Based on Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, the DISCOVER assessment was designed to identify gifted minority students for placement into programs for the gifted. In previous studies, the reliability and validity of the assessment in elementary grades were examined and yielded mostly positive results. In this study, similar analyses were carried out to investigate some validity aspects of DISCOVER with secondary students. The sample consisted of 303 predominantly Hispanic and Native American ninth graders. The results provided evidence for an alignment of the assessment with the theory of multiple intelligences. Also, no overall gender or ethnic differences were found in the numbers of students identified. In addition, the results suggested that the use of the DISCOVER assessment might help in reducing the problem of minority students' under-representation in programs for the gifted, as 29.3% of the high school students who participated in this study were identified as gifted.
The focus of her research is on the use of performance-based assessments in measuring intelligence and identifying giftedness. She has presented her work at international conferences and has several published articles on the effectiveness of the DISCOVER assessment in identifying gifted students.
Based on the general framework of Gardner's (1983) theory of multiple intelligence and Maker's (1996) definition of giftedness, the DISCOVER process is a performance-based assessment designed to identify gifted students from culturally diverse groups. The process consists of five activities through which linguistic, logical-mathematical, and spatial intelligences are appraised. In this review, I describe the assessment and review preliminary studies on its reliability and validity. The DISCOVER assessment seems to be a promising alternative technique through which the problem of underrepresentation of gifted minorities in programs for the gifted might be reduced. However, educators using the DISCOVER assessment for identification purposes must make sure that a good match exists between the assessment and the type of gifted program in which students will be placed.
This study used the Raven Progressive Matrices to examine the concurrent validity of the DISCOVER assessment. It also investigated gender differences. A secondary purpose was to determine the effectiveness of the DISCOVER assessment in reducing the problem of minority students being under-represented in programs for the gifted. The sample consisted of 257 kindergarten, second, fourth, and fifth graders, predominantly Navajo Indians and Mexican Americans. The results provided some evidence for concurrent validity and showed that, through the use of the DISCOVER assessment, 22.9% of minority students were identified as gifted. A MANOVA (gender by grade level) resulted in the absence of significant main effects for both gender and grade, as well as for gender by grade interaction. Chi-square tests revealed no overall significant gender differences in identification. The findings promote the use of the DISCOVER assessment for identification purposes.
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.