Chapter VII: Studies on Motivation and Identification of Gifted Pupils

Abstract

During recent years there has been a tremendous increase in the amount of attention focused on gifted children. Probably the most important reason for this increase is our national concern about possible shortages of top-level personnel, particularly in the science fields. Wolfbein (60) surveyed occupational trends and showed that the high-level occupations will need increasing proportions of the total labor force by 1965 and 1975. Wolfle (61), in a detailed and definitive survey of our potential resources of specialized talent, found that only approximately half of the students who are intellectually in the top 5 percent of the population now graduate from college and thus qualify themselves for high-level intellectual work. He analyzed the reasons for the loss and made some recommendations for improvement of the situation.Not all educators were comfortable with this emphasis on the development of talents of gifted persons primarily for the sake of the national welfare. Faust (22) called attention to the importance of our responsibility to the individual in a democratic society and recommended that educational programs be designed to develop superior individuals rather than simply to channel brainpower into work important to the nation. Anderson (1) and Getzels (25) also registered concern over the tendencies some writers showed to equate manpower with man.The evidence that accumulated with regard to the need for and wastage of high-level talent led to attempts to discover why such a large proportion of highly intelligent youth did not go to college. Berdie (5) conducted a questionnaire study of all 1950 high-school seniors in Minnesota, supplemented by various interview studies. His figures showed that sex and geography affected college going. A smaller proportion of girls than of 391 at Uni of Southern Queensland on June 22, 2015 http://rer.aera.net Downloaded from REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH Vol. XXV , No. 4boys and a smaller proportion of rural than of urban youth planned to obtain higher education. Money was mentioned as a reason by about one-third of those not going to college; cultural factors seemed to be somewhat more important than economic factors.The Educational Testing Service (21) conducted a very extensive survey of the plans of 32,750 seniors in 478 high schools, almost 7000 of whom were followed up to ascertain whether or not they had actually entered college. The higher the ability level, the larger was the proportion who planned to enter college and who actually went. Other factors bearing on the decision that seemed to operate at all ability levels were friends, class standing, opportunity for counseling, having taken science and mathematics in high school, number of siblings, father's occupation, father's education, and the availability of funds. Cole (13), who carried out a similar survey with a 5-percent sample of all high schools in the United States, discovered similar factors. Havighurst (29) discussed conditions favorable and unfavorable to the development of talent with special em...