Including opportunities for students to conduct independent investigations is a mainstay of gifted education programs and services. When carefully designed and skillfully facilitated, students' interest-based, independent study experiences result in increased intrinsic motivation, growth in 21st-century critical and creativity skills, greater…

From a learning ecology perspective, this paper aims to better understand how girls become gifted in CT competencies and how CT competencies were manifested through the co-influence of multiple factors in the developmental trajectory. A life-narrative approach using interviews was taken to unpack the significant factors that facilitate or limit…

This study examined struggling and skilled writers' narrative writing performances when revising stories in pairs online as compared to students working independently. In the experimental group, 5 mixed-ability pairs of upper-elementary struggling writers and skilled writers engaged in online collaborative revision. In the control group, 5…

This article presents two independent studies of Finnish teachers' conceptions of giftedness and considers whether it is a malleable or fixed quality. The first qualitative study examined elementary school teachers' (N = 212) conceptions via inductive-oriented content analysis, whereas the second study measured teachers' (elementary n = 184,…

This review summarizes the lack of research regarding the learning preferences of gifted individuals. Through the topic of cooperative and collaborative learning, the need for refinement of definitions and expanded methodologies is identified. Past research has narrowly focused on only one or two variables of interest, has often ignored contextual…

Multidimensional models of giftedness specify individual and environmental moderators or catalysts that help transform potential into achievement. However, these models do not state whether the importance of the "individual boxes" and the "environmental boxes" changes during this process. The present study examines whether,…

In this article, the authors describe McNair Middle School's Independent Study process. Each year in late January the authors connect to look at the calendar to schedule time for the seventh-grade gifted and talented (GT) students to come to the school library to begin their annual Independent Study. "Independent study is a planned research…

Back in the early 1990s, three Manitoba School districts launched the "Lost Prizes" project to reclaim talented, at-risk high-school dropouts. Despite their unique gifts, these relationship-resistant youth were disenchanted, disillusioned, and disconnected. Many had major substance abuse problems and were engaged in serious criminal…

All students are entitled to a respectful and meaningful education in this decade of No Child Left Behind, and yet attention to the gifted wanes with the emphasis on standards-based education and testing. Educators of the gifted have wrestled with this dilemma for many decades, even as early as the 1920s when Leta S. Hollingsworth, noted…

Teaching in a regular classroom has become more complicated than ever with increased student diversity and pressure to connect learning experiences to educational standards and test preparation. Although teaching to the middle is often what occurs in traditional classrooms to meet required standards, it is neither an appropriate nor meaningful…

The author of this article observes that sometimes educators are so overwhelmed by the needs of struggling learners that they believe they do not have time for the gifted, talented, high achieving, and high potential students. However, those students are just as desperate as any other students for good teachers to help them progress. Middle school…

This paper reports on an assessment of knowledge of SDL in primary (elementary) South Australian school students, fifty-six of whom were assessed to be high reasoning. The goals of the study were to identify the effectiveness of teaching and assessing knowledge of Self-Directed Learning (SDL) in high reasoning students, investigate whether there…

The author mentions Project THINK (Tapping Heuristic Intelligence for New Knowledge) and describes the Isle of Independent Study, a seven-step procedure designed in the form of a map for use with upper elementary gifted students. (SB)

Teachers in a South Windsor, Connecticut, program for gifted elementary students improved their students' independent study skills through the structure of nine steps such as selecting a topic, planning a schedule, writing objectives, and locating resources. (DB)

A self-instructional unit on advanced astronomy concepts resulted in moderate to high growth in specific target skills for gifted students in grades five through eight. Most of the students expressed heightened interest in astronomy, and one-half elected to pursue advanced investigations in astronomical research. (CL)