Radical Acceleration of Highly Gifted Children

Radical Acceleration of Highly Gifted Children An annotated bibliography of international research on highly gifted young people who graduate from high school three or more years early. Miraca U. M. Gross, PhD Helen E. van Vliet, MBBS M.Teach Gifted Education Research, Resource and Information Centre The University of New South Wales Sydney Australia Supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation 1 Acknowledgements The authors wish to acknowledge with gratitude Sir John Templeton, Dr Arthur Schwartz and their colleagues at the John Templeton Foundation for their vision in initiating and sponsoring this project The many scholars and researchers whose work is reported in this annotated bibliography The gifted students whose experiences and insights have informed ongoing research in the field of gifted education 2 The Authors Miraca U. M. Gross Dr Miraca Gross is Professor of Gifted Education at the University of New South Wales and Director of the Gifted Education Research, Resource and Information Centre (GERRIC). Dr Gross has over 20 years’ experience as a classroom teacher and school administrator including 12 years as a specialist teacher of the gifted. Dr Gross has an MEd in Gifted Education, and a PhD in Educational Psychology, specialising in Gifted Education. She has won five international awards for her research in gifted education including the Hollingworth Award for her 20-year longitudinal study of Australian children of IQ 160. Dr Gross is recognised internationally as a leading authority on the education of gifted and talented children. Helen E. van Vliet Helen earned a Master of Teaching degree at The University of Sydney. Her thesis on gender identity formation in elementary school children was awarded First Class Honors. Helen also completed a postgraduate Certificate of Gifted Education at the University of New South Wales. Her experience working to produce this annotated bibliography on radical acceleration has inspired her to enter doctoral studies in the field of gifted education. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………........ 2 THE AUTHORS………………………………………………………….. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………,…....... 4 FOREWORD……………………………………………………………. 5-6 INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………….. 7-12 TOPIC INDEX…………………………………………………….…..13-15 International incidence and prevalence of radical acceleration Range of procedures resulting in successful radical acceleration Variables which appear to predict success for radical acceleration Home schooling as a facilitator of radical acceleration Distance education as a facilitator of radical acceleration University course entered and degree of success Cognitive outcomes Affective outcomes ABSTRACTS………………………………………………………….16-235 REFERENCES…………………………………………………….. 236-242 4 FOREWORD Educational acceleration of highly intellectually boys and girls is frequently misunderstood as only skipping school grades. Although it is crucial that very bright youth be moved ahead at appropriate rates in the areas of greatest intellectual ability and interest, there are at least twenty different ways in which this can be done well. For example, one of the two mathematically ablest students I have known among the millions tested in our annual talent searches since 1972 (top possible score on a college test of mathematically reasoning twice at age 10) graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude in mathematics at age 19, only about two years ahead of his age mates. How [did] this brilliant Chinese-American young man do so? He skipped a year in elementary school and completed his baccalaureate at Harvard in three years instead of the usual four, beginning there with graduate- level math courses because he had taken much math and physics at a local university on a part-time basis while still a high-school student. He could have completed his degree near home in a year after high-school graduation, but chose instead to get a “normal” college experience far away, at Harvard, without slowing down his mathematical development. Thus, he had the best of two “worlds.” (Now he has a Ph.D. degree, with further honors, and is a faculty member in mathematics at a top university). Furthermore, he competed vigorously and enthusiastically in many math contests from the seventh grade through his time at Harvard, breaking a number of long-standing records while meeting in those contests his true intellectual peers who were also approximately his age mates. Too few unusually capable youth realize that various local, regional and national contests, not just in mathematics, have suitably high ability “ceilings” and provide the intellectual and social stimulation that many of the boys and girls crave. As the great poet Robert Browning wrote in the language of his day, “…a man’s (or a woman’s) reach should exceed his (or her) grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” In recent years, news media in the United States have featured kids as young as age eight who entered universities, far younger than we think wise. Some have graduated at age 10, 11, or 12, and quite a few at age 15. Some of those have been moderately or even highly successful thereafter (news media seldom follow up to see what resulted). A few have paid a costly price in social and emotional underdevelopment. It seems to us in the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) at Johns Hopkins University that excellent parenting is especially crucial for such “radical accelerants.” 5 The main literature on educational acceleration is tucked away in specialist journals and therefore not readily accessible to the typical parent or gifted student. Professor Gross, an internationally renowned specialist in this area of intellectual talent, and her co-author has done a great service to a wider audience by abstracting some of the most useful studies. The abstracts, from quite varied sources, are preceded by an excellent chapter overview of the topic. Abstracts are clearly written and readily comprehensible to the “intelligent layman.” This is a remarkably useful volume, of great value to gifted-child specialists, other educators and administrators, parents, journalists, educational policy makers, and even the gifted children themselves. It helps dispel some of the myths that encumber the facilitation of educational talent, such as the incorrect notion that gifted students will be able to shift well for themselves wholly within the context of the regular age-in-grade curriculum or, as noted above, that educational acceleration means only grade-skipping. The gifted-child field is greatly indebted to Professor Gross and her co-workers for their intelligently diligent preparation of this book. It opens the way to conferences and further deliberations and publications that are already planned to examine educational acceleration even more fully. - Julian C. Stanley Dr. Julian Stanley is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and the Director of the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), which he founded at Johns Hopkins University in 1971. His research and service on behalf of mathematically and/or verbally gifted students has sparked the creation of talent searches and residential academic summer programs which have profoundly influenced the lives of thousands of boys and girls throughout the world. Dr. Stanley is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and the National Council on Measurement in Education. In 2000, the Mensa Education and Research Foundation selected Dr. Stanley as the winner of its first Lifetime Achievement Award. 6 INTRODUCTION This annotated bibliography summarises and critiques a range of academic articles concerning the incidence and effects of radical educational acceleration. They comprise research papers, descriptive articles, personal accounts, literature reviews, conference papers, book chapters, and a guidebook. Research papers outline individual case studies, multiple case studies, cohort studies and biographical accounts of radical acceleration. Some studies are longitudinal in nature, while others are cross- sectional and comparative. Methodologies employed in the studies reported include questionnaires, surveys, interviews, tests of achievement, tests of ability, personality and self-esteem inventories, and measures of social adjustment. Radical acceleration is said to have occurred when an intellectually gifted young person graduates from school three or more years earlier than the usual age. Radical acceleration is the consequence of one or more procedures being adopted in an effort to meet the needs of highly gifted children. These procedures generally include early school entry, subject acceleration, grade skipping, curriculum compacting and curriculum telescoping. Case studies indicate that it is usual for a student to experience a combination of these procedures and, together, this combination results in radical acceleration. Students who radically accelerate their education often enter college or university three or more years earlier than is customary. The literature compiled in this reference work has been reviewed for information regarding the following: the incidence of radical acceleration and any patterns of prevalence which appear internationally; the range of acceleration procedures, and the combinations of procedures, which result in successful radical acceleration; variables which appear to predict success of radical acceleration; the incidence of home schooling of exceptionally and profoundly gifted students and its influence as a facilitator of radical acceleration; the

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