Journal for the Education of the Gifted

Nine months after participating in a three-week individualized, flexiblypaced precalculus course, 239 academically talented students who received placement into a subsequent advanced math course in regular school (placement course) completed a questionnaire which assessed: (a) perceived preparation for advanced level work, (b) grades received in the placement course, and (c) perceived challenge of the individually-paced course relative to the placement course. Responses indicated that students experienced greater challenge in the individually-paced precalculus course than in their school placement course. Self-reported grades, as well as students' perceptions of their preparation for advanced level coursework suggest that individually-paced courses prepare students to be successful in placement courses in their schools. Mathematics courses which allow students to proceed at a pace of learning matched to their abilities, followed by appropriate placement in their schools, provide an educational opportunity to meet the special academic needs of talented students.

Although gender differences in mathematics performance have been investigated in numerous studies, virtually no research exists which examines gifted females' causal attributions for mathematics performance. This study examined whether gifted female students demonstrated unique causal attributions for success and failure in math performance which could be deemed as counterproductive and whether a pattern of causal attributions would differentiate gifted female students from gifted male students and from nongifted male and female students in grades 3, 6, and 9. Gifted females evidenced self-defeating causal attributions for math performance relative to gifted males in the ninth grade only for six of the eight dependent variables. For the nongifted subjects, significant sex differences were not as pronounced as those for the gifted subjects. It was concluded that there was a need for developing appropriate intervention strategies for gifted females to remediate self-defeating causal attributions for math performance in the junior high school years.

The purpose of this study was to replicate previous findings of a positive association between academic achievement and career maturity in young adolescents. Academic achievement and gender were the independent variables. The dependent variables were vocational identity, need for occupational information, perceived career barriers, and range of occupational aspiration. Gifted students perceived fewer career barriers than students in the regular curriculum. There were two interactions of gender and academic curriculum. First, gifted boys expressed a greater need for occupational information than gifted girls or students from the regular curriculum. Second, gifted boys expressed an interest in a wider range of occupational aspirations than gifted girls. The implications of these findings for program development in the area of career education and guidance are identified.

The purpose of the paper is to consider the issue of cooperative learning for the gifted from the perspective of the gifted student's preferred learning style. The sample consisted of 169 intellectually bright/gifted senior high school students, 94 girls and 75 boys in Calgary. Their preferred learning style in respect to science, mathematics, and English was measured using the Learning Preference Scale-Students. Overall, the cooperative style was not significantly more preferred for any subject matter by boys or girls. In mathematics, boys preferred both the individualistic and the competitive styles to the cooperative style while girls preferred the individualistic style to both the cooperative and competitive styles. The cooperative style was not found to be positively significantly related to higher achievement outcome of any subject matter. Implications for cooperative learning for the gifted are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to explore the social/emotional development of gifted learning disabled students using a phenomenological approach. A series of interviews was conducted with four gifted learning disabled boys aged nine to twelve, their parents, and their teachers. Using procedures recommended by Colaizzi (1978) and Kruger (1979), themes were extracted from the interviews, and then grouped into categories to provide an overall description of the characteristics of gifted learning disabled children's social/emotional development. After comparing these characteristics to those of gifted children and learning disabled children, implications were drawn for educational programming and future research.