Bruce M. Shore

Setting, Elaborating, and Reflecting on Personal Goals Improves Academic Performance

Of students who enroll in 4-year universities, 25% never finish. Precipitating causes of early departure include poor academic progress and lack of clear goals and motivation. In the present study, we investigated whether an intensive, online, written, goal-setting program for struggling students would have positive effects on academic achievement. Students (N = 85) experiencing academic difficulty were recruited to participate in a randomized, controlled intervention. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 intervention groups: Half completed the goal-setting program, and half completed a control task with intervention-quality face validity. After a 4-month period, students who completed the goal-setting intervention displayed significant improvements in academic performance compared with the control group. The goal-setting program thus appears to be a quick, effective, and inexpensive intervention for struggling undergraduate students.

Three Myths? The Over-Representation of the Gifted among Dropouts, Delinquents, and Suicides.

one (Barnes, 1973). Hecht (1975) asked why the academically gifted and potential dropouts are traditionally viewed at opposite ends of a continuum. Using teacher ratings, he found 20% of potential dropouts came from families on welfare, while only 3% of this group were described as academically gifted. Academically gifted subjects were described as coming from stable homes of the majority culture, obtaining good grades, and being well adjusted. Opposite characteristics were described for potential dropouts. Hecht pointed that teachers may be confusing academic gifted-

12 Tips: Guidelines for authoring virtual patient cases

Background: Virtual patient cases are an increasingly utilized and compelling pedagogical strategy for medical education informatics. They provide educators with the opportunity to develop richly layered, multidimensional teaching situations for their learners. However, ‘virtual patients are notoriously difficult to author, adapt and exchange’ (MedBiquitous Virtual Patient Specification, Virtual Patient Working Group 2007), and case creation can be daunting. Authors may be uncertain about the process of virtual patient case development and this can translate into ambiguity and hesitation. Aims: This installment of the ‘12 tips’ presents specific guidelines that are intended to provide medical educators with guidelines to facilitate the development of virtual patient cases. Methods: These 12 tips are based upon comprehensive, research-based, theory-grounded and criterion-referenced guidelines and founded in pedagogical principles, theories of cognition, and recognition of current technology and availability of authoring applications. Results: It is anticipated that the 12 tips will provide medical educators interested in authoring virtual patient cases one set of useful guidelines to facilitate the process. Conclusions: Virtual patient cases provide medical educators with an innovative tool for medical education. These guidelines will assist authors in case development.

Mentors’ contributions to gifted adolescents’ affective, social, and vocational development

Research on mentorships for gifted adolescents primarily has focused on the role mentors play in students’ academic success. Mentors’ contribution to gifted adolescents’ affective, social, and vocational development rarely has been addressed. This article identifies special needs and characteristics of gifted adolescents in these latter areas, and suggests how mentors can play a significant role in each, including the particular value of mentoring relationships for gifted adolescent females. Finally, educational implications are explored, as well as the need for empirical studies which examine the benefits derived by gifted and nongifted mentees from mentoring relationships.

Talents unfolding : cognition and development

Giftedness in the Very Young - How Seriously Should it Be Taken?, Nancy M. Robinson Strategies for Modelling and Studying the Development of Giftedness in Children, Nancy Ewald Jackson A Sociolinguistic Perspective on Exceptionally High IQ in Children, Martha J. Morelock The Giftedness Matrix - a Developmental Perspective, Gardner Tracking Trajectories of Talent - Child Prodigies Grow Up, Lynn T. Goldsmith Cognition, Development and Exceptional Talent in Infancy, John Columbo et al Lifespan Cognitive Giftedness - the Development of Relativistic Thinking, MaryLou Fair Worthen Metacognition and Flexibility as a Part of a Redefinition of High Ability, Bruce M. Shore Social Giftedness in Childhood - a Developmental Perspective, Marion Porath On the Nature of Expertise in Visual Art, Sandra I. Kay Finding the Problem Finders - Problem Finding and the Identification and Development of Talent, Alane J. Starko Was Mozart at Risk? a Developmentalist Looks at Extreme Talent, David Henry Feldman.

Research as a model for university teaching

Forty-nine active researchers in 28 university departments were interviewed about their research and teaching. Though most disciplines were clustered within specific research types, lectures were almost universally prescribed for teaching large and undergraduate classes. Except for seminars, commonly chosen for graduate classes in the humanities, teaching methods did not reflect how professors pursued their own learning. A second study replicated the first with 22 English and 18 chemistry professors. Nearly all the chemistry staff did experimental research, and nearly all the English did analytical. Lectures dominated teaching prescriptions of the former, and lectures and seminars the latter; had teaching and research been closely related, there should have been much less overlap and dispersion in the teaching prescriptions. Finally, only a few instructors in either study traced their research directly to experiences involving teaching. Although general methods by which teacher-researchers pursue knowledge do not appear to be reflected in undergraduate teaching, and research does not widely benefit directly from teaching, the strong belief that the two interact may suggest they should, perhaps in more subtle ways, and the implementation of this interaction is not inconceivable.

Cognition and Giftedness: New Research Directions

How do gifted students think? Are their thinking processes significantly different from their nonidentified peers? The author explores issues related to theory, methods and validity of cognition research. New developments are previewed, and suggestions made for further investigations.

Multipotentiality and Overchoice Syndrome: Clarifying Common Usage

AbstractThe term “multipotentiality” has appeared in the literature over 100 times in the past 35 years. The term has, however, been used in slightly different ways by different authors. This lack of consistency became evident to the present authors, who then set out to analyze the concepts surrounding use of the term multipotentiality in the literature. It has become clear that multipotentiality refers only to multiple abilities. Career decision-making problems accompany multipotentiality only when interests, motivations, and opportunities are also abundant. In this case, when motivation to learn is high, an “overchoice syndrome” can be said to exist.

Problem-Solving Processes of High and Average Performers in Physics.

This study examined cognitive processing differences reported between experts and novices in physics, in order to compare corresponding processes in high and average school achievers. It explored the possibility that the cognitive processes of the high achiever more closely resemble those of experts. Subjects were 12 boys and 9 girls from a grade eleven enriched physics course, divided into groups of high and average achievement. Two graduate students in physics and a high school physics teacher served as experts. All were asked to think aloud while solving five physics problems. The protocols were transcribed and segmented into clauses. Each clause was categorized as a metacognitive, planning, or content statement. Further analysis of the content statements indicated whether they were based on given or prior knowledge. Experts and high performers made more correct metastatements and more references to prior knowledge than the average performers, indicating similarities between high performance at the high school level and expertise in physics.

Can Personal Goal Setting Tap the Potential of the Gifted Underachiever

Although underachieving gifted students have been largely ignored in empirical research, there has been a modest surge of interest in describing and “treating” this population in recent years. It is estimated that nearly half of gifted youth achieve significantly below their potential. In the realm of school psychology, gifted children have special needs that must be addressed. In this article, gifted underachievement is briefly reviewed, and personal goal setting is explored as a possible intervention. Goal settings applicability is reviewed in light of recent expressive writing, neuropsychology, and goal-theory literature. Although personal goal-setting exercises are often reserved for young adults, the reported heightened metacognitive capabilities of gifted children indicate that they might benefit from this type of focus much earlier.