Catherine A. Little

The Effects of Differentiated Instruction and Enrichment Pedagogy on Reading Achievement in Five Elementary Schools

This experimental study examined the effect of a differentiated, enriched reading program on students’ oral reading fluency and comprehension using the schoolwide enrichment model–reading (SEM-R). Treatment and control conditions were randomly assigned to 63 teachers and 1,192 second through fifth grade students across five elementary schools. Using multilevel modeling, significant differences favoring the SEM-R were found in reading fluency in two schools (Cohen’s d effect sizes of .33 and .10) and in reading comprehension in the high-poverty urban school (Cohen’s d = .27), with no achievement differences in the remaining schools. These results demonstrate that an enrichment reading approach, with differentiated instruction and less whole group instruction, was as effective as or more effective than a traditional whole group basal approach.

A Study of Curriculum Effectiveness in Social Studies

This quasi-experimental study examines the effects on student performance of a Javits-funded curriculum designed to respond to the needs of high-ability students in elementary and middle school social studies. The curriculum, implemented with all students in heterogeneous classrooms, addresses state standards while integrating advanced content, higher level process emphases, and a conceptual orientation. Data collection focuses on student performance in conceptual reasoning, critical thinking, and content learning and on teacher demonstration of specific desired teaching behaviors. Results demonstrate significant and important differences between treatment and comparison groups in the area of content learning, favoring the treatment group; no significant differences are found for the small subsample of gifted students. Subanalyses yield differential results for specific units and schools, potentially indicating issues of treatment fidelity. Contextual challenges and implications of the study are discussed, including issues related to social studies curriculum implementation and differentiation in the current standards-based environment.

Advancement Via Individual Determination: Method Selection in Conclusions About Program Effectiveness

The authors present results of a 2-year mixedmethods evaluation study of Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID; 2006), an academic intervention initiative supported by the Advanced Placement (AP) Incentive Program that targets middle-achieving students who have been underrepresented in advanced classes and 4-year colleges and that aims to increase their AP course and college enrollment. Results of the evaluation provide a mixed review of program effectiveness by year of implementation and method of inquiry, with highlights including universal stakeholder support and statistically significant differences between AVID and comparison students on a number of academic variables. The authors discuss implications of findings and suggestions for data triangulation.

A Sample of Gifted and Talented Educators’ Attitudes About Academic Acceleration

Despite extensive research supporting its use, including the 2004 publication of A Nation Deceived, acceleration is an underutilized strategy for meeting the academic needs of gifted and talented students. Parents’ and educators’ attitudes and beliefs about acceleration influence the extent to which it is implemented in schools. This study investigated gifted and talented educators’ attitudes toward acceleration using a 7-point rating scale measuring concerns about acceleration, beliefs about acceleration, and support for specific acceleration strategies. Data indicated there were no differences in attitudes among teachers from rural, suburban, or urban school districts. Overall, the least popular acceleration strategies were also the easiest to implement, but caused the greatest change in students’ environments (i.e., grade-skipping and early entrance to kindergarten). As expected, the educators were most troubled by social issues and least concerned about academic issues related to acceleration.

A Model of Academic Self-Concept: Perceived Difficulty and Social Comparison among Academically Accelerated Secondary School Students.

Academic self-concept predicts students’ future goals and is affected by a student’s relative success compared with his or her peer group. This exploratory study used structural equation modeling to examine the contributions of the perceived level of difficulty of the curriculum, in addition to the contributions of social comparison and achievement in schoolwork, to academic self-concept among students enrolled in advanced coursework. Along with school achievement, perceived difficulty and social comparison also predicted academic self-concept. The final model indicated that students differentiate between learner self-concept, which is how students perceived their ability to understand new ideas or knowledge, and student self-concept, which is how they perceived their abilities to succeed in school-related tasks. Of these two constructs, student self-concept was a better predictor of future goals; however, the overall effect was small.

Time to Read: Advancing Reading Achievement After School

Out-of-school programs provide a context for enriching academic experiences. This study describes a 12-week after-school reading program, Project Expanding Horizons, which is based on the Schoolwide Enrichment Model-Reading (SEM-R) framework. SEM-R has three phases: exposure, supported independent reading, and choice. The exposure phase is designed to broaden students’ literature experiences through short read-alouds. During the next phase, supported independent reading, teachers circulate and hold conferences with students as they read independently from self-selected books. Teachers give guidance to students in selecting books of appropriate challenge during this phase and promote thinking about reading through questioning and discussion. Finally, during the last stage, teachers give students a choice of a variety of activities related to their reading. The program provided wide exposure to books and emphasized individually challenging reading, including a specific focus on meeting the needs of advanced readers. In this study, the participants included 155 students in grades 3–6 from 3 demographically diverse districts. Average weekly gain scores in reading fluency were compared to grade-level national norms. Third and fifth graders showed statistically significantly higher gain scores than the national sample; fourth and sixth graders did not. These results suggest that participation in the after-school program may have contributed additional support to students’ growth in reading achievement over the course of 12 weeks. Further analyses indicated similar gain scores across subgroups by gender, district, and entry reading level. Thus, this program shows potential benefits for both low-ability and high-ability readers.

Avenues to Professional Learning Online: Technology Tips and Tools for Professional Development in Gifted Education

The use of online methods for professional development activities is on the rise, with more schools exploring creative ways of providing teacher learning opportunities. Online professional development offers a promising direction for providing increased learning opportunities, promoting professional collaboration, and supporting teacher facility with technology resources. In gifted education, online activities may present effective ways of connecting gifted education professionals across multiple schools and districts and providing professional learning experiences in gifted education for colleagues in general education. In this article, the authors discuss key features of professional development and considerations for applying them in an online learning context. The authors emphasize the importance of coherence with the curriculum, active engagement, sustained attention, and administrative support. They then discuss five avenues or approaches for implementing online professional development, representing a range of interactive elements and opportunities for blending live and online components. Within each avenue presented, the authors share specific resources that would support implementation in the professional learning context.

Single-Subject Research in Gifted Education.

Single-subject research (SSR) is an experimental research tradition that is well established in other fields (e.g., special education, behavior analysis) but has rarely been applied to topics in gifted education. In this Methodological Brief, Brandi Simonsen and Catherine A. Little from the University of Connecticut highlight the key features of SSR, describe typical SSR designs, and present examples to illustrate how each design could be applied to topics in gifted education.

Effects of Differentiated Reading Instruction on Student Achievement in Middle School.

Reading instruction often does not focus on appealing to student interests, offering choice, or responding to the needs of advanced readers. In this experimental study, we examined the effects on achievement of an instructional approach involving choice, differentiated instruction, and extensive, supported, independent reading, with corresponding elimination of regular reading instruction. The study, which incorporated multi-site cluster-randomized design, was conducted in four middle schools with 2,150 students and 47 teachers. Pretest and posttest data were collected on reading fluency and comprehension, with Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) procedures used to investigate the effects of the intervention. Results indicated similar results overall for treatment and control group students, with treatment outperforming control on reading fluency at two of the schools. The findings demonstrate that the intervention resulted in similar or higher scores for fluency and similar scores for comprehension, despite the diminished whole-group and small-group instruction provided in the intervention as compared with regular reading classes.

Barriers to Underserved Students’ Participation in Gifted Programs and Possible Solutions

Gifted students’ learning gains result from complex, advanced, and meaningful content provided by a knowledgeable teacher through high-quality curriculum and instruction at an appropriate pace with scaffolding and feedback. These elements exert influence that increases with dosage and within structures that facilitate student engagement in rigorous experiences, including interactions with one another. Talent development is a two-part process. First, educators and parents must provide opportunities for talent to surface, and then they must recognize the talent and provide educational opportunities that engage the emerging talent and move it to exceptional levels. Unfortunately, a variety of barriers exist that limit underserved students’ participation in this process. We discuss these barriers within a proposed model of talent development.