Is There Still A Need for Gifted Education? An Examination of Current Research

What recent research has been conducted about gifted and talented students and their learning experiences in school? As we complete the first decade of the new century we are entering a time when much attention is focused on remediation and test preparation; it only seems appropriate to reflect upon what has been learned about gifted education during the last few decades and consider the compelling evidence that may or may not support special services for gifted and talented. Consensus on which research themes and studies should be included in this type of examination would difficult to reach, but we have identified six important themes that are discussed in the article. This review of research strongly suggests that the need for gifted education programs remains critical during the current time period in American education when our nation’s creative productivity is being challenged by European and Asian nations. What learning experiences do gifted and high-potential students currently encounter in schools? Are they challenged and engaged in their classes and content areas? Is differentiated instruction given to them on a regular basis? Does research suggest that certain types of provisions result in higher engagement, motivation, and creative productivity? In this article, recent research related to gifted education is summarized across six important research themes: (a) expanded conceptions of giftedness and talent development; (b) the continued absence of challenge for gifted and high potential students; (c) grouping patterns for gifted students; (d) the effects of differentiation, acceleration, and enrichment on both achievement and other important outcomes; (e) the use of gifted education programs and pedagogy to serve gifted and high-ability students from diverse populations as well as high-potential students who underachieve or have learning disabilities; and (f) longitudinal effects of gifted education programs and pedagogy. Expanded Conceptions of Giftedness and Talent Development Research about gifted and talented learners points to the great diversity among this heterogeneous group of young people (Neihart, Reis, Robinson, & Moon, 2001) and the fact that many do not realize their potential, in part, because of school factors that contribute to underachievement. In recent years, research about the development of giftedness suggests that personality, environment, school, home, and chance factors all interact with demonstrated potential and whether or not that potential eventually develops into demonstrated gifts and talents (Renzulli, 2006; Sternberg & Davidson, 1986, 2005). Difficulty exists in finding one research-based definition to describe the diversity of the gifted and talented population, and the number of overlapping definitions of giftedness that are proposed in educational research (Sternberg & Davidson, 2005) underlie the complexity of defining with certainty who is and who is not gifted. In describing this diverse group of learners, many educators interchangeably use expanded definitions of giftedness and talent. This was not always the case; for decades past, researchers and psychologists, following in the footsteps of Lewis Terman, equated “giftedness” with high IQ (Terman, 1925). More recently, however, definitions of giftedness or talent have become more multi-dimensional and include the interplay of culture and values on the development of talents and gifts (Sternberg & Davidson, 2005). Current research on the multiple perspectives of conceptions of giftedness range from general, broad characterizations to more targeted definitions of giftedness identified by specific actions, products, or abilities within domains (Sternberg & Davidson, 1986, 2005). This collection of research studies, conducted over the last few decades, supports a broader-based conception of giftedness which combines non-intellectual qualities and intellectual potential, such as motivation, self-concept, and creativity (Sternberg & Davidson, 2005). Broadened Multidimensional Conceptions of Giftedness Current research has expanded to include a multidimensional construct of giftedness that incorporates a variety of traits, skills, and abilities which are manifested in multiple ways. This belief is particularly evident in Conceptions of Giftedness (Sternberg & Davidson, 1986, 2005) of conceptions of giftedness, in which most contributors proposed conceptions of giftedness that extended beyond IQ. Rapid learning as compared to others in the population; attention control, memory efficiency, and characteristics of perception; desire to develop one’s gifts; and task commitment are all proposed as aspects of giftedness in and across the different models in this collection (Heller, Perleth, & Lim, 2005; Reis, 2005; Renzulli, 2005). Those labeled gifted as children and/or adults are found in every ethnic and socioeconomic group and in every culture (Sternberg, 2004). They exhibit an unlimited range of personal and learning characteristics and differ in effort, temperament, educational and vocational attainment, productivity, creativity, risk-taking, introversion, and extraversion (Renzulli & Park, 2002; Renzulli & Reis, 2003). They have varying abilities to self-regulate and sustain the effort needed to achieve personally, academically, and in their careers (Housand & Reis, 2009). And despite the label that this diverse population has been given, some do and some do not demonstrate high levels of accomplishment in their education or their chosen professions and work (Reis & McCoach, 2000; Renzulli & Park, 2002). In research on the characteristics of this diverse population, Frasier and Passow (1994) synthesized traits, aptitudes, and behaviors consistently identified by researchers as common to gifted students across cultures, noting that these basic elements of giftedness appear to be similar across cultures (though each is not displayed by every student). These traits, aptitudes, and behaviors include: motivation, advanced interests, communication skills, memory, insight, imagination, creativity, problem solving, inquiry, reasoning, and humor. Each of these common characteristics may be manifested in different ways in different students; educators should be especially careful in attempting to identify these characteristics in students from diverse backgrounds as behavioral manifestations of the characteristics may vary with context (Frasier & Passow, 1994; Tomlinson, Ford, Reis, Briggs, & Strickland, 2004). Joseph Renzulli was one of the earliest theorists to propose a research-based multifaceted conception of giftedness. The theory of his three-ring conception has prompted widespread research and gained popular appeal. It supports the idea that “gifted behaviors” result from the interaction among distinct intrapersonal characteristics, as is outlined in the excerpt below. Gifted behavior consists of behaviors that reflect an interaction among three basic clusters of human traits—above average ability, high levels of task commitment, and high levels of creativity. Individuals capable of developing gifted behavior are those possessing or capable of developing this composite set of traits and applying them to any potentially valuable area of human performance. Persons who manifest or are capable of developing an interaction among the three clusters require a wide variety of educational opportunities and services that are not ordinarily provided through regular instructional programs. (Renzulli & Reis, 1997, p. 8) Underrepresentation of Giftedness in Diverse Populations The last few decades of the 20 century were marked by an increasing interest in diverse gifted students who can be described as ethnic, racial, and linguistic minorities, economically disadvantaged, gifted females, gifted underachievers, and the gifted/learning disabled. Despite this interest and the recent research cited above that expanded conceptions of giftedness, the majority of young people identified as gifted continue to represent the majority culture, as economically disadvantaged and other diverse student populations continue to be underrepresented in gifted programs (Donovan & Cross, 2002). For example, Frasier and Passow (1994) indicate that identification and selection procedures may be ineffective and inappropriate for the identification of these young people. Educator bias, for example, may occur when preconceived ideas about what constitutes giftedness results in teachers’ failure to recognize and nominate indicators of giftedness in culturally, linguistically diverse (CLD) students with high potential (Ford & Grantham, 2003; Frasier & Passow, 1994). Groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in gifted programs could be better served (Ford & Grantham, 2003; Frasier & Passow, 1994) if the more expanded notions of giftedness and more flexible forms of identification are translated from research conducted to state and local guidelines and regulations. Little doubt exists about the widening acceptance of a broadened conception of giftedness and talent in the research and scholarly literature (Sternberg & Davidson, 2005), however translating this research into policy and practice continues to remain an elusive goal. Continuing Absence of Challenge for Gifted and Talented Students In National Excellence: A Case for Developing America's Talent (U.S. Department of Education, 1993), a federal report on the status of education for our nation's academically talented students, the education of talented students in the United States was described as a quiet crisis. The National Excellence report indicates the absence of attention paid to this population and the absence of challenge that confronts them: Despite sporadic attention over the years to the needs of bright students, most of them continue to spend time in school working well below their capabilities. The belief espoused in school reform that children from all economic and cultural backgrounds must reach their full potential has not been extended to America's most talented students. They are underchallenged and therefore underachieve. (U.S. Department of Education, 1993, p. 5) The report further indicates that our nation’s talented students are offered a less rigorous curriculum, read fewer demanding books, and are less prepared for work or postsecondary education than top students in many other industrialized countries. Talented children from economically disadvantaged homes or from culturally or linguistically diverse groups were found to be especially neglected, the report indicates, and many of them will not realize their potential without some type of intervention. Current research suggests that gifted and talented students fail to be challenged in school, especially in elementary and middle school (Archambault, Westberg, Brown, Hallmark, Emmons, & Zhang, 1993; Reis et al., l993; Reis et al., 2004; Westberg, Archambault, Dobyns, & Salvin, 1993). Research conducted by researchers at the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented have identified what occurs in American classrooms for high ability students and the results describe a disturbing pattern (Archambault et al., 1993). The Classroom Practices Survey was conducted to determine the extent to which gifted and talented students receive differentiated education in regular classrooms. Sixty-one percent of slightly more than 7,300 randomly selected thirdand fourth-grade teachers in public and private schools in the United States reported that they had never had any training in teaching gifted students. Classroom teachers, responding to a survey, reported making only minor modifications in curriculum and instruction on a very irregular basis to meet the needs of gifted students. This result was consistent for all types of schools sampled, for classrooms in various parts of the country, and for various types of communities (Archambault et al.,1993). The Classroom Practices Observational Study (Westberg et al., 1993) examined instructional and curricular practices in 46 regular elementary classrooms throughout the United States. Two students, one identified gifted student and one average ability student, were selected for each of two observation days and the types and frequencies of instruction that both students received through modifications in curricular activities, materials, and teacher-student verbal interactions were documented by trained observers. The results indicated little differentiation in the instructional and curricular practices, including grouping arrangements and verbal interactions, for gifted students in the regular classroom. Over 92 observation days, gifted students rarely received instruction in homogeneous groups (only 21% of the time), and more alarmingly, the target gifted students experienced no instructional or curricular differentiation in 84% of the instructional activities in which they participated. In a study on curriculum differentiation (Reis et al., l993), the effects of using curriculum compacting (Reis, Burns, & Renzulli, 1992) were examined; curriculum compacting is the process of modifying the curriculum and eliminating previously mastered work for high ability students. The content that is eliminated is usually repeated from previous textbooks or even content that may be new in the curriculum but that some students already know. In this study, after a few hours of training, classroom teachers learned how to differentiate curriculum and instruction, and they were able to eliminate between 40-50% of previously mastered regular curriculum for high ability students. However, they were less effective at replacing what they eliminated with high quality, challenging curriculum and instruction (Reis et al., l993). No differences were found in the achievement scores of gifted students whose work was compacted and students who did all the work in reading, math computation, social studies, and spelling. In science and math concepts, students whose curriculum was compacted scored significantly higher than control group in achievement (Reis et al., 1993). Little differentiation in reading was found for thirdor seventh-grade gifted readers who read several grade levels ahead in reading (Reis et al., 2004). Research conducted in 12 different thirdand seventh-grade reading classrooms in both urban and suburban school districts over a 9month period showed that little purposeful or meaningful differentiated reading instruction was given for talented readers in any of the classrooms (Reis et al., 2004). Above-grade level books were seldom available for these students in their classrooms, and students were not encouraged to select more challenging books and so made little continuous progress. Other research related to the absence of middle school differentiation and attitudes of teachers and administrators about differentiation (Moon, Tomlinson, & Callahan, 1995) suggests that advanced students continue to remain under-challenged in many middle school classrooms in the United States. The research studies summarized in this section suggest that that gifted and high potential students in American schools are under-challenged. In a data-based longitudinal study (Reis, Hébert, Diaz, Maxfield, & Rattley, 1995) conducted with gifted, urban, high school students, half of these previously identified students were found to be underachieving in high school. These students provided insight about why they did poorly, blaming an elementary and middle school program that was too easy. The problem of systematically learning not to work exists in rural, suburban, and urban areas and seems to be an area of increasing importance in the education of gifted and talented students This section has summarized studies showing a pattern of little differentiation occurring in randomly selected classrooms (Archambault et al., l993; Reis et al., l993; Reis et al., 2004; Westberg et al., 1993). Many classroom teachers have not received training in differentiation or gifted education pedagogy and fail to use it regularly or effectively in their classrooms (Archambault et al., 1993; Reis et al., 2004). When they do receive training, they can often eliminate redundant content through procedures such as curriculum compacting but often have few resources to use with their students (Reis et al., l993). This lack of challenge and differentiation is one reason that some gifted students drop out (Renzulli & Park, 2000) or underachieve in school (Reis et al., 1995). Research on Grouping Patterns for Gifted Students Although research on tracking has been shown to produce detrimental effects for some students (Oakes, 2005), we make a distinction between tracking and instructional grouping. We define tracking as the permanent placement of students into a class that is often remedial or advanced in nature with little chance of exit or entrance over the years. In contrast, several types of instructional grouping exist for academically talented students, and the ones reviewed in this article enable flexible movement in and out of grouping patterns. Several studies have proven that grouping gifted students together for differentiated curriculum and instruction increases achievement for gifted students and, in some cases, also for students who are achieving at average and below average levels (Gentry & Owen, 1999; Kulik, 1992; Rogers, 1991; Tieso, 2002). Kulik’s (1992) meta-analysis of grouping found that achievement is increased when gifted and talented students are grouped together for enriched, advanced, or accelerated learning in classes. Kulik further found, in this meta-analysis, that ability grouping without curricular acceleration or enrichment produces little or no differences in student achievement. Kulik’s research found positive effects for students at all achievement levels; gifted, average, and struggling students were all found to benefit from being grouped with others in ability/instructional groups when the curriculum is adjusted to the aptitude levels of the group. Gifted students who were grouped together and received advanced enrichment or acceleration benefitted the most because they outperformed control group students who were not grouped and did not receive enrichment or acceleration by 5 months to a full year on achievement tests (Kulik, 1992). Rogers (1991), in a separate meta-analysis, found similar results showing grouping gifted and talented students for instruction in advanced classes improves their achievement, and that full-time ability/instructional grouping produces substantial academic gains in these students. She also found that pullout enrichment grouping options produce substantial academic gains in general achievement, critical thinking, and creativity, and that within-class grouping and regrouping for specific instruction options produce substantial academic gains provided the instruction is differentiated, more advanced, or infused with enrichment opportunities (Rogers, 1991). More recently, Tieso (2002) studied grouping patterns and found similar results, as treatment group students outperformed students who were grouped for an enriched math lesson scored higher than comparison groups. Further, results indicated significant differences favoring the group that received a modified and differentiated curriculum in a grouped class (Tieso, 2002). Gentry & Owen (1999), in a quasi-experimental cluster group study of high ability students, found that students at high, medium, and low levels all benefited from cluster grouping and other forms of instructional grouping accompanied by differentiated instruction and content. Cluster groups of students, usually those who score at the very high or low end of achievement, are grouped in a cluster and then placed in a class with other students. Students who were in cluster groups and who received advanced and enriched learning opportunities scored significantly higher than students who were not cluster grouped (Gentry & Owen, 1999). The more recent research on various forms of grouping gifted and high potential students strongly supports the use of this instructional strategy for higher achievement and also suggests benefits for children of other achievement levels as well. Flexible grouping (Tieso, 2002), class grouping (Rogers, 1999), or cluster grouping (Gentry & Owen, 1999; Tieso, 2002), when combined with advanced content and differentiated instruction, has been shown to be an effective strategy for challenging gifted and talented learners, as well as students from other bands of achievement as well. Achievement Increases from Accelerated and Enriched Programs The use of enrichment, differentiation, acceleration, and curriculum enhancement has resulted in higher achievement for gifted and talented learners as well as other students when it is applied to a broader population of high and average achievers (Colangelo, Assouline, & Gross, 2004; Field, 2009; Gavin et al., 2007; Gentry & Owen, 1999; Gubbins et al., 2007; Kulik, 1992; Reis et al., 2007; Rogers, 1991; Tieso, 2002). For example, in one experimental study, teachers used curriculum compacting and enrichment for gifted students, finding that elimination of work already mastered by gifted and talented students followed by the replacement of enriched learning opportunities such as self-selected independent study resulted in higher or similar achievement scores (Reis, Westberg, Kulikowich, & Purcell, 1998). Colangelo, Assouline, and Gross (2004), in the most comprehensive meta-analysis of acceleration to date, studied many different types of acceleration practices. They summarized research proving that, over decaded, these practices resulted in both higher achievement and higher standardized scores for gifted and talented learners. Students whose grade level was accelerated tended to be more ambitious, and they earned graduate degrees at higher rates than other students. Interviewed years later, accelerated students were uniformly positive about their experiences, reporting that they were academically challenged, socially accepted, and did not fall prey to the boredom, as do highly capable students who are forced to follow the curriculum for their age-peers (Colangelo et al., 2004). Gavin et al. (2007) used quasi-experimental methods in intact classrooms to investigate the use of more challenging math curriculum for gifted students; findings showed that talented third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade math students had significant gains in achievement in math concepts, computation, and problem solving each year over a 3-year period. Reis and colleagues (Reis et al., 2007; Reis, Eckert, McCoach, Jacob, & Coyne, 2008), using experimental research methods, found that students, including gifted students, benefitted from an enriched and accelerated reading intervention. Gifted students as well as randomly assigned students who participated in the enriched and accelerated SEM-R program had significantly higher scores in reading fluency and comprehension than students in the control group, who did not participate in the SEM-R. Results show achievement differences favoring the SEM-R treatment across all levels, including students who read well above, at, and below grade level (Reis et al., 2007,