Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment SOI question

Hi All,

Just had a meeting with our principal, and he's interested in starting a GATE program for our school! Yes, unheard of in this day and age ...

He's pondering which test would work best to identify a wider form of giftedness. He thinks that the WISC-IV and SB-V tests that are commonly used only identify those who are gifted mathematically and verbally. He's trying to find tests that also take into account creativity, among other things. A parent suggested he looked into SOI (Structure of Intellect).

From their website, it looks like SOI is used in Special Ed programs, as well as in identifying gifted students. I'm wondering if anyone has experienced with SOI. Thoughts and ideas are greatly appreciated!

This sentence makes me raise an eyebrow:

With the SOI approach the near-gifted have a clear means of becoming gifted if they want to develop their near-gifted abilities to the gifted level.

From Materials and Methods of Teaching the Gifted (3rd edition):

Studies of the model do not include effectiveness data (Meeker, 1976); rather, they primarily focus on findings for its use as identification criteria, as a means for organizing information about a gifted child, or as a means for overall program design.

(note about its use with multi-ethnic and disadvantaged children)

Although now somewhat dated, SOI offered a means of understanding children students by delineating profiles of their intellectual abilities. It contained a teacher training component that used teacher modules designed to train one SOI ability at a time. Training materials included mini-lesson plans for group teaching and self-help modules for individualized instruction with selected students (Meeker, 1969).

The University of Georgia has a Torrance Center for Creativity that offers training for tests of creativity:

http://www.coe.uga.edu/torrance/training-opportunities/

If they're referring to the idea that IQ is trainable to a certain degree, and since the cut-off for the definition of gifted can be somewhat arbitrary, that they feel they can help people just below the cut-off reach slightly above it, then I have no problem with that statement.

It's a questioning eyebrow! I don't approve of hard and fast cutoff scores when making educational decisions. I believe in collecting information from a variety of sources, and taking confidence intervals into account.

On related note: I am such an ENTP!