Although it is generally assumed that gifted students hold favorable attitudes toward participation in special programs, the specific reasons for such satisfaction, and problems that might be the cause of dissatisfaction have received little or no attention in research studies dealing with programs for the gifted and talented.Professionals and researchers in the field have noted the need of gifted students for greater challenge, intellectual excitement, and exploration of morals and values (Gowan & Bruch, 1971;Malone, 1975) and have shown a positive increase in student attitudes toward school in general because of various types of special programs (Hymes & Bullock, 1975) Renzulli & Gable, 1976;Gatty, 1976;Feldhusen, 1977), but there appear to have been few if any systematic attempts to tap student attitudes about being identified and placed in the special programs per se. The purpose of the present study was to investigate sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction on the parts of students who participated in a wide variety of special programs, with a special aim toward the analysis of students' attitudes toward their identification as gifted. The sample population consisted of approximately 500 middle grade children who received special program services for a minimum of four and one-half hours per week but who were not enrolled in full-time special classes. The programs were operated by thirteen school districts in the state of Connecticut, and although a wide variety of curricular variation existed among the programs, the major organizational design consisted of resource rooms or part-time special classes within which highly flexible and individualized programming took place.A questionnaire entitled Special Program Attitude Survey ( Figure 1) was prepared and distributed to the students in these special programs. The questionnaire dealt with factors relating to: (1) satisfaction about being in a special program, (2) perceived attitudes of non-program students toward gifted students, (3) perceived attitudes of parents toward their youngsters' involvement in a special program, and (4) reactions of non-program teachers toward gifted students. Since being classified as gifted almost always involves some type of placement in a special program, an attempt was made to approach the problem through questionnaire items focused on
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