Gifted Child Today

This column introduces a collaborative partnership between the Center for Gifted Education at William & Mary and the Paradise Valley School District in Phoenix, Arizona. It describes its history and the leadership of the project.

Although K-12 schools and universities are two separate and distinct systems, fundamentally both have the same broad goal: the education of students. This leads one to ponder, “How can these two entities work together to promote, foster, and support this goal?” In this article, I share and discuss the key elements for building a successful school–university collaborative partnership. A type of partnership that includes ongoing commitment founded on mutually beneficial goals, trust, equitable decision making, and communication. A partnership that produces high-quality research, improves educational practices in schools, and contributes to the field.

The author, as a school administrator, wrote this article to describe an effective collaboration with several universities on research projects that benefit both institutions. The outcomes described here focus on the process involved in such collaborations and the benefits to the school district these collaborations can create. Directed toward other school administrators, the article outlines processes employed to encourage similar partnerships between other school districts and universities. Based largely on the collaborative partnership between Paradise Valley Unified School District (PVUSD) and the College of William & Mary, the author shares a framework for initiating and planning such collaboration from a school administrator’s perspective. Within this framework, she describes approaches for obtaining administrative support, methods for planning proactively, suggestions for allocating time and resources, and the importance of integrating projects into existing structures and aligning them to district initiatives. The outcomes discussed describe what schools can expect from these collaborative partnerships. These outcomes can include professional learning opportunities with leading experts in the field, free curriculum and other resources, and access to school or district research-based data that have been analyzed by the higher institution’s researchers.

Establishing a collaborative partnership takes a willingness to see the benefits despite the obstacles. Understanding how the partnership will impact each of the involved stakeholders is paramount to being able to foresee the possible issues. In the case of the College of William & Mary and Paradise Valley Unified Schools, challenges of time, training, and materials were overcome through the close communication and collaboration of all involved. The how-to components from the district’s perspective will be outlined in this article. Study success is contingent upon front planning and the coordination of all aspects of the process from the ground level up.

This article examines the implementation of an innovative English language arts curriculum from the William and Mary Center for Gifted Education (CFGE) using the perspectives of teachers and its impact on students. The school/university collaborative project between Paradise Valley Unified School District and CFGE is discussed in the hope of highlighting the benefits and modifications of this curriculum. Aspects of the implementation process and teaching and learning outcomes are explored including how we made modifications based on teacher expertise, used workshop and teacher guides to assist in teacher understanding, provided researchers with information about what needed to be changed, and perceived our role in the research process.

This article reviews recent efforts to implement the William & Mary English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum within the Paradise Valley Unified School District gifted programs. The programs include self-contained gifted, as well as content replacement programs in Title 1 and Non-Title 1 schools. Each delivery model modified the constructs of the curriculum to meet the unique needs of the students serviced. All results indicated successful academic progress and student growth.

Students are active in shaping the implementation of any curricular intervention. At Paradise Valley Unified School District (PVUSD), more than 1,500 students in Grades 1 to 6 were recipients of the William & Mary English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum units. In this article, we share students’ perceptions related to the following three themes: (a) perception of researchers in the classroom, (b) perceptions of new curriculum, and (c) receptivity to the teaching models. Students’ responses revealed that they had much to say about the work being conducted at PVUSD. Gaining an understanding of students’ perception of curriculum could lead to stronger curricular reform in the future, especially when outcomes of school reform are measured by the success of students.

In this article, an honors college student reflects on being gifted. In reflecting on her giftedness, she expresses her conceptions of various characteristics of giftedness that she has experienced through drawing. These drawings and associated captions are featured in this text, and the student discusses her process of experiencing the characteristics and developing the artworks. One of her honors thesis committee members provides connections to the literature for each of the issues the student discusses.