For its 53rd annual meeting, the Association of Educators and Researchers met in Charlotte, North Carolina at the Marriott Charlotte City Center. This year's conference theme was "Building Literacy Communities", which was also used as the title for this year's Yearbook, Volume 32. This organization has long been the home of some of the nation's…

Educators can identify children's strengths early on and gain insight into each student's unique abilities by using the numerous ideas and informal assessments in this exciting guide. Gifted and talented specialist Ann Maccagnano offers K-8 teachers challenging activities and engaging lessons to develop and nurture gifted learners' talents.…

A driving force in standards-based educational reform was the 1983 release of "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform" (National Commission of Excellence in Education [NCEE], 1983). The report called for "an end to the minimum competency testing movement and the beginning of a high-stakes testing movement that would raise the…

This study explores how a project-based approach, based on gifted education pedagogy, was implemented in a public school program where the majority of students were from low-income families. The 2 first-grade teachers in this study were able to change their teaching practices to include more strategies commonly found in gifted programs such as…

Four teacher researchers focused on the lack of students' proper social skills for this action research project report. In the classes of four teacher researchers, the students were coming to school lacking proper social skills. Because of this, teachers were spending time allocated for the curriculum, on discipline and the instruction of social…

Too often, African American elementary school students, including the gifted, disengage academically and underachieve in public schools. Increased research on the underachievement and low achievement of African American students in gifted education programs has suggested that an array of educational, personal/social, and familial factors (e.g.,…

The Chapter 2-Carnegie Middle School Project was designed to develop educational programming and to provide appropriate services to advanced and gifted learners within the restricted middle school environment. This study examined the extent to which trained teachers could effectively implement advanced instructional techniques and curricula for…

A major benefit of inclusive education is to give students and staff learning and teaching opportunities that reflect the wide range of contributions by and roles open to people similar to and different from themselves. Inclusion covers all students, including those with behavior problems, lower academic abilities, and health conditions. For…

This paper examines research on the individual needs of gifted children, with a special focus on underachieving gifted students, and provides results of a study of students in a 10-week after-school enrichment program in Queensland, Australia. Over 300 gifted children (ages 5-8) attended the program, and five case studies are provided using…

This report examines three sets of standards developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and provides recommendations for curriculum, teaching, and assessment of students showing mathematical talent. Specific recommendations are suggested for programs, teaching strategies, resources, and alternative means of evaluation…

This document reports on an investigation that described patterns of interests in specific careers for academically talented seventh grade girls and boys. This study represents a step in addressing the unequal distribution of males and females in many occupational fields, most notably the low involvement of females in scientific and technical…

This paper discusses how elitism and anti-intellectualism have affected the teaching of intellectually gifted students. It examines methods of identifying the intellectually gifted child. It traces trends in education of the gifted through history and discusses the issues of equity, elitism, and anti-intellectualism which have resulted in…

This pamphlet guides Hispanic parents in helping their children succeed academically, based on findings from a study of 10 high-achieving Puerto Rican high school students. The students described specific family factors which supported and nurtured their academic achievement. Guidelines for parents are extracted from these factors and include: (1)…

Although British psychologist Francis Galton lost the battle for the definition of intelligence in his own time, his views live on in the work of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. They argue that the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is an adequate measure of intelligence, and that IQ is highly heritable. They contend that there are racial and…

This conference proceedings focuses on structuring classrooms to optimize learning among Alberta (Canada) gifted students. The first paper, "Optimizing Parent Potential" (Trudy A. Harrold), describes a model and a process for helping parents acquire knowledge, organize their thinking, and act from a realistic base when dealing with their gifted…