Few academic interventions for gifted students have generated more empirical support than acceleration and ability grouping, and formative assessment is advocated as a tool that educators can use to appropriately integrate accelerative practices and ability grouping into the classroom. However, the empirical support for accelerative practices,…

Gifted adolescents are poised to make important decisions that will determine the trajectory of their futures. A positive self-concept may lead to higher educational and career aspirations, whereas a poorer self-concept may negatively influence choices and outcomes. Research points to self-concept differences among gifted students of different…

Gifted students report that they are often perceived differently than nonidentified students (Cross, Coleman, & Stewart, 1993); thus, they employ social coping strategies to manipulate the visibility of their giftedness. The Social Coping Questionnaire (SCQ; Swiatek, 1995) was designed to assess these strategies. This study's purpose was to…

Grappling with the issues of equity and excellence has become evermore complex, solutions seem more and more remote as the divides between socioeconomic groups become greater and greater, and the ethnic diversity of the student population continues to present ever-increasing stress on the educational system. Robinson's concerns that redress to…

Both the current school reform and standards movements call for enhanced quality of instruction for all learners. Recent emphases on heterogeneity, special education inclusion, and reduction in out-of-class services for gifted learners, combined with escalations in cultural diversity in classrooms, make the challenge of serving academically…

The purpose of this study was to collect reliability and validity data on the School Characteristics Inventory (SCI), a quantitative measure based on Sternberg's (2000) theory of contextual modifiability. Data were collected from a national sample of middle school teachers and from teachers participating in a 3-year study investigating teachers'…

A study investigated the efficacy of specific interventions (mentoring, parental involvement, and multicultural curricula) on academic achievement of 273 elementary students from low-socioeconomic environments. The interventions had no statistically significant effect on student achievement in any grade. However, by the end of the program,…

This article urges educators of the gifted to look critically at both contributions of their field (for example, recognition of individual differences, stress on process and metacognitive skills, and commitment to high standards) and weaknesses (for example, narrowness of definition and identification, lack of program evaluation, and poor…

Current research and practice seem to indicate that opportunities for gifted females have increased while barriers to their achievement have decreased. This article reviews research studies and analysis regarding sex differences, points out promising research directions, and discusses sex bias in programs and curriculum. (Author/JDD)

This study investigated self-concepts and quality of parent-adolescent communication among 60 gifted adolescent females, including 42 participants in early college entrance programs and 18 who stayed with traditional high school programs. Results indicate that parent-daughter communication varied widely between mothers and fathers and was…

The study assessed the structural validity of the Ross Test of Higher Cognitive Processes (a recently developed instrument designed to assess the higher level thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation as outlined in Bloom's Taxonomy) with 154 gifted third through sixth graders. (Author/CL)

Review of solicited gifted program evaluation reports and the literature found a relative paucity of such reports as well as a lack of methodological sophistication, reporting, and utility concerns. Promising practices were seen in some evaluations conducted for program improvement, which employed multiple methodologies, sources, analysis…

This article describes the database of the National Repository for Instruments and Strategies Used in the Identification and Evaluation of Gifted Programs (University of Virginia). The Scale for the Evaluation of Gifted Identification Instruments is applied to the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children. A sample bibliographic reference from the…

This paper discusses selected issues and literature concerning gifted female students, examining achievement and aptitude, career choice, self-perceptions of ability, course taking, parental influences, the glamorization of sex differences, stereotyping, effects of classroom groupings and teaching strategies, and effects of single-sex schools and…