Best Practices in Gifted Education

INTRODUCTION

Parents want the best for their children; educators want their students to do well. Both parents and educators have questions about what works at home and at school to foster the talents of children and adolescents. The collection of prac• tices based on research provides homes and schools with prac• tical information upon which parents and educators can act.

The 29 practices in this volume are the result of an extensive, but by no means comprehensive, examination of educational research on what works with talented youth. The practices selected for review are supported by systematic inquiry and research evidence. They are offered not as a complete picture of how to develop talents in high-ability youth, but as recom• mendations for specific actions parents and teachers can take in the upbringing and schooling of their talented children.

The practices are organized into three sections: the home, the classroom, and the school. To a certain extent, the sections are not mutually exclusive. Many of the practices are shared by home and school. However, the research often focuses on one arena more than the others, so the practice is placed in the section where the actions are most likely to take place. A list of the practices is found in Table 1.

The reviews of each practice are organized in four sections. First, a summary statement sets the stage for the review. Second, the research literature is pre• sented in a section titled “What We Know.” Third, recommendations or actions derived from the research are bulleted in a section titled “What We Can Do.” Finally, a list of references is included at the end of each discussion. The reviews of the practices are not interlocking: The reader of this text may browse the practices like the reader of a collection of short stories.

The need for this information was considered sufficiently pressing that the Javits Gifted and Talented Students program of the United States Department of Education convened a steering group of practitioners and academics to iden• tify which practices are of greatest interest to practitioners and which of these have research support. The group represented higher education, state depart• ments of education, regional educational service districts, and local school dis• tricts. Three editors or former editors of journals in gifted child education also participated. The steering group included individuals representing 2 countries,

11 states, and 1 province, and included university, state department, and school district personnel.