Dear Prufrock Press Customer,
I would like to invite you to listen to one of the new "experiments" at Prufrock Press--our new Gifted Education Podcast. In the coming months, you will have the opportunity to listen to a growing collection of short, focused interviews about topics important to gifted education. These interviews will be posted on the Prufrock Press Gifted Education Blog in the form of complimentary podcasts.
The idea behind these podcasts is to allow you to hear from some of the nation's most influential people in the field of gifted child education. Our guests for these podcasts will include nationally recognized professors, psychologists, teachers, and parents.
Listen to the Podcast
To listen to these podcasts, please visit Prufrock's Gifted Education Blog and click on the latest podcast posted there. I'm posting the podcasts in the form of audio files that most computers will be able to play without any trouble. Alternatively, if you have iTunes installed, you can listen to or subscribe to our podcasts in iTunes by clicking on this link.
Episode 1: Ability Grouping Gifted Children
The topic of my most recent podcast is one that impacts gifted kids in schools on a regular basis. In the past, gifted children often were placed into special gifted classes or accelerated learning groups. The thinking went that gifted children learned at a faster pace than other kids, and if you could group gifted children together it was easier for those students and their teachers to move at a faster pace through the class' subject matter.
However, the practice of grouping students by ability has become a controversial topic in many schools. As a result, during the last few years we have seen the dismantling of special gifted classes. We also have seen teachers move away from the use of ability groups in their classrooms.
How are gifted students affected by this change and does it make sense to move away from ability grouping?
To answer these questions, I've invited Todd Kettler to join me in discussing this topic. Todd is the director of Advanced Academic Services at Coppell ISD (Coppell, TX), a district outside of Dallas. Todd is on the editorial advisory board for the Journal of Advanced Academics and is the chairperson of the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented's Research and Evaluation Committee.
