![]() Louis public schools, under the leadership of William Torrey Harris, designed a system for early grade promotions for those who exhibited outstanding academic ability (Jolly 2004). Formal programming efforts to serve students of high academic ability began in the mid-nineteenth century. Gifted education remains negligent in its retrospective examination of its own history and this work attempts to place in historical context the impact of the NDEA on gifted education by specifically examining the identification and conceptions of giftedness and talent, school programming, and professional development of teachers.įaltering attempts in the United States to accommodate the unique learning needs of gifted children can be traced back to the 1800s. to building better school programs for youngsters with outstanding ability" (Passow 1960, 141). The launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik and subsequent passage of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) is a central example of "a revival of concern. However, as equity becomes the predilection, gifted students' needs are seen as an elitist luxury and are replaced with the priorities of students within other subpopulations. Often mirroring the pendulum swing of society's priorities of "critical need to its elitist luxury" (Jolly and Kettler 2008, 427), gifted and talented students become a national priority when excellence is sought and a critical need is perceived. Discourse between excellence and equity also has created a tension regarding the education of gifted and talented students. No other special group of children has been so alternately embraced and repelled with so much rigor by educators and laypersons alike" (Tannenbaum 1983, 16). Abraham Tannenbaum, a Teachers College professor and gifted education researcher, noted, "The cyclical nature of interest in the gifted is probably unique in American education. Public understanding and support, as well as, federal aid has mirrored this pattern, waxing and waning in response to national interests and concern from private institutions and foundations. Since its inception in the 1920s, the field of gifted education has remained in a constant ebb and flow. ![]()
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