This article discusses the importance of recognizing and nurturing intrinsic motivation in students and describes an introductory teacher education course that alerted 48 teacher interns to the characteristics of intrinsically motivated students and to the exceptional qualities of non-conforming students who lack the benefit of being teacher…

Discusses the underrepresentation of culturally different students in gifted programs in South Florida and a pilot project that identifies and teaches primary-age children who appear to have above-average ability, but who are often hindered from achieving their true potential by economic circumstances or cultural differences. (CR)

This supplement is composed of short articles discussing Georgia's criteria for identifying gifted students: (1) "Georgia's Journey toward Multiple-Criteria Identification of Gifted Students" (Sally C. Krisel); (2) "Multiple Criteria: The Mandate and the Challenge" (Mary M. Frasier); and (3) "Multiple Criteria from a…

First examines issues in the identification of mathematically gifted children in the context of V. A. Krutetskii's categories of mathematical ability developed in his 1976 work, "The Psychology of Mathematical Abilities in Schoolchildren." A case study model is then offered which involves continuous and interactive identification and…

This article describes the theory of successful intelligence and how it can be applied to gifted education. It discusses the inadequacy of notions of IQ or general ability for fully characterizing intellectual giftedness and presents evidence in favor of the statistical validity and usefulness of the successful intelligence theory. (Contains…

This article examines creativity and talent of individuals that can be identified from perceptions of themselves. It describes two instruments that may be used to measure such predispositions. Several problems studied with these instruments are presented and a number of uses for the instruments are suggested. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Discussion of the issues of under representation of diverse students, especially African Americans, in programs for gifted students and of underachievement of minority students suggests a solution to both issues is for schools to create culturally responsive classrooms. The article describes the needs of diverse students and offers several…

This article discusses how giftedness is currently defined and presents an alternative view based on a balance theory of wisdom. The theory is described as a useful way of conceptualizing wisdom. Sources of differences in wisdom and the need for development of wisdom as a form of giftedness are addressed. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

A study examined the use of cluster grouping in two elementary graduation classes (n=197). During the three program years, students involved in the school using cluster grouping were more likely to be identified as high achieving or above average, and all students had significant increases in achievement test scores. (Author/CR)

Spearman's ''Law of Diminishing Returns'' with regard to ability is tested in a dataset from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The dataset consisted of a sample of 6980 children aged 12-16 from the 1997 cohort. The subjects were tested with a computer administrated adaptive format of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery…

The research described in this paper investigates one possible explanation for students' ability or inability to identify fallacious arguments. As students' ability to identify informal reasoning fallacies has been the subject of scant empirical investigation, the current study may broaden our knowledge concerning this phenomenon and locate it in…

The education of children who are gifted is examined with respect to their unique traits as a group, their learning styles, and the best methods for instruction. The focus is elementary level academic instruction and strategies that can be used by regular classroom teachers to challenge students who are gifted. Consideration is given to:…

Results are reported for a series of 13 studies examining individual differences in information processing efficiency. The tasks used represented different content domains and levels of processing complexity. A total of 680 individuals (balanced between males and females, and aged 18 to 25 years) were tested. Subjects were selected from…

Since the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) was published in 1991, it has been reported that fewer students are qualifying for gifted programs that use the WISC-III as a criterion measure. WISC-III differs from the WISC-Revised (WISC-R) in having a greater emphasis on speed of response, which could…

This article maintains that the older Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (Form L-M) is the best tool for assessing extraordinarily gifted children despite the acknowledged deficits of the scale in comparison with newer instruments. Although the article finds that the Stanford-Binet uses outdated terminology, is highly verbal, has 20-year-old norms,…