The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented: Past Reflections and Future Directions
by
Joseph S. Renzulli
The University of Connecticut
During the past two decades the amount of state dollars allocated to programs that serve the gifted and talented has increased tenfold, and a greater number and assortment of services are being provided than ever before (Council of State Directors, 1987). An unfortunate reality, however, is that only a fraction of these monies has been devoted to research that can provide empirical support for more effective ways of better serving our most able young people. Equally unfortunate is the fact that the vast majority of past research efforts has focused almost exclusively on students from white, middle class backgrounds. Moreover, most of the research on gifted and talented students that has been carried out to date reflects the individual interests of university faculty members and graduate students rather than the practitioners who provide services on a daily basis, but who are unable in most cases to provide empirical support for the types of programmatic activities they advocate. What is clearly needed if we are to increase the extent and variety of defensible practices is a systematic national program of research that is (1) responsive to the needs and interests of practitioners, (2) representative of the broad range of ethnic, economic, and cultural diversity in our society, and (3) directed toward the development of consumer oriented research products. A grant funded under the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act and administered by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement made available for the first time a significant amount of funds to support such a program of national research.
Rational Underlying the National Research Center
In an effort to provide a platform for a national program of systematic research, a series of universities, Universities of Connecticut, Virginia, and Yale University, together with state departments of education, parent groups, and 300 collaborating school districts throughout the country, have formed a consortium entitled the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented (NRC G/T). A major conviction underlying NRC/GT has been that research in an applied field must be grounded in the realities of schools and classrooms, and must be accessible and meaningful to those people who work and study in them. A guiding principle for the Center, therefore, is that all research and dissemination activities must have derived benefits for practitioners, and must result in some kind of direct impact upon educational policy, management, or practice. At the same time, we recognize the essential need for research to be theory based and empirically sound.
The educational context of NRC/GT extends from preschool through post-secondary education, and includes all types of interventions that influence the full development of the gifted and talented individual. One of the major assumptions underlying the Center is that the identification of and effective programming for gifted and talented children is not a function of schools alone. Rather we view the gifted child as part of a much larger system incorporating family, cultural milieu, classroom, school, and community. Furthermore, we view the issues surrounding the identification and education of gifted and talented students as including personal and social development issues as well as cognitive ones. The development of talents and abilities and full utilization of those talents and abilities does not take place separately from the development of the total individual. Research on the culturally different (minorities and socioeconomically disadvantaged) clearly suggests the significance of the family, the peer group, the society and the significance of role models in the development and achievement of the individuals in those groups.
A second assumption is that a variety of research strategies must be used in order to examine fully the questions of identification of gifted and talented students and their development. Current thinking in the field of educational research and evaluation suggests that although traditional research designs and standardized instruments have been adequate for addressing certain issues, many research and evaluation questions have been inadequately addressed using traditional paradigms and instruments. For example, the emerging literature on gifted women and the ways in which women learn suggests that we may have a distorted view of the learning process in that population (Belenky et al., 1986). It is not unreasonable to assume that the cultural bias underlying most intelligence and achievement measures may also underlie assessment of personality, interest, motivation, creativity, etc. Thus we have designed our initial research studies to incorporate both traditional and non-traditional assessments and designs using qualitative and quantitative methodology.
Our third assumption is that a national research center must devote a portion of its resources to policy studies, and that implications for public policy must also be explored for studies that are primarily designed to have an impact on educational practice or program management. Even the most compelling research findings about better ways of identifying high potential non-English speaking students, for example, will have limited impact if we do not provide policy makers with pragmatic, action-oriented recommendations for putting research into widespread practice.
Finally, it is apparent from the literature on child development that the initial years are crucial to the formation of attitudes toward learning, perceptions of competence, development of intrinsic motivation, and many other patterns of behavior. Thus, any meaningful study of the development of giftedness, especially among the culturally different, the disadvantaged, and minority populations must carefully assess the impact of early intervention programs on infants and preschool children.
Avoiding Past Problems In Research On Education of the Gifted and Talented
In the process of developing a mission and implementation strategies for the Center, we have examined several of the problems that traditionally have limited the extent and impact of research on the gifted and talented. Among the many causes of limited progress in this area, nine problems are particularly prominent. First and foremost, the majority of research studies in this area have focused on trait and status characteristics rather than intervention studies and hypothesis-testing research grounded in specific theories and models designed to guide identification and programming practices. We know a good deal about whether or not gifted students are first-born or have fathers with college degrees and professional backgrounds. We know very little, however, about the effects of interventions based on theoretically sound identification or programming models.
A second problem results from the small number of talented scholars bringing intellectual and research expertise to the issues confronting the field. Our professional publications are replete with journalism and folk wisdom about all manner of “shoulds” and “musts” for serving highly able students. Very few of these recommendations, however, are supported by strong data bases grounded in empirically validated theories or models. The field also suffers from a limited number of “long distance runners,” (i.e., persons who are willing to make a long-term commitment to research on a particular topic). Thus, there have been too few long term follow-up studies on selected populations, and we know very little about the more enduring impact of programs designed to meet special needs.
A related concern has been limited involvement of academic scholars from other disciplines. It is not uncommon to see articles on learning with no participation on the part of cognitive psychologists, or recommendations for curricular modifications in specific disciplines with little or no involvement from persons who represent authentic knowledge bases or research methodologies from the disciplines in question.
A third area that has not been adequately addressed is the interaction between research studies and public policy. Little if any formal policy analysis has been conducted in the area of gifted education or on various proposals or regulations governing the field. Unexamined guidelines for identification, mandated hours and minutes that youngsters must spend in special services, as well as standards for teacher certification have been applied in a well-meaning but sometimes capricious, arbitrary, or political fashion. In most cases there is not a single fragment of research evidence to support one regulation or another. The time is ripe for examining these important policy issues because of the many concerns raised by practitioners in the field about guidelines and regulations under which they are forced to operate in their respective states and districts.
A fourth area is limitations in research evidence that have resulted in overdependence on test scores for determining the impact of educational interventions. Giftedness and the development of gifted behaviors is a complex process that involves the assessment of variables that are much more complicated than merely examining score increases on standardized instruments, most of which have been developed and normed on general populations. We need to examine a broader range of both quantitative and qualitative research designs and we need to expand greatly the range of criterion measures that are used to determine growth in process skills, motivation, self-directed learning, and a broad range of affective processes that the research literature clearly indicates are important manifestations of the development of gifted behaviors. Further, the assessment of interventions designed to promote maximum academic, social, or emotional developmental requires the construction of creative assessment tools and the effective dissemination of technical information about currently available instruments of high quality, however limited this supply may be.
A fifth problem area relates to the ways in which research findings are translated into classroom practices. A history of adverse relations between schools and universities is familiar to most researchers and practitioners. Practicing educators and researchers bring different perspectives to research needs. Teachers tend to disparage educational researchers and become impatient with researchers' unwillingness to provide practical solutions to their problems. They also find research writing too technical and often irrelevant to the problems and daily concerns encountered in schools and classrooms.
Researchers, on the other hand, strive to build theories and develop elegant research designs that will gain respect in the research community and in the journals that are read almost exclusively by other researchers but not practitioners. Researchers often find the world of the classroom too cluttered with "contaminating variables," so they frequently choose to work with restricted segments of educational problems. Even when researchers conduct their studies in classrooms as opposed to the laboratory, they oftentimes become impatient with teacher concerns that are frequently viewed as "messy practical problems." And when applied research studies focus on practical problems, there is a tendency for administrators to preselect findings that support their own views, to freely interpret them, and to impose generalizations on teachers and programs that don't easily translate to particular teaching/learning situations or to the daily problems of instruction.
The result of these different perspectives has undoubtedly resulted in the well-known gap between research and practice. Teachers resent researchers and their findings and researchers tend to undervalue teachers' capacities for participating as equal partners in research endeavors.
A related problem is the growing difficulty of obtaining permission from administrators and boards of education to conduct school-based research. Concerns about confidentiality, comparisons between and among school districts, and exposing the school culture to "outsiders" have made it increasingly difficult to gain access to schools as research sites. There is, therefore, a long history of poor communication and limited cooperation between university-based and school-based educators. Although a collaborative research approach cannot undo this history overnight, positive steps can be taken to decrease the communication gap between researchers and practitioners, and to gain some assurance beforehand that a large number of schools will be available to carry out the mission and objectives set forth for the NRC/GT. Even in cases where research results are strong, their influence is relatively weak when compared to the more powerful influences of the workplace. All too frequently teachers adopt the untested practices of their experienced colleagues or fall prey to the “quick fix” solutions offered by an increasingly large number of over-the-road workshop presenters.
Charismatic, fast-talking conference speakers, and an almost endless multiplicity of “make-it and take-it” workshops seem to be the major ways in which information is conveyed to teachers of the gifted. The intellectual leadership necessary for change must therefore involve both a strong dissemination component and a more forceful orientation to consumers about the need to examine critically the rationale upon which recommendations for practice are made. Staff development and training have taken on nothing short of a big business dimension in the area of education for the gifted and talented, and yet, little if any research has examined in a systematic way the value and impact of various training programs and models.
A sixth area of limited research has been studies related to the recruitment of personnel who have the highest potential for becoming successful teachers of the gifted and talented. Indeed, there are very few studies examining the criteria for successful teaching. Because conventional wisdom tells us of the crucial role played by teachers, we need to examine recruitment and training factors that will provide guidance for selecting and preparing those persons with the highest potential for serving able youth. Also in need of examination is the role and impact of certification requirements for teachers of the gifted.
The seventh problem area undoubtedly represents the most serious gap in research on the gifted and talented. In spite of considerable rhetoric about the needs of economically disadvantaged individuals, individuals of limited English proficiency, and individuals with handicaps, very few data based studies have been carried out with these groups. As part of our recruitment process for collaborative school districts, we have sought out locations that will make available to the Center a large number of students from diverse populations that are representative of groups that have been largely overlooked in research in this area of special education.
An eighth area of concern is the limited attention that has been paid to students who are talented in the arts. Too often our programs are directed only at academically gifted students. To address this problem, we have included nationally prominent educators of artistically talented students on our advisory board and will focus our efforts in future years to provide research findings aimed towards helping develop identification and programming strategies for artistically talented students.
Underlying all of the above areas is a ninth and final concern that might best be described as the gifted student's relationship to the regular curriculum. Although both students and curricula vary in many ways, the mismatch between gifted youth and the curriculum they are forced to study most of the time is nothing short of an American tragedy. The human waste in terms of both student and faculty time are inestimable, and this waste can be found in both rich schools and poor, and even in schools that have well established programs for the gifted. It is this mismatch that brings most bright youngsters to our attention in the first place; and yet, very few studies have attempted to examine in a systematic manner intervention techniques that can be used to get the regular curriculum "off the backs" of those students who have already mastered (or could quickly and easily master) regular curricular material. Implicit in this major concern about curricular mismatch is the related issue of making time available for more productive use of bright young minds.
These nine concerns are too general to translate directly into research hypotheses, however, they are important enough to serve as considerations in most of the specific studies that the Center will undertake. We don't want the Center to do trivial or unimportant research, nor merely to continue the research agenda that has been guided by past practices and traditions. Another study about the age at which bright youngsters walk or talk may make good copy for a parent magazine, but such studies do not offer a great deal of direction about the things we need to do to better serve high potential youth. The concerns listed above, and the vital role that we believe research should play in the overall development of a truly excellent American educational program for gifted and talented students, enabled us to create NRC G/T. The following interrelated categories of products have been produced by the Center: consumer-oriented guidebooks that can be used for the implementation of favorable practices resulting from research carried out by the Center, video training tapes based on the above, technical reports, articles for research journals and parent and practitioner-oriented journals and magazines, briefs, abstracts, and best-practice summary monographs. For information on the National Research Center, please visit our web site: PRIVATE HREF="http://www.gifted.uconn.edu" MACROBUTTON HtmlResAnchor www.gifted.uconn.edu
Collaborative School Districts
A key component of our Center consists of a broad-based group of public and private school districts across the country that represent the many ethnic, socioeconomic, and demographic differences that characterize our nation's schools. The specific responsibilities of Collaborative School Districts are:
Collaborating Districts are given opportunities to select the research projects in which they would like to participate, and they also determine the extent to which they are able to take part in the dissemination process. District personnel are encouraged to participate in professional conferences and meetings and to exchange resources in mutually beneficial ways through print and electronic media as well as traditional staff development formats.
The Destination Present and Future Activities
Our research has been guided by our shared belief that a critical need exists to improve current efforts to identify and provide programs for all gifted and talented students, especially those who have been traditionally undeserved. A number of premises are central to our research efforts:
Subsequent studies carried out by NRC/GT will be mainly determined by the results of the priorities set forth in the Javits Act. We hope that our research over the years will help to address five fundamental questions related to the field in general:
Although our goal has been to develop a scientifically sound base for educational practices that serve gifted and talented students, we have worked to make results "practitioner friendly,". We hope that the work we have carried out will truly make a difference in the schools and classrooms where the daily provisions for high potential students are carried out. Finally, we hope that the Center will serve as a vehicle for the formation of a community of scholars and practitioners who are dedicated to a common cause.
References
Council of State Directors of Programs for the Gifted. (1987). The 1987 State of the States Gifted and Talented Education Report. Topeka, KS: Author.
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