Cooperative learning activities, which assign gifted learners to mixedability groups, have been validly decried as exploitation. But a case can be made that mixed-ability grouping provides opportunities for gifted students to develop transformational leadership skills, an element of gifted education that has been given insufficient attention. Observations of interactions in mixed-ability groups reveal three persistent challenges (inclusiveness, enacting the ideal, and monitoring growth) in which leadership skills can be exercised and developed. Specific student strategies are proposed for each challenge. The role of teachers in developing the leadership skills of gifted learners involves delegating responsibility to student groups, adjusting leadership to the maturation levels of gifted learners, and creating pull-out programs for leadership training.
This study is the result of a partnership of teachers and researchers exploring the leadership behavior of gifted learners working in small groups. Using videotape analysis and a model of transformational leadership, this study traced a process for diagnosing the leadership needs of gifted learners and created instructional interventions to enable students to transfer skills developed in a teacher-directed lesson to other settings. Transformational leadership is a viable model for conceptualizing the leadership of gifted learners, although the frequency of leadership behavior was relatively small.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.