Journal of Advanced Academics

The goal of the Israel Arts and Science Academy (IASA) is to graduate well-educated, deeply committed, independent learners who will apply their gifts in the arts and sciences to the betterment of the human condition. The Greek ideal of the unity of truth, beauty, and goodness serves as the central curricular force. At the Israel Arts and Sciences Academy, excellence emerges from the interrelationship of scientific and artistic education, performed in an engaging context of values and morality.

This study discusses the goals and objectives of the Advanced Academy of Georgia at the State University of West Georgia, an innovative, full-time residential early-college-entrance program for gifted and talented high school juniors and seniors. Also included is a comprehensive report of its progress, as well as entering SAT scores, academic performance, retention rates, and scores on the Dimensions of Self-Concept, which was developed to measure noncognitive factors associated with self-esteem or self-concept in a school setting. In addition to these areas, noteworthy student accomplishments are discussed, including several anecdotal comments about student achievement from the university's faculty. The paper concludes with a discussion of the progress to date and recommendations for further studies on this program.

This study examined gender differences in academic self-concept, self-esteem, and academic motivation among high-ability Chinese adolescents. Study 1 studied gender differences in a key school as compared to a regular school using a school-type-by-gender MANOVA design. Participants were 208 10th-grade students from the two schools. Consistent with the extent literature on American adolescents, boys at the regular school demonstrated higher math self-concept, and girls demonstrated higher verbal self-concept. In contrast, for the key school, girls and boys had comparable math self-concept and girls had higher general academic self-concept than boys, which is at variance with the findings on high-ability American and European adolescents. As a replication, Study 2 used a between-class design with a group of 148 10th-grade students from a regular school that grouped the top 50 students in one class. Gender differences in math and verbal self-concepts were comparable between the high-ability class and two regular classes and more consistent with what was found with regular school students than with the key school students in Study 1. The discrepancies of the findings of the two studies are discussed in light of the social-contextual nature of academic self-concept and designs of the two studies.

This study was designed to identify the variables that lead to the retention and attrition of talented men and women in science. It is an outgrowth of a longitudinal investigation conducted by the principal investigator with 1983 winners of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search (currently called the Intel Science Talent Search; Subotnik, Duschl, & Selmon, 1993; Subotnik & Steiner, 1993; 1994). The results of three earlier collection points have established patterns of external and internal influences that lead to participation in the research sciences, into applied sciences (e.g. medicine, engineering), or out of the field altogether.