Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Best practices for gifted (research based)?

I've tried to read a fair bit on education-related topics and research.

It seems that much of the academic research on education is:

1) Aimed at school administrators, policy makers, and/or teachers.
2) Aimed at improving outcomes for the middle or the low ability end of the academic spectrum, rather than for gifted kids.

I have had difficulty finding research that is parent (or student) oriented and that focuses on high ability/gifted kids.

i.e. Questions of interest are:

1) What is the effect of different schooling choices? (different kinds of schools including public, private, homeschooling and different tracks and options within schools)

2) What supplements/interventions, if any, outside of school have proven high impact?

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Ideally, I'd love gold standard research - randomized control studies, measuring varied outputs at different intervals (short and long term), with large sample sizes and high significance levels. I realize this is a bit of a pipe dream.

But I mention it in part to draw a contrast with weaker sauce - anecdotal stuff, studies that are likely more a result of correlation than causation, studies that are polluted by selection effects, etc.

Anyways, can anyone point me to good research that provides academic insight and data for navigating some of the choices that parents of gifted kids (DD13, DS11, DD7) face?

Randomized controlled studies with meaningful longitudinal results aren't feasible. You'd have to randomly place kids into specific controlled environments for long periods of time and prevent them from exiting those environment when there are problems. You also can't control for family mobility and too many other factors.

I'm very skeptical on most research relating to decisions for individual gifted students, because there are such wide variances between different levels and such distinct difference amongst the gifted population and a large overlap with LDs. It would be hard enough to find adequate population sizes without also making sure you have enough depth in say sub-categories like: balanced IQ scores, nonverbal significantly larger than verbal, high IQ with average PSI, EG with anxiety, HG with visual processing challenges,... etc. etc.

All that said, I'd say this site (Davidson) has about the best collection and well organized of studies that are out there. If you haven't explored it, it's http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/

This is far from the gold standard, but I find the results from surveying formerly gifted students at least somewhat compelling.

E.g., the work summarized in Chapter 3 of this:

http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Nation_Deceived/ND_v2.pdf

Despite being accelerated reasonably aggressively, when looking back as adults, students (especially women) actually are more likely regret not being accelerated more than to regret the acceleration. On average, they report acceleration has having been very positive academically, positive emotionally, and essentially a wash socially.

It's also interesting that they are almost uniformly opposed to "de-tracking".

For advocacy, it might be more effective to give people copies of the original papers, rather than the book, depending on the audience.

I agree with the others-- nothing in the field really meets my standards for "rigor" short of, say, Terman... and that has other issues associated with sampling and bias.


Anyway, at some point along the way, as I was reading here, at Hoagie's, at SENG (all of which I recommend, by the way); checking out everything on educational theory and giftedness that my local library had (I am especially fond of Miraca Gross and Ellen Winner there, and obviously am very grateful to the Davidsons for their book), I realized what Zen Scanner has alluded to above:

what the RESEARCH says is population/sample based. HG+ kids are all singularities in terms of their overall educational needs. This means that we, as her parents, have the greatest degree of insight into what she needs and what will be good/bad/neutral for her.

Therefore, I changed strategies-- I began learning about different educational philosophies, about NT development, and how the development of GT children differs from that NT trajectory (it does, and the evidence THERE is far more robust), and about the unique problems that seem to plague HG+ people who have personality quirks in common with my DD.

That taught me what I should spend my time/energy on. Of course, the other component to that is that I don't fix what ISN'T broken-- I worry about problems we DO seem to have, and not so much about those that we don't.

You might want to check out these two books: Academic Advocacy for Gifted Children by Barbara Jackson Gilman, and Reforming Gifted Education by Karen Rogers. Malone Family Foundation website has summary of Karen Rogers' book: http://www.malonefamilyfoundation.org/educating_plan.html.

I second others about Davidson website. They have links to many studies that have been done about efficacy of different programs for the gifted. Here's one that hopefully help answer some of your questions:
A Best-evidence Synthesis of Research on Accelerative Options for Gifted Students by Karen Rogers
http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10004.aspx

-Paula