Practitioner Objections to the Academic Acceleration of Gifted Children

Abstract

Despite extensive recent reviews that fail to document harm from early admission and acceleration, many school districts are still reluctant to employ such educational techniques. This paper reports the results of a large, mailed survey of attitudes toward these practices as reported by coordinators of gifted, school psychologists, principals, and teachers (554 respondents) and a follow-up study that explored the origin of such attitudes. The major concern of all groups is the potential for harm to the social and emotional development of accelerants, though coordinators of programs for gifted and talented show significantly more positive views toward early admission and acceleration along every dimension. Personal experience (self or family member) with acceleration was most highly related to positive attitude toward the practice. Respondents viewed early admission and grade skipping as identical. This view, coupled with the prevalence of citations by practitioners of inadequately designed and inappropriately applied "early admission studies," presents an impediment to employment of any acceleration options. Implications for researchers and leaders in the field are discussed.

Grade Skipping From the Perspective of Teachers in Germany

“…In particular, beliefs about students' social development as well as their motivational development were closely related to teachers' acceptance, whereas beliefs about students' academic development were also of significance, but to a smaller extent. The factor structure of teachers' beliefs found in our study is in accordance with previous results on teachers' concerns (Hoogeveen et al, 2005;Southern et al, 1989) as the content was similar, and the number of factors we found was limited as well. Our factors also reflect the main dimensions reported by Siegle et al (2013) with the exception that in our study, concerns about students being younger than their peers did not load on a separate factor but were associated with beliefs about students' social integration; concerns about students missing out on extracurricular activities were associated with beliefs about academic development and the additional time needed to catch up in our study.…”

“…Previous research has shown that educators hold differentiated beliefs about grade skipping. Southern, Jones, and Fiscus (1989) reported four general concerns that educators associate with grade skipping or early admission to primary school: They are especially worried about the academic performance difficulties as well as the social and emotional difficulties that students might face. Socioemotional difficulties are suspected because students are younger than their classmates and might not have sufficient physical and emotional resources to cope with the additional stress.…”

“…We also reviewed the scales used in previous studies on teachers' concerns about acceleration (Hoogeveen et al, 2005;Southern et al, 1989). The focus of these studies was slightly different than ours as the items additionally captured beliefs about early admission to primary school (Southern et al, 1989; e.g., " . .…”

“…Opinions about the gifted and their education instrument (Gagné & Nadeau, 1991) Questionnaire on teacher attitudes about acceleration and accelerated students (Hoogeveen et al, 2005) Questionnaire on the presumed effects of acceleration (Southern et al, 1989) Research articles (beliefs about students' motivational development) of the variance that existed before rotation. The item loadings on each respective factor were above 0.52 with the exception of two items that showed factor loadings of 0.21 ("After the acceleration, the student will find friends more easily") and 0.03 ("After the acceleration, the student will still not be challenged mentally"; see Table 4 for factor loadings after oblique rotation).…”

Exploring Alignment in Gifted Education Program Policies and Practices

“…There appears to be a disconnect between state and district beliefs about acceleration as reflected in policy and practices and school level beliefs as reflected by interpretation and implementation of those policies. In past studies, researchers have demonstrated that educators believe acceleration is a practice that will ultimately harm gifted students in some way despite extensive evidence to the contrary (Siegle, Wilson, & Little, 2013;Southern, Jones, & Fiscus, 1989). It is possible that these deep-seated beliefs about the educational practice of acceleration still play a major role in the inconsistent implementation of acceleration policies, especially at the school level.…”