Sally Reis Presentation for School Board June 8, 2009

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8/14/2019 Sally Reis Presentation for School Board June 8, 2009

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What Research Tells Usabout Exemplary Practices and

Gifted Education!

Sally M. Reis, Ph.D.

Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Department of Educational Psychology

Neag School of Education

University of Connecticut

Data Base Studies In Gifted

Education: An Overview

What Current Research Tells Us

WHAT STRATEGIES AND INTERVENTIONSARE SUPPORTED BY "STRONG" EVIDENCE

OF EFFECTIVENESS?

Randomized, controlled trials that are well-designed and implemented

What key items should we look for in the study'sintervention and the random assignment process?

What does the intervention do?

• How the interventiondiffered from whatthe control group

received;• How the intervention

was supposed toaffect educational

outcomes

Further Questions

• How do we know that something works?

• Has the research has been published in peer-

reviewed journals?

Should we adopt or implement?

THE BIG QUESTION:

IS THE INTERVENTION SUPPORTED BY

"STRONG" EVIDENCE OF

EFFECTIVENESS?

Two considerations exist when a

district-wide continuum of services isdeveloped.

1. Organizational

2. Comprehensive

curriculum andlearningopportunities

Organizational

Where and when students will beprovided with services?

How and when will students be groupedtogether in or across different schools?

• Grouping by instructional level

• Cluster grouping in one or morecontent areas across classrooms

• Separate classes for gifted students at

any grade level.• Pull-out program/Resource Room

• After School Programs

• Saturday or Summer Programs

Curriculum and learning

opportunities

• Acceleration?

• Enrichment?

• Advanced Content?

• Teacher selected content?• Student selected content?

• Regular CurriculumExtensions?

• Advanced Content Based onInterests, Readiness,Learning and Product Styles

Linking It Together: What works?

• Continuum of Services

• Grouping for Instruction

• Acceleration

• Enrichment

• Interventions to reverse underachievement

• Special programs that provide challenge

The needs of gifted students are not met by most regular

classroom teachers without teacher training and

support .

Karen Westberg’s research at the NRC-GT found that:

Students experienced no instructional orcurricular differentiation in 84% of theactivities in which they participated in:

Reading Language Arts

Mathematics Social Studies

Science

(see graph on next slide)

Westberg, K. L., Archambault, F. X., Jr., Dobyns, S. M., & Salvin, T. J. (1993). An observational study of

instructional and curricular practices used with gifted and talented students in regular classroom ( Research

Monograph 93104). Storrs, CT: The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, University of

Connecticut.

Types of Differentiation in Which Target Gifted

Students Were Involved

N o D i f f e r e n t i a t i o n

a n c e d C o n t e n t

a n c e d P r o c e s s

a n c e d P r o d u c t

I n d e p . S t u d y w /

s s i g n e d T o p i c

I n d e p . S t u d y w /

S e l f - s e l e c t e d T o p i c

O t h e r

D i f f e r e n t i a t i o n

Why Not Let High Ability Students Start

School in January? The CurriculumCompacting Study

Sally M. Reis

Karen L. Westberg

Jonna Kulikowich

Florence CaillardThomas Hébert

Jonathan Plucker

Jeanne H. Purcell

John B. Rogers

Julianne M. Smist

The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented

What can be done?

• Teacher training

• Place cluster groups of gifted

and high achieving studentsONLY IN CLASSROOMS

OF TEACHERS WHO

HAVE HAD

PROFESSIONAL

DEVELOPMENT IN

GIFTED EDUCATION AND

DIFFERENTIATION!

Instructional

Grouping works and results in

higher achievement scores!

Seminal Research:

Cluster Grouping: An Investigation of

Student Achievement, Identification, and

Classroom Practices

Marcia Gentry

Cluster Grouping

Sample Classroom Configuration

"Congratulations!! She seems very

bright."

Grouping gifted students togetherfor instruction increasesachievement for gifted students,and in some cases, also forstudents who are achieving at

average and below average levels(See, for example, Kulik, Rogers,Tieso).

What can be done?

• Grouping strategies and

policies should be established

in your district.

• Policies should be voted upon

by the Board of Education

• Cluster grouping and

classroom grouping should

be a part of your program!

Acceleration Results in

Achievement

Acceleration

The use of acceleration results inhigher achievement for gifted

and talented learners.Consistent results over decades

of research.

What can be done?

• Read the research

• http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Nation _Deceived/

• Acceleration policies should be

established in your district.• Policies should be voted upon by

the Board of Education• http://www.oagc.com/files/AccelerationPolic

y4_12_06.pdf

(Ohio acceleration model policy)

The use of

enrichment and

curricular

enhancement

results in higher

achievement forgifted and

talented

students.

Enrichment Programs Work

• Enhance interests

• Focus on rigor and effort

• Both gifted and talented

children and high potential

students benefit from

services

Research presented at the American Educational Research Association (2008)

on free tutoring that schools must offer under the No Child Left Behind law if

math and reading levels don't rise for three years.

In Milwaukee and Los Angeles, researchers found no rise in scores. One

reason, says Patricia Burch of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is that, in

many sessions, tutors used "uninspired practices," such as handing out

worksheets. Researchers in L.A. found similar results.

Despite spending over $595 million in the 2006-07

school year for free tutoring for students in struggling

school, test scores failed to significantly improve,

according to recent evaluations conducted in Georgia,Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Tennessee and Virginia.

The use of creative learningopportunities does not

result in lower test scores!

Rather, achievement can be

increased when we use

creative teaching

methods, differentiated

instruction and

enrichment pedagogy.

What can be done?

• Ask about research that shows theintervention works

• Show research that demonstratesthat enrichment programs work

• http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/sem/semresearch.html

• http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/SEMR

•http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/projectm3/

Teacher

training

Makes adifference

The lack of teacher training andprofessional development in gifted

education for classroom teacherswill result in fewer challenges, lessdifferentiation, and lowerachievement for gifted and

talented students.

"I didn't actually read the book, but I did play the

video game loosely based on it."

Teachers can learn how to differentiate and

compact curriculum to provide more

challenge to all students, when they have

the professional development, time, andsupport to learn how to effectively

implement these skills and strategies.

Classroom Practices Study

Teachers reported that they never had any

training in meeting the needs of gifted students.

61% public school teachers

54% private school teachers

Archambault, F. X., Jr., Westberg, K. L., Brown, S. W., Hallmark, B. W., Emmons, C. L., & Zhang, W. (1993).

Regular classroom practices with gifted students: Results of a national survey of classroom teachers

(Research Monograph 93102). Storrs, CT: The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented,

University of Connecticut.

Individual Educational Programming Guide—The

Compactor

Curriculum

Areas to Be

Considered

Compacting

Procedures

Compacting

Materials

Acceleration

and/or

Enrichment

Activities

Gifted education programs and

strategies are effective at serving gifted

and high-ability students in a variety of educational settings and from diverse

ethnic and socioeconomic populations.

For every complex problem there is a simple

solution…

And it is usually

WRONG!

H.L. Mencken

Charter Oak Academy of Global

Studies

Successful Learning Communities Where

Schoolwide Enrichment is Used

Peg Beecher and Sheelah Sweeny

School Goal: To reduce the achievement gap and effectively address

disparity among groups of learners,80% of students who perform

below goal will make 1.5 years growth in Mathematics and Reading

and will progress 2 points on the holistic scoring scale in Writing.

Reading comprehension scores with Renzulli improved 147%

over non-users in just 16 weeks.

Reading Reading Social Science

Fluency Comprehension Studies

What can be done?

• Ask about research that shows theintervention works

• Show research that demonstratesthat enrichment programs work

• http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/sem/semresearch.html

• http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/SEMR

•http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/projectm3/

The curriculum and

pedagogy

of gifted programscan be extended

to a variety of

content areas andmore students

resulting in higher

achievement.

The Schoolwide Enrichment

Model-Reading Study

• SEM-R is a framework for reading instruction based on

Renzulli's Enrichment Triad Model• (Renzulli, 1977)

• Students engage with texts of their choice at an

appropriate level of challenge with reading strategy

support

• Includes three phases, focusing on interest-based

reading, individualized, differentiated conferences,

freedom of choice & challenging content

Gifted and talented students andthose with high abilities need giftededucation programs that willchallenge them in regular classroomsettings and enrichment andaccelerated programs to enable

them to make continuous progressin school.

Gifted Education Strategies: Can

be Embedded into Content

Areas to Produce Higher

Achievement

http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/S

EMR/about/home.html

http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/projectm3/

What can be done?

Implement ContentInterventions!

Some high potential

students with

learning disabilitieswho are not

identified as gifted

experience

underachievement

and have social and

emotional

difficulties. Some

drop out of school.

Some gifted students withlearning disabilities who are notidentified experience emotionaldifficulties and need counseling.

High percentages of giftedstudents do underachieve, butthis underachievement can bereversed. Some gifted studentsdo drop out of high school.

Baum’s Study of Using Enrichment Triad Model

with Students with LD

Creative Type III studies, whenused as an intervention withhigh ability, learning disabledstudents, was associated with

improvement in the students'behavior, specifically the abilityto self-regulate time on task;improve self-esteem; anddevelopment specific learningstrategies.

To be Gifted and Learning Disabled

Creative Learning Press

Gifted Education Strategies: Can

Reduce Underachievement

Gifted education

pedagogy can alsoreverse

underachievement

in these students.

Underachievement can be

reversed.

School dropout rates can bereduced.

Gifted students do

underachieve and dropout of school, but thosewho do can reverse theirunderachievement and

stay in school whenprovided withchallenging enrichedlearning opportunities inareas of interest.

Research: Implications

When gifted students

do underachieve,interventions make adifference. (SeeBaum, Hebert, andRenzulli)

Gifted

educationprograms and

strategies

benefit giftedand talented

students

longitudinally.

Longitudinal research demonstrates

the effectiveness of gifted educationprograms and curriculum in raising

student achievement, as well as

helping students to develop interests,

creativity, and productivity, and

career goals.

The Stages of Talent Development

latent

manifest

emergent

Giftedness can be:

Where do we go from here?

Questions?

• National Research Center on the Gifted and

Talented

• Neag Center for Gifted Education and Talent

Development

• www.gifted.uconn.edu

Sally Reis Presentation for School Board June 8, 2009

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