Gifted Students and Mainstream Classes

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Look at the .doc below.

Please contact me if you need anything clarified.

What I will do here is deal with some of the academic literature on our topic. I will then condense the argument for the other assignment you have posted. Both of your questions will be dealt with below - that is, the question of academic success and possible challenges. The literature has a tendency to treat these as one thing.

My interest in this is personal - I was a gifted student who actually went to a "gifted" school. My son is now in the gifted program in the local public school. He is being mainstreamed; I was not.

Here's an important resource from UCONN:
http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/robinsn2.html

Here are the four major points: Gifted children are one of the most poorly served groups in our schools. School psychologists and clinical psychologists are in a critical position to change this.

Psychologists play a significant role in identifying such children and by advocating for changes in their experience that will support their optimal development.

Psychologists need to enhance their knowledge of such children, to take on an active advocacy role, and, in many instances, to serve as a school's "resident expert" just as you are the expert in other matters that impinge on the development and behavior of children.

Gifted children will not, as is too often assumed, "make it on their own"-or, if they do, they are unlikely to reach the heights of achievement and personal satisfaction that they could.

Now, the author is not taking one side or another, but you might take this as advocating separation of the gifted from the mainstream population. She also mentions that IQ is inversely related to standardized test scores. For me, this is a huge discovery. What does it imply?

It implies that gifted students cannot learn in the traditional ways. They must be free to develop their own "research agenda" even at the lower grades so as to ...