Self-efficacy is the belief in one's capacity to perform and accomplish goals. Specifically, academic self-efficacy refers to a student's perception of their ability to engage and successfully complete academic tasks. Self-efficacy affects students' behavioral choices, motivation, thought patterns and responses, perception of control, and…

The importance of parental involvement in schools has been the focus of numerous studies (Cotton & Mann, 1994; Hoover-Dempsey & Sadler, 1997; McDermott & Rothenberg, 2000; Trotman, 2001; Epstein & Sanders, 2009). Many of these same studies correlate student achievement with parental involvement and suggest that student achievement is improved when…

In this article, the author discusses the meaning and importance of high grades and high achievement in terms of giftedness. She offers some reasons to tell children about the importance of school achievement. She suggests that good grades are no guarantee of eventual adult success, whether that is defined as a high income or a rewarding,…

In the 1970s, Jose Antonio Abreu started the Venezuelan program that puts instruments into the hands of poor children and transforms their lives with free music education. Abreu, a musician and economist, sees in the arts not just a discipline and skill but a path to true selfhood. This is not the sort of talk one often finds in education.…

The seeming lack of motivation of many academically gifted students is an area of frustration and concern for many parents, teachers, and psychologists. This article explores two studies in which researchers designed interventions to improve academic achievement. Both interventions were created using the Achievement-Orientation Model. The first…

Children who are intellectually gifted are often emotionally mature for their ages. For a variety of reasons--including an unrewarding curriculum, preference for others of the same intellectual ability, or a feeling of social rejection--this maturity is sometimes masked at school. This can lead to what the author calls a "forced-choice" dilemma.…

What do you do with the student who says she hates history, yet watches The History Channel every night? What do you do with the student who is underachieving in social science but has visited every battlefield in Virginia? Our curriculum frameworks and pacing guides suggest a chronological, fact-based approach to teaching and learning history,…

In the era of No Child Left Behind (ED, 2001), public school administrators have dedicated resources to ensuring all students reach proficiency in basic skills on the state mandated assessments. The focus on reaching proficiency on NCLB assessments is less of a concern for gifted students who exceed grade level expectations and have the potential…

This article introduces the Special Class for the Gifted Young (SCGY), an early college entrance program in mathematics and science in China, which has been a focus for media coverage and public discussion of accelerated education in China. We first describe the admission policy and academic programming of SCGY and delineate its distinct features.…

Academic self-concept predicts students' future goals and is affected by a student's relative success compared with his or her peer group. This exploratory study used structural equation modeling to examine the contributions of the perceived level of difficulty of the curriculum, in addition to the contributions of social comparison and…

Recent handbooks of giftedness or expertise propose a plethora of conceptions on the development of excellent performance but, to our knowledge, there are no comparative studies that provide empirical evidence of their validity to guide researchers and practitioners in their adoption of a particular conception. This study sought to close that gap…

The impact of gifted education services is not monitored by accountability measures required by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2002), and giftedness is not a suspect class in equity concerns (Leslie, 2009). Therefore, a research base that measures the impact of well-designed practices on student outcomes may serve as the strongest…

We examined the moderating effects of mastery goals and academic contingency of self-worth (CSW-A) on how perfectionistic discrepancy associates with academic efficacy and satisfaction with life among gifted students in middle and high school. Participants in this study were 144 gifted students from 6th to 12th grade in a suburban Midwest U.S.…

This study developed and tested a new model of the forced choice dilemma (i.e., the belief held by some intellectually gifted students that they must choose between academic achievement and peer acceptance) that incorporates individual-level cultural orientation variables (i.e., vertical allocentrism and vertical idiocentrism). A survey that had…

In today's educational climate, differentiated instruction is a common practice for students who need remediation; what is less common is to Differentiate Instruction for the advanced learner. Contrary to popular perceptions, advanced learners do not automatically differentiate instruction on their own. Students who have the potential to excel…