DOCUMENT RESUME ED 026 758 EC 002 206 By-Gallagher, James J.; And Others Productive Thinking of Gifted Children in Classroom Interaction. CEC Research MonographSeries B, Number B-5. Council for Exceptional Children, Washington, D.C. Spons Agency-Elizabeth McCormick Foundation, Chicago, Ill.; Office of Education (DHEW), Washington,D.C. Pub Date 67 Note-113p. Available from-The Council for Exceptional Chiidren, NEA, 1201 16th Street, N.W., Washington,D.C. 20036 ($2.00). EDRS Price MF-$0.50 HC Not Available from EDRS. Descriptors-Academic Achievement, *Attitudes, Cognitive Measurement, *Cognitive Processes,Convergent Thinking, Divergent Thinking, Evaluative Thinking, *Exceptional Child Research, FamilyRelationship, *Gifted, HighAchievers,*Interaction,JuniorHighSchoolStudents,ParticipantCharacteristics,Questioning Techniques, Questionnaires, Sex Differences, Student Attitudes, Teacher Attitudes, Tests Identifiers-Guilford, Theoretical Model for Complete Structure of Intel A research project attempted to identify and classify productivethought processes of gifted junior highschool students and their teachers. Subjects were 176 gifted high achieving students of both sexes with a verbal 10 rangeof 127.21 to 136.35, a nonverbal 10 range of 122.88 to 134.59, and a chronological age rangeof 12.50 to 14.63 years. The students were given tests to determine attitudesand divergentthinkingabilitiesand were evaluated forsocialqualities and class contributions by their teachers. Parents were asked tocompleie questionnaires independently to determine family relationships. Three judges, working as a team, tape recorded five consecutive sessions of classes in social studies, science, andEnglish conducted by different teachers inthefall and again the following spring; all comments were classified accordingto levels of thinking definedinGuilford's structure of theintellect.The types of questions asked by teachers strongly influenced the quality of pupil response. More than 507 of questions asked in a class session were cognitive memory questions.The second most frequent category was convergent thinking, with a much smaller proportionof divergent and evaluative thinking questions. (BB) , , Prodifutcetd civehiiThdirnekning -II , 073 c 0.CEC in Classroom mi Interaction <m ii 2 The Council for by James J. Gallagher Exceptional Mary Jane Aschner Research i0 Jenne Monograph O Children, NEA and William m O co V 1-r O N. 2 .g) mz 1 c) _ CD W PROCESS WITH MICROFICHEAND PUBLISHER'S PRICES. MICRO- FICHE REPRODUCTION ONLY. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE PROCESS WITH MICROFICHE OFFICE OF EDUCATION AND PUBLISHER'S PRICES. MICRO- FICHE REPRODUCTION ONLY. THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT.POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY. CEC Research Monograph Series B, No. B-5 Productive Thinking of Gifted Children in Classroom Interaction James J. Gallagher Associate Director, Institute for Research on Exceptional Children, University of Illinois Mary Jane Aschner Boston University William Jenné Oregon State University The research reported herein was performed pursuant to a contract with the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education. During the first year, it received support from a grant from the Elizabeth McCormick Foundation. "1" Research Monographs of TheCouncil for Exceptional Children, aDepart- ment of the NationalEducation Association, are issuedperiodically. Price per single copy: $2; Discount rates:2-9 copies, 10%; 10 or more copies, 20%. Address all inquiries and orders to: TheCouncil for Exceptional Children. NEA, 1201 Sixteenth Street, N.W.,Washington, D.C. 20036. Copyright 1967 by The Council forExceptional Children, NEA Library of Congress Card Catalog No.67-22603 Permission to reproducethis copyrighted workhas been granted to the EducationalResources Information Center (ERIC) and to the organizationoperating under contract with the Office toEducation to reproducedocuments in- cluded in the ERIC systemby means of microficheonly, but this right is notconferred to any users ofthe micro- fiche received from theERIC DocumentReproduction Service.Further reproductionof any part requires per- mission of the copyright owner. Acknowledgments In a project as long and extensive asthis one, it is only natural that the authors have many debts ofgratitude to the large number of per- sons who wereresponsible for its completion. During the course of the project, numerousresearch associates and assistants at the Institute for Research onExceptional Children, Uni- versity of Illinois, served in a multitudeof capacities, such as test scor- ing, judges for the classification system,and aiding in the anal7sis of the data. These were Sibel Afsar,Helen Farr, Joyce Perry, Mary Ann Rainer, Faye Shaffer, Robert Smith, andElizabeth Thomas. Dr. Betty Teska provided needed assistance on thedifficult scoring problems on the sentence completion test inaddition to her other duties. The author would like to expresshis appreciation to those school administrators who accepted the inconveniencesthat this research im- posed on their school programs. Thesewould be Dr. David Jackson, who at that time was principal ofUniversity High School; Dr. W. L. Shoemaker, Director of the Guidance Department atUniversity High School; Dr. William Cherry, Superintendentof Schools in Li bana; and Mr. Wendell Anderson, Principal ofUrbana Junior High School. The cooperation and enthusiastic supportof these administrators were responsible for the warmreception the research people foundin the schools in which the taperecordings were obtained. A large debt is also due to theteachers who graciously allowed us to intrude on their classrooms so that wecould learn something more about teacher pupil interaction.These teachers were Miss Frances Cottrell, Mrs. Viola Gribinovsky, Mr.Keith Hanson, Mr. Thomas Mor- gan, and Mrs. CarolePalmer. In a real sense, this was a mostimportant first step in removing the cloakof mystery over the classroom actions in the hope that the informationgained would be of help to them and to other teachers. The services of the Digital ComputerLaboratory at the University of Illinois made it possible to do someof the more involved statistical analyses, and Mrs. Sondra Phillipsprovided invaluable assistance in preparing the data for analyses. "'t2isqt,:.,1(1 .71CIWF,51,7, ,"173.F"9,V.1"75777&771 T.T.E11771M77,747,?, The author also expresses thanks to numerous fellow members of the staff at the Institute for Research on Exceptional Children at the University of Illinois who graciously listened to many progress reports and gave good counsel and advice along the way. Finally, to those students at University High School and Urbana Junior High School who participated in die tape recordings and in the testing program that were a part of the total project, we wish to give our sincere thanks and appreciation. JJG Contents PAGE CHAPTER Acknowledgments List of Tables and Figures vii 1 1/ Overview of the Study Objectives and Procedure 1 Results 3 Conclusions and Implications 5 2 / Background of Project 7 Research in Classroom Interaction 8 Research in Cognitive Processes 9 3 / Objectives and Methods 13 Subjects 14 Data Collection 15 Classification System 17 Measuring Instruments 28 Analysis of Data 24 4 / Results 37 Proportion of Various Thought Processes Expressed by Teacher and by Students 37 Relationship between Inc lass and Extraclass Factors 53 Relationship between Cognitive Performance of Teacher and Student 60 Consistency of Classroom Expressiveness in Gifted Children over Change of Time, Subject Matter, and Teacher 61 Daily Consistency of Teacher Student Expressiveness within Class Sections 62 Factors Influencing Type of Production in Class 66 Sex as Relevant Variablein Classroom Expressiveness and Other Comparisons 70 Subgroup Differences inCognitive Styles 75 Differences between Expressiveand Nonexpressive 80 Students Family Data 84 5 / Discussion andImplications 86 Cognitive Structure and Process 86 Project Limitations 95 Future Research Plans 96 A Final Word 99 References 100 KY, List of Tables and Figures =MENP. PAGE TABLES 1. Differences between Laboratory Exercisesand Reality in Use of Productive Thinking 10 2. Chronological Age and AbilityLevel of Students by Group and Sex 14 3.Classes Tape Recorded for FiveConsecutive Sessions for Analysis of Productive Thinking 16 ,f 4. Secondary Classification Categories 22 5. Percentage of Agreement by TwoConsensus Teams Classifying One Session of IDEA 3 27 6. The Stability of Fluency as a PersonalCharacteristic 30 7. Interscorer Valence Agreement forSentence Completion Test 33 8. Teacher Rating Scale on Personalityand Attitudinal Characteristics of Students 35 9. Secondary Category Classificationsof Teacher Questions and Statements 46 10. Secondary Category Classificationof Student Statements 50 11. Group A Principal AxisComponent Loadings by Sex (Varimax Rotation) 54 12. Group B Principal Axis ComponentLoadings by Sex (Varimax Rotation) 55 13. Spearman Rank Order Correlationsof Student Performance 60 versus TeacherPerformance 61 14. Consistency of ClassroomExpressiveness in Gifted Students 15.Differences by Chi Square onProportions of Teacher Cognitive Expression within Five Class Sessions 63 16. Differences by Chi Square onProportions of Student Cognitive Expression within Five Class Sessions 65 17. Analyses of Variance of ThoughtProcesses Expressed by Group, Class,