher risk of underachievement due to boredom if a gifted student is forced to remain in regular classes (Compton, 1982; Copley, 1961; Freeman 1983; Manaster & Powell, 1983; Paulus, 1984).
• t has been noted that boredom in the classroom may lead to other adjustment difficulties, such as social withdrawal (Compton, 1982) or lack of self-discipline (Compton, 1982; Paulus, 1984).
• When acceleration is properly used, it works academically.
• • The Psychosocial concerns for acceleration
• Rather, the research has amply demonstrated that most gifted children are psychosocially mature (Delp & Martinson, 1977; Hildreth, 1966; Holli
• gifted students have been shown to be popular with other students
• Gifted students appear to be well adjusted, especially during the preadolescent years; acceleration does not seem to affect that adjustment (Benbow, 1991
• Decreases in self-esteem are indeed frequently found on enrollment in acceleration as well as enrichment programs.
• greater realism in students' self-concepts rather than as indications of a dangerous decline.
• One study compared radically accelerated male students with equally gifted unaccelerated male students and found no significant differences on variables associated with personality, career interests and aspirations, and values
• • Second topic is comparing gifted accelerated and nonaccelerated

  • Because the empirical data concludes that the psychosocial is not affected, this research will study students'self-reports on both academic and psychosocial/attitudinal variables to provide direct evidence for global effect of acceleration.
• The best ethical design, therefore, appears to be quasi-experimental (Campbell & Stanley, 1963; Cook & Campbell, 1979). Students who, for reasons of their own, either have or have not accelerated should be matched for ability and then compared. This procedure was followed in the present study.

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