Todd Kettler

Critical Thinking Skills Among Elementary School Students Comparing Identified Gifted and General Education Student Performance

Education reform efforts, including the current adoption of Common Core State Standards, have increased attention to teaching critical thinking skills to all students. This study investigated the critical thinking skills of fourth-grade students from a school district in Texas, including 45 identified gifted students and 163 general education students. Identified gifted students outperformed general education students on both the Cornell Critical Thinking Test and the Test of Critical Thinking (d = 1.52 and d = 1.36, respectively). There was no evidence of main effects or interaction effects for gender in measures of critical thinking within these samples. Critical thinking scores of students in the three schools did not differ significantly, nor were differences in scores associated with length of exposure to the gifted education program. The association of higher ability with advanced critical thinking skills, but at the same time, the lack of evidence of an effect of the gifted education programs (which did not focus specifically on critical thinking skills) suggests that differentiation of curriculum and instruction for gifted or advanced learners might fruitfully include deliberate differentiation of instruction in this area.

Social Effects of Hispanic Students Enrolled in an AP Class in Middle School.

Waco Independent School District (WISD) initiated a project offering AP Spanish Language to Hispanic students in the eighth grade. The Hispanic students in this AP Spanish Language class and a similar comparison group answered survey questions on parental involvement, composition of peer group, sense of belonging at school, academic attitudes, and academic aspirations. Data gathered indicated that the students enrolled in the AP course made friends with peers who cared more about grades, enjoyed reading in English, and were more optimistic about their future family, future job, and their service to the community. These results suggest that Spanish-speaking skills can be viewed as a strength and can be used as a gateway, rather than a barrier, to academic success. Enrolling at-risk native Spanish-speaking students in an AP Spanish Language class during their eighth-grade year can create a peer group that honors the students’ native language. This academically supportive peer group can play a role in students’ decisions to enroll in higher level coursework in high school. Because beliefs about self and school are deep rooted and peer group influences are intensifying during middle school, the academic benefits of AP participation need to be extended to Spanish-speaking Hispanic students. AP Spanish Language programs such as this seems to be a feasible way to target Hispanic middle school students and create an academically supportive peer group that will positively influence students’ educational aspirations.

Inequitable Access to Gifted Education Variance in Funding and Staffing Based on Locale and Contextual School Variables

This study examined discrepancies in educational opportunity for gifted students at the program services level. School districts in the study (N = 1,029) varied in expenditures for gifted education and the allocation of faculty for gifted education. The relationships of variables representing funding and staffing gifted education and school contextual variables such as locale (city, suburban, town, rural) were examined. Pairwise comparisons among locales revealed effect sizes as high as 0.31 with respect to funding and staffing variables. Multiple regression analyses and bivariate correlations were examined to estimate the relative strength of the predictor variables on the funding and staffing variables. Data in this study indicated that locale, school size, and economic disadvantage were the strongest predictors of variance in funding and staffing gifted education programs. Rural schools, small schools, and schools with larger economically disadvantaged populations allocate proportionally less fiscal and human resources to gifted education services. Racial/ethnic diversity, property wealth, and overall expenditures per student accounted for relatively little of the variance in funding and staffing gifted programs.

Mathematical Acceleration in a Mixed-Ability Classroom Applying a Tiered Objectives Model

What does effective differentiation look like in a math classroom, and in particular, what does it look like in a mixed-ability math classroom? Those essential questions must be confronted by teachers and program directors who work with gifted and talented students in the field of mathematics. Once a commitment is made, it is not acceptable for students with high abilities in math to lethargically traverse the terrain of the mathematics curricula. Educators of the gifted and talented must confront the best practices and ask, “How can we apply effective differentiation practices to meet the needs of our students?” The following is a brief summary of what current research reveals about mathematics instruction with gifted learners. The authors also recommend a model which teachers can use in mixed-ability classrooms to effectively challenge and raise student achievement in mathematics.

Grouping and Instruction for Gifted Students

Gifted education within school settings can be boile down to three areas of educational services: arrangement of students, curriculum and instruction , and guidance and counseling. Ideally all three of these components fit nicely together to manifest a clearly de nea and goal-directed program for the appropriate education of gifted students. I want to briefly describe a vision of how the first component, arrangement o£students, may be implement ed in a school nd how it impacts the second component, curriculum and instruction. There are multiple options for schools to arrange or group gifted students. The process or criteria for arranging students can be classified into three broad categories: social rationale, political rationale, or instructional rationale. Social rationales for placing students may be based on which students get along well with each other. A social rationale may also place a priority on teachers having siblings of former students. Social rationales may review which students have been in class previously with an effort to maintain or vary those groups. The standards of excellence for the social rationale are harmony and relationships. Political rationales for arranging students into classes are typically based on some concept of fairness . Decisions made within this rationale are designed to justly divide students to ensure balance among classes. If the balance is disturbed, it is not uncommon to hear someone claim that the class groupings are not fair. Adherents to this rationale may say that it is not fair to place a disproportionate number of gifted students into a classroom or a

Defining Rural in Gifted Education Research Methodological Challenges and Paths Forward

Definitions of rurality in education research are inconsistent, making generalization across studies difficult at best. We review published research in rural education between 2005 and 2015 (n = 17) and characterize the way each defined rural. A common technique for classifying rural schools is the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) locale code. We argue that the NCES locale codes fall short of most conceptual understandings of rural. We recommend a school size filter to address the mismatch between the NCES codes and conceptual understandings of rurality. We compare non-rural districts with rural districts using NCES codes for grouping with and without the school size filter. Observed effects vary depending on whether the school size filter was used. We argue that the school size filter along with NCES codes better captures the concept of rural education and could improve research design and generalization across studies involving rural schools.

Rural gifted education and the effect of proximity

Gifted education services in rural districts typically lag behind those in nonrural areas. Using district classifications assigned by the National Center for Education Statistics and Texas school district data (n = 1,029) from the Academic Excellence Indicator System, the role of school district classification on gifted education outcomes was investigated. Contextual variables such as school demographics and school size were also examined. The study focused on rural and town school districts which are further classified as fringe, distant, or remote (level of proximity) within those two broad categories. Results of one-way multivariate analysis of variance indicated an effect of proximity for both rural and town districts on both contextual variables and gifted education outcomes. Additionally, rural fringe districts were found to be more similar to districts not classified as rural (i.e., urban, suburban, town) than to rural distant and rural remote districts. Findings offer important implications for both the support for gifted education in rural settings and the usefulness of the census codes as an indicator in educational research.

Advanced Academic Participation: A Longitudinal Analysis of Ethnicity Gaps in Suburban Schools.

Participation in advanced academic programs such as Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) has been associated with higher student achievement and college readiness. In addition, AP and IB are widely recommended and implemented as services for gifted and talented students. Students who participate in these programs tend to be more successful in college admissions, scholarships, college grade point averages, and college completion rates. Black and Hispanic students do not generally participate in AP and IB programs at the same rate as same-school White students, leaving White students to benefit disproportionately in the transition from high school to college. This study analyzed ethnicity gaps in AP and IB programs longitudinally from 2001 to 2011 in 117 suburban high schools. Results indicated that AP/IB participation increased for all students over time (d = 0.74). There were ethnicity gaps in 2001 and again in 2011 between Black and Hispanic student AP/IB participation and White student AP/IB participation, and the gaps neither increased nor decreased substantially over time. This study also examined school factors associated with AP/IB ethnicity gaps and found that overall schoolwide college readiness and the proportion of minority faculty at each school were moderately associated with changes in the magnitude of the gaps. Teacher experience and changing student demographics in schools showed little to no association with changes in the magnitude of the ethnicity gaps.

Preschool gifted education: Perceived challenges associated with program development

This descriptive study investigated the challenges related to implementing gifted education services in preschool centers. Participants were 254 licensed preschool center directors in a southern state. Participants completed a researcher-created survey including both selected response items and constructed response items to examine the perceived challenges of providing preschool gifted education services. Ninety-five percent of the preschool center directors had no formal policies or practices for gifted education, and 86% of the center directors had provided no gifted education training to staff. Using qualitative techniques of constant comparative analysis, substantive and theoretical categories yielded seven verifiable themes related to perceived challenges of gifted education in preschool centers: (a) finding and retaining a trained and qualified staff; (b) balancing time, space, and money constraints; (c) implementing gifted education practices; (d) overcoming oppositional beliefs; (e) acquiring educational resources; (f) outside factors; and (g) finding information and guidance. Results of this study imply that preschool educators have misunderstandings about gifted education in early childhood, and model policies and practices for recognizing and serving gifted children in preschool settings may be needed.

Gifted Students' Conceptions of Their High School STEM Education.

This qualitative study was conducted to explore gifted students’ conceptions of their high school science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Participants were seven male and female college freshmen selected from the Honors College of a large research university. In-depth interviews captured students’ retrospective accounts of their conceptualizations of their high school STEM education. Interview transcripts were analyzed inductively using a phenomenographic analysis framework. Findings comprised an outcome space composed of six core categories of meaning representing STEM learning environment, institutional supports, social supports, teacher qualities, active involvement in learning, and students’ self-perceptions of their STEM capability. Findings from this study offer a deep understanding of contemporary STEM education of gifted secondary students and help inform future curriculum design, program evaluation, and educational policy.