Peggy Dettmer

New blooms in established fields: Four domains of learning and doing

Educational taxonomies developed by Bloom, Krathwohl, and collaborators have been used for decades as frameworks for instructional objectives, curriculum design, and assessments of achievement. However, their scope is now too limited. The well‐known cognitive domain is extended to include ideational functions of imagination and creativity, and the affective domain is enhanced to include internalization, wonder, and risk taking. The psychomotor domain is expanded into a sensorimotor domain, incorporating five senses along with balance, spatial relationships, movement, and other physical activity. A social domain is introduced to accentuate sociocultural processes that accompany thinking, feeling, and sensing/movement. Lastly, the four domains are synthesized into a unified domain of thinking, feeling, sensing/moving, and Interacting to optimize potential and self‐fulfillment for all students.

Gifted Program Advocacy: Overhauling Bandwagons to Build Support

Significant progress has been made in gifted education during the past two decades-legislation to establish programs, state and local funding in many areas, systems for preparing personnel, growth of professional organizations, numerous publications and research efforts, and the Javits Act at the federal level. Why then have all the eloquent appeals for gifted education not yet secured a solid place for gifted programs in the

Improving Teacher Attitudes Toward Characteristics of the Creatively Gifted

-ences are incompatible with teacher attitudes, teaching methods, and systems of reward. It appears that in spite of a great societal need for creative production and much educational emphasis upon teaching for creativity, the qualities of truly creative behavior generally are not prized and rewarded within schools. There is, to be sure, considerable semantic difficulty in defining the creative personality. There is also evidence that ordinary persons can be highly creative under certain circumstances, while highly gifted persons might not be particularly creative. However, Gowan, Torrance, MacKinnon, and others present evidence that those who are highly creative do have unique personality traits. While it is these creative individuals to whom society turns when new ideas and solutions are needed, unfortunately their individual differences are typically treated as nuisances rather than assets in school settings. Teaching methods and lesson plans rarely attempt to capitalize on the inner personality or unique learning styles of each child. A student is pressured instead to adjust, adapt, change roles, and modify preferences, and then to be creative as well. These conflicting demands are very confusing to students. Henry (1959) noted that American educators think that they want creative children in school, but put overwhelming emphasis on adjustment to the group. Torrance (1965)

Gifted education: Window of opportunity

Educators and parents of gifted students have many concerns as current movements of educational restructuring and reform sweep the country. However, unparalleled opportunities emerge from the swelling interest in education that focuses on the individual learning needs of all students. This interest should be perceived as a window of opportunity. In order to take advantage of the opportunities, gifted program personnel will want to keep an open mind toward concepts such as inclusion and collabora tion. Without giving up the cause as champions of differentiated learning opportunities for highly able students, they can be accepted at last as key conversants in the educational dialogue. Then they can work in more integrative and productive ways with general classroom teachers, administrators, parents, and community leaders to develop exceptional student potential.

Factors of Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Sense of Accomplishment Among Teachers of the Gifted

A recent teacher poll (McGuire, 1979) revealed that one out of every three teachers surveyed would not choose teaching as a career if the decision were to be made again. Four out of ten teachers do not plan to remain in teaching until retirement, and the number of teachers with twenty or more years of experience has dropped by nearly half within the past 15 years. Over 75% of teachers questioned by Miller (1979) stated that their absences from school were fre-

Characteristics and Needs of Adult Learners in Gifted Program Inservice and Staff Development

The adult learner in inservice and staff development (ISD) for gifted programs requires a learning environment based upon several assumptions of adult education. Adult learners tend to be self-directed with an accumulated wealth of experiences. They have a need for immediate application of learning, and they vaiue problem-centered activities. Participants in gifted program ISD are served best in a collaborative atmosphere where they are involved in self-assessment of needs, mutual goal-planning, use of materials and facilities appropriate for adults, and self-evaluation of learning with supportive feedback and followup.

Advocacy for Gifted Programs: An Interview with NAGC Executive Director Peter D. Rosenstein

Peter Rosenstein, Executive Director of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) since October 1989, is an advocate for intellectually gifted and creatively gifted children and educational programs that can help them develop their talents and abilities to the fullest. In this article Mr. Rosenstein responds to specific questions from guest editor Peggy Dettmer about advocacy efforts in the field of gifted education.

Gifted Program Inservice and Staff Development: Pragmatics and Possibilities

Inservice and staff development form a vital link between learning needs of gifted and talented students and adoption of educational practices that will serve those needs. Yet general attitudes about inservice and staff development (ISD) range from negative to hostile in many school settings. We read that staff development (SD) is perceived for the most part as irrelevant, ineffective, and a waste of time, while inservice (I) is the slum of education disadvantaged, poverty-stricken, and ineffective (Wood & Thompson, 1980). Inservice seems to be the subject of endless rhetoric more ornamental than useful (Cruickshank, Lorish & Thompson, 1979), only slightly more palatable and necessary than death and taxes (Dillon, 1979), and rather like Flossie’s artificial insemination where that poor bovine has no control over the procedure and &dquo;not much fun in the process&dquo; (Sharma, 1982). Despite the bad press toward 1SD, educators continue to express a need for effective ISD that will help them &dquo;to be better at something that is very, very hard to do&dquo; (Howey & Joyce, 1978, p. 211). Indeed, if a time existed when educators could consider themselves fully prepared for their complex roles, this is not that time. Even as we take teaching certificates in hand and step into our first class-