Deborah E. Burns

Bridging the Gap: A Tool and Technique to Analyze and Evaluate Gifted Education Curricular Units

Research on the quality of educational standards, our knowledge about the quality of textbooks, and the performance of high-achieving students on international assessments all point to the need for exemplary curricula for gifted and talented young people. The gap between research in these areas and the needs of gifted and talented learners is startlingly clear. This article includes information about the development of a rubric that was originally designed to assess the quality of curricular units that are submitted annually to the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) Curriculum Divisions Curriculum Competition. The article also includes information about 4 different, but related, uses for the rubric. Ultimately, we hope that the use of this tool and assessment technique by practitioners across the country will begin to close the enormous gap between the learning needs of gifted and talented young people and curricula.

Can we generalize about the learning style characteristics of high academic achievers

In 1980 Dunn and Price used their Learning Style Inventory (Dunn, Dunn & Price, 1975) to investigate differences between the learning style preferences of high academic achieving students and the preferences expressed by same‐age students with average or below average academic achievement. The purpose of the study described in this article was to determine if and how the learning style preferences of a different group of high academic achieving students, inventoried at a later date, but with the same instrument, differed from those identified in the original study. A discriminant function analysis analyzed the learning styles data obtained from 500 students in grades 4 ‐ 8. While significant differences (p < .001) in the preferences distinguished between the average and above average achieving students groups, there was minimal overlap with the preferences identified in original investigation. The authors conclude that the differences within an achievement group may be as great as between groups, and that...

Developing a Thinking Skills Component in the Gifted Education Program.

As a result of our experience in developing thinking skills components within gifted education programs, we have identified several key issues in the creation of an effective thinking skills program. We believe that although the development of improved questioning strategies and classroom environments to enhance thinking skills is a vital and often neglected aspect of cognitive instruction, the actual teaching of thinking skills is even more important. We define “direct instruction” as the development and use of lesson plans that describe, define and model the appropriate strategies for applying a particular thinking skill. Given the necessary training and planning time, teachers can learn to develop units of instruction to introduce, practice and transfer a given thinking skill. By observing as the teacher models the use of these strategies, and by engaging in guided practice, the student can be “coached” to attain skill mastery and will eventually be able to transfer this new thinking skill to appropria...

Return Gift to Sender: A review of The Bell Curve, by Richard Herrnstein & Charles Murray

intelligence: Anglo whites, Ashkcnazi Jews (their qualification, not oms, of those of the Jewish 1-clifioll), certain Asians, and so on. Moreover, the definition makes no allowance for those who may not.score particularly highIv on cOI1l’elltional intelligence tests, but who show gifts according to broad<.’) theories 01 intelligence or giftedness, in gciicial. Consider justateBB or these nroclern conceptions of giftedncss. For l’xaIIlplc, aInong those written Oil ~ti-c people who are ,iitcct in terms of spatial, mrrsicul, bodilv-kiIlL’stl1L’ti,’, oliliti~II)Cl-s()IILII intelligeuccs in terms of (~arclncns (19t33) Of multiple intcll>gci>Lc;; or in rrcativr or praWical intdlig,’nlT in