Preschool Gifted Education

Abstract

Early educational experiences are formative for establishing a foundation of academic success in childhood and adolescence (Reynolds, 2000; Reynolds, Temple, Robertson, & Mann, 2001). It is estimated that there are almost 8,000,000 preschool-aged children in the United States, and nearly half of those children (3,669,000) attend some type of preschool program (Maxwell, 2012). With the passing of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the United States has validated its priority on early childhood learning. In ESSA, Congress included language that schools should partner with preschool programs in areas of teacher training and student transition to kindergarten (Samuels, 2016). Moreover, the ESSA supports early childhood education with two fiscal appropriations-a $250 million grant program to support states as they develop preschool programs and a $190 million grant program to help states develop literacy instruction from birth to age 5 (Demma, 2015). Quality early childhood education for all children has emerged as a federal priority (U.S. Department of Education, Health and Human Services, 2015), and these emergent priorities present an opportunity for advocates of gifted education in early childhood. Preschool educational programs may range tremendously in their academic focus. Some are primarily day care facilities with minimal educational focus, and others are formally committed to early childhood educational programming (Smutny, 1998). Longitudinal studies of the effects of high-quality, state-funded preschool programs indicate both immediate and lasting effects (Hustedt,

A Neglected Practice in Iran: EFL Teachers’ Differentiation for Gifted Students in Rural Schools

“…The EFL teachers in this study reported a host of perceived challenges. Researchers outside the context of Iran have referred to the majority of these barriers, including time (Goodnough, 2010;Oswald & de Villiers, 2013;VanTassel-Baska & Stambaugh, 2005); energy (Goodnough, 2010); class size (Oswald & de Villiers, 2013); lack of practical knowledge about differentiation (Kettler et al, 2017;Oswald & de Villiers, 2013); opposing beliefs (Kettler et al, 2017); lack of motivation, particularly financial (Kettler et al, 2017); lack of administrative support (Goodnough, 2010;VanTassel-Baska & Stambaugh, 2005); and limited resources (Goodnough, 2010). The barriers reported in this study can be grouped according to their nature or by varying degrees of preponderance in different locales.…”

Testing, Identifying, and Serving Gifted Children With and Without Disabilities: A Multi-State Parental Perspective

“…Perhaps an "advanced development" verification based on character descriptors and functional testing should be considered for gifted children who are not yet school age. This could be determined by observational data on functional developmental indicators such as the mismatch between a child's level of performance and the typical learning activities of the center (Kettler et al, 2017).…”

“…Gifted children may appear more advanced when compared to peers in a variety of ways (Bildiren, 2018;NAGC, 2019), such as in language development (Bildiren, 2018;NAGC, 2019) mathematical (Bildiren, 2018) or numeracy skills (Adedoyin & Chisiyanwa, 2018), inquiry and curiosity (Kettler et al, 2017), or even entrepreneurship (Shavinina, 2008). Children can be gifted globally, or they may exhibit high abilities in one or more areas that occur alongside average abilities (Kettler et al, 2017) or another exceptionality (NAGC, 2019). Gifted characteristics can also be observed in very young children.…”

Atender las Altas Capacidades en Chile: facilitadores y barreras del contexto escolar

“…De manera similar a las creencias sobre la diversidad, en lo que refiere a la AC existe, a nivel discursivo, una intencionalidad de reconocerla y abordarla en el aula como otra necesidad educativa, lo cual contradice visiones encontradas en la literatura sobre discursos "anti-intelectuales" por parte de profesionales de la educación, quienes rechazan la idea de abordar la AC por considerarla elitista (Hafenstein et al, 2017;Kettler et al, 2017). Sin embargo, también se aprecia una visión restringida sobre la AC, la cual pone mayor énfasis en el rendimiento, sin necesariamente considerar otros elementos propios de su expresión, como por ejemplo la creatividad.…”