Research Base - NAGC

U.S. Department of Education. (1993). National excellence: A case for developing America’s talent.Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.The federal Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act provided a general definition of giftedness aschildren with outstanding talent. “Children and youth with outstanding talent perform or show the potential forperforming at remarkably high levels of accomplishment when compared with others of their age, experience,or environment. These children and youth exhibit high performance capability in intellectual, creative, and/orartistic areas, possess an unusual leadership capacity, or excel in specific academic fields. They requireservices or activities not ordinarily provided by the schools.” (p. 26)U.S. Congress, Public Law 91-230, April 1970.The Educational Amendments of 1969 contained one of the first federal definitions of giftedness: “The term‘gifted and talented children’ means in accordance with objective criteria prescribed by the Commissioner,children who have outstanding intellectual ability or creative talent, the development of which requires specialactivities or services not ordinarily provided by local education agencies.” This was later revised andbroadened by Sidney Marland (1972).Practice-based ReferencesBorland, J. H., & Wright, L. (1994). Identifying young, potentially gifted, economically disadvantaged students.Gifted Child Quarterly, 38, 164-171.This article describes Project Synergy, a procedure for identifying economically disadvantaged, potentiallygifted kindergarten students in urban schools. The approach emphasized the development of site-appropriatemethods such as multicultural curriculum-based enrichment activities, classroom observations, portfolioassessment, teacher nominations, dynamic assessment, a literature-based activity, a child interview, and theconcept of best performance. It de-emphasized the use of standardized tests.Johnsen, S., & Ryser, G. (1994). Identification of young gifted children from lower income families. Gifted andTalented International, 9(2), 62-68.This study examined the relationship among measures used in the identification for a summer program of 50gifted and talented four to seven-year-old children from lower income families. Approximately 38% wereHispanic. Identification procedures included parent nomination, teacher nomination, products, the TorranceTest of Creative Thinking, the Screening Assessment for Gifted Elementary Students—Primary Version. Thethree best predictors of future achievement were the SAGES-P Reasoning, the parent checklist, and theteacher checklist.Jatko, B. P. (1995). Action research and practical inquiry: Using a whole class tryout procedure for identifyingeconomically disadvantaged students in three socioeconomically diverse schools. Journal for the Educationof the Gifted, 19, 83-105.This author conducted research addressing the identification and selection of economically disadvantagedgifted students for participation in the TAG Future Problem Solving program. An action research, wholeclassroomapproach was used to evaluate fourth grade students at three elementary schools (1 affluentcommunity, 1 lower-middle income, and 1 extremely low income) who had no previous experience with theFPS program. The author states that this technique can be an effective tool for educators in increasing thenumber of economically disadvantaged children in a TAG program, but ultimately, the students are the majorbeneficiaries of the services.Kitano, M. K., & Espinosa, R. (1995). Language diversity and giftedness: Working with gifted Englishlanguage learners. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 18, 234-254.This article summarizes research on language diversity and giftedness, recommending new strategies foridentification: a developmental program that “evokes” a gifted student’s potential; a broader conceptualizationof intelligence; alternative constructs of giftedness; and assessment models developed for specificpopulations. In addition, English language learners tend to profit from primary language instruction during theearly grades followed by a two-way bilingual program for upper level elementary gifted students.Recommended instructional strategies include student-centered approaches, emphasis on language7