Giftedness at Adolescence:
Diverse Educational Options Required
Matthews, D. J. (1996). Giftedness at adolescence: Diverse educational options required. Exceptionality Education Canada , 6 (3 & 4), 25-49 .
Note . Portions of this paper were first presented as part of a symposium entitled Changing Conceptions of Gifted Education: Implications for Assessment and Program Planning , at the National Association of School Psychologists' Conference in Seattle, March 1994. The author can be reached in the Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St., West, Toronto, M5S 1V6; e-mail dmatthews@oise.utoronto.ca
Abstract
T here are many challenges inherent in working with gifted adolescents. It is argued here that the optimal educational response to exceptionally high-level development, particularly at adolescence, is to move toward providing a wide range of creatively flexible curriculum adaptations that take into account variability in students' learning styles and needs. Appropriate programming approaches are discussed, including adapting instruction to meet diverse learning needs; providing a range of interesting learning options that include connections beyond the classroom; and creating opportunities for systematic learning about human development. Examples are provided of implementation projects in three Canadian school boards.
Introduction
Early adolescence is a vulnerable period for many reasons and many children (Harter, 1990 ; Hetherington, 1991 ; Strober, 1986 ). Gifted adolescents are engaged, like their age-peers and mostly independently of their being gifted, in the complex and sometimes overwhelming developmental experience of coping with puberty. For many of those immersed in adolescence--whether hitherto brilliant, troubled, or average in their intellectual endeavours--, the physiological, emotional, social, and cognitive changes that are occurring can tend to override academic concerns, at least in more traditional school environments (Fullan, 1991 ; Gilligan, Lyons, & Hanmer, 1990 ; Hargreaves & Earl, 1990 ). At the same time, there are school-related issues that exceptionally able (or gifted) learners experience through the adolescent years that are worth considering. An understanding of these issues can assist those who are involved in the challenging work of providing educational options for them, to do so wisely and well.
I begin by discussing some general issues concerning gifted education and adolescent development. I then outline the implications for schools in their work with gifted adolescents, taking into account the realities of the Canadian educational situation, including economic and geographical constraints, and cultural diversity. Finally, I provide brief descriptions of some case studies of board-wide policy implementation, to illustrate practical applications of the concepts discussed.
Giftedness as Domain-Specific Developmental Expertise
Empirically-validated theories of high-level ability and achievement are strongly supportive of a domain-differentiated, developmental perspective. Giftedness, it increasingly appears, develops over time as the result of socially-mediated and supported opportunities for engagement in meaningful learning (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993 ; Bloom, 1985; Feldman, 1986 ; Gardner, 1991 ; Howe, 1990 ; Keating, 1990 ; Vygotsky 1930/1978 ). Consistent with this perspective, it has often been argued that gifted education policies should work toward the matching of school programming to students' developmental levels, on a subject-specific basis, at the minimum ensuring that students are not required to attend classes covering curriculum they have already mastered (Cohn, 1988; Horowitz & O'Brien, 1986 ; Keating, 1991 ; Matthews & Keating, 1995 ; Robinson & Robinson, 1982 ; VanTassel-Baska, 1995 ).
When giftedness is understood as domain-specific, school-related developmental advancement, its educational implications are often described in adaptive instructional terms that apply to all students: schools should be attempting to encourage students' learning by assessing subject-specific mastery, and providing or facilitating meaningful learning opportunities that match the assessed needs, in an ongoing and dynamic way (Bolig & Day, 1993 ; Callahan & Hunsaker, 1992 ; Cox, Kelly, & Brinson, 1988 ; Lupart & McKeough, 1991 ; Matthews, 1993, in press ; Smyth & Matthews, 1994; VanTassel-Baska, 1995).
The domain-specific developmental approach suggests that what works best is what stays closest to individuals' competences and interests (Keating, 1990 ). In the Study for Mathematically Precocious Youth (Stanley & Benbow, 1986 ), that has meant finding students who are very good at mathematics and arranging the environment to help them learn it as well as possible. With linguistic giftedness, it has been argued that educators should look for students who are extremely good at language use and then work at arranging the environment to help them study various aspects of language as productively as possible (Matthews, 1993 ). Adapting the Multiple Intelligences model (Gardner, 1983 ), then, perhaps educators should be considering gifted needs in the social, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, and visual-spatial domains, in addition to the linguistic and mathematical domains that tend to dominate North American education.
Adolescence, Giftedness, & Education: The Problems
Academic Boredom and Alienation
Academic boredom and alienation have been identified as serious problems in many of the schools that adolescents attend: "Change is necessary because high proportions of students are alienated, performing poorly or below par or dropping out. Their life in schools and after schooling is far less than it should be" (Fullan, 1991 ; p. 131). A school leavers' survey (Statistics Canada, 1991 ) reported that thirty percent of early school leavers cited "boredom" as an important reason for their having quit school; and concluded that school leaving is a process, not an event. Boredom and its resulting alienation are predictable results for anyone placed in an environment where too little is learned too slowly, confirmed by the finding that thirty percent of Canadian students who have been strong academic achievers leave school without obtaining their high school diplomas (Statistics Canada, 1991). Many of them return later, but whether they quit school or suffer all the way through it, exceptionally able students in our schools have a very high risk of serious degrees of academic disaffection.
Autonomy
We know that autonomy increases in importance in early adolescence, and remains a major goal through early adulthood (Erikson, 1968; Steinberg, 1990 ). Investigations of stress and coping show that in adolescence and beyond, higher perception of control over one's life is associated with higher self-esteem and resilience (Hauser & Bowlds, 1990; Henderson & Dweck, 1990 ). Given their autonomy concerns, adolescents have an increasing need for relevance and practical utility in their lives. The more a student is motivated by an intrinsic motivation to learn, the less likely she is to waste her time doing schoolwork when truly interesting experiences await. Although school is compulsory until age 16 in Canada, schools unfortunately do not have the reciprocal responsibility of ensuring that what is being taught in school provides students with something to learn by attending. It can be expected that the greater the mismatch between students' developmental levels and the instruction that is being offered--a mismatch experienced by many gifted students--the greater the frustration experienced by young people developing autonomous learning goals and attempting to become independent individuals.
Identity Formation: Problems with Peer Identification
Identity formation is a major challenge through adolescence, experienced as a basic dynamic conflict requiring balance and integration of two apparently opposite principles. On the one hand, there is a strong need to be normal, to be just like one's age-peers. On the other hand, there is an emerging need to be unique, to find and be completely and unmistakeably oneself. Although the uniqueness dimension may be easier for some gifted students, the peer-identification side of this conflict is often the source of considerable anguish for them (Delisle, 1986; Nicholi, 1988 ). All adolescents tend to see themselves as the intense focus of others' attention, experiencing parts of their lives as if they were acting to an imaginary audience, and as if they were the heroes of unique personal fables (Elkind, 1967; Keating, 1990). For people who are different than their peers in some way, such as by being gifted, these tendencies can be exacerbated. Their peers and others may well find them different, and therefore worthy of scrutiny. This obviously makes the peer-identification component of identity formation considerably more difficult for them.
Harter (1982; 1983; 1990 ) has done considerable work on the development of self-concept, including creating a theoretically defensible measure of this construct. She has argued that interactive styles fostering the healthiest patterns of identity formation are those that give the adolescent permission to question, and to be different, within a context of support and mutuality, or conformity. Therefore, maximizing students' autonomy, while providing appropriate guidance (Steinberg, 1990; Steinberg, Mounts, Lamborn, & Dornbusch, 1991 ), can be seen as the goals most likely to optimize adolescents' self-esteem, resilience, and healthy identity formation. For students who are already seen by their peers and themselves as different in some way (including those who are educationally exceptional, like gifted), finding this balance becomes particularly important and difficult.
The range and degree of questioning devised by highly able students in their searching for autonomy and identity can be much greater than the questions that are generated by their more average peers, although their ability to make sense of their internal conflicts is not necessarily better. This can lead to increased levels of discomfort, conflict, and self-questioning for such adolescents and their teachers and parents (Gilligan, et al., 1990; Keating, 1990 ). Linguistically gifted students in particular may make extremely articulate cases for their having considerably more freedom than is good for them.
Cognitive Processes
In considering cognitive processes at adolescence and the implications of these processes for educators, Keating (1990) discussed the significant skills differentiation that occurs at the beginning of adolescence, with the degree of specialization rapidly approaching the level of adults. Using Vygotsky's (1930/1978) conceptualization of zones of proximal development, he argued that it is primarily in the context of meaningful discourse at developmentally appropriate levels that significant learning takes place. He emphasized the importance of encouraging critical habits of mind at this developmentally vulnerable period, and concluded that adolescents require a serious engagement with authentic problems, in depth and over time, both with their teachers and with each other. For educators working with the most able students, it can be seen that providing appropriately stimulating educational experiences--situations where students' exceptionally high developmental levels are matched by the education provided--is a particularly daunting challenge.
Female and Minority Group Experience
Alienation from school may be compounded for gifted girls at adolescence. Bright girls have been described as being at risk of losing their "voices"--their authentic selves--at about age 11 (Gilligan, et al., 1990). School environments typically exacerbate this problem, encouraging girls to conform at the cost of discovering and expressing their individuality and autonomy (Bailey, 1993 ; Sadker & Sadker, 1994 ; Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, 1992 ). Highly able female students, having shown early academic promise, face a serious conflict at adolescence between their identity as academic achievers and their identity as females. Because achievement is associated with masculinity, and not femininity, gifted girls have a choice between being "feminine" and being high achievers (Archer, 1991 ; Chodorow, 1989 ; Olshen & Matthews, 1987 ). This situation has not changed much since Komarovsky (1946) noted in a study of Barnard College students the difficulty that highly able women described in being simultaneously "feminine" and "successful" (cited by Bogdan & Biklen, 1992 , p. 18).
In their research on issues of self-concept and social support for gifted early adolescents, VanTassel-Baska, Olszewski-Kubilius, & Kulieke (1994) observed that gifted members of minority groups had problems similar to those reported for gifted girls. They concluded, "Culturally diverse groups battle internally a dual value system message: one that calls for subgroup loyalty and adherence to tribal, family, and cultural traditions, and the other that calls for individual excellence in a mainstream world" (p. 190). Their recommendations included systematic and intentional efforts to help students develop self-awareness, appropriate life goals, and a meaningful philosophy of life. They argued that these resources could lead to a healthy self-concept developing over time.
There are hopeful signs for people concerned about sex and race differences in achievement. For example, in their review of fifteen years of talent searches, Goldstein, Stocking and Godfrey (in press) noted that the gender gap in high level mathematical ability declined dramatically, from about 10:1 fifteen years ago to 3:1 in the most recent search for which there were figures available, 1994. They attributed this to educators having committed themselves to encouraging girls in their mathematical development, most particularly by working to engage their interest. This is consistent with the meta-analysis by Linn and Hyde (1991) which indicated that although there are still massive sex differences in career access and earning power, sex differences in most measures of achievement respond to training, and are declining. Goldstein et al. (in press) argued that the same attention, if paid to other kinds of differences, including racial differences, will yield the same kind of bridging of achievement gaps. This work provides one more logical premise for the argument that where students' interest is intentionally and systematically engaged, learning outcomes can be expected to increase, and problems of alienation to decrease.
Adolescence, Giftedness, & Education: Some Solutions
A ttempting a synthesis of what we know about adolescence with what we know about high-level development, as described above, one might consider the following educational perspectives and initiatives. While these ideas are addressed separately, they are highly interconnected both theoretically and practically.
Adaptive Instruction
The most straightforward and obvious implication of the foregoing is that schools that want to deal well with gifted adolescents adopt policies that ensure that at the very least students are not expected to sit through curriculum instruction they have already mastered. Instruction below a student's zone of proximal development, when experienced over weeks, months, years, and/or over several courses can be guaranteed to induce boredom and alienation. When students are allowed to demonstrate their competence in a subject area, leading either to their being excused from attending classes in that subject area, or being given more appropriate learning opportunities, they are far likelier to stay engaged by school and learning (Fox, 1981 ; Keating, 1991; Reis, 1989 ; Robinson & Robinson, 1982 ).
Providing curriculum for all students at appropriate levels of challenge means that talent is likelier to be discerned and encouraged in a broader range of students than those traditionally labelled gifted (VanTassel-Baska, 1995). VanTassel-Baska recommends several context variables as helpful in adapting instruction for gifted learners: a recognition of the need for a match between the learner and the intervention; a flexible approach to student placement and progress, including ungraded multi-age contexts where high ability learners are able to use ability-appropriate work groups and curriculum stations; ability grouping where possible and appropriate; teachers trained in this perspective; and the provision of challenging opportunities that tap deeply into students' interests, provide creative opportunities and offshoots, and demand high standards of excellence.
Another advantage of a school-wide adaptive instructional policy starting at least by the early adolescent years is that it greatly increases the likelihood of exceptional students receiving appropriate educational programming without being explicitly labelled and segregated as gifted, learning disabled, or anything else. As mentioned above, while adolescents want to be uniquely individualistic, it is at least as important to them that they are just like everyone else. Adapting instruction to individual needs generally means that more students' needs can be met without labelling and segregation. This kind of educational climate, where schools are flexible in their demands, taking individual learning levels and styles into account, and adapting instruction as necessary, has been argued as being good for all adolescents, encouraging optimal development, positive attitudes toward learning, and much higher engagement in learning ( Fullan, 1991; Gardner, 1991; Glaser, 1985; Hargreaves & Earl, 1990; Powers, Hauser, & Kilner, 1989 ; Shinn,1989 ).
Range of learning options
One of the best ways to adapt instruction to respond appropriately to the developmental diversity demonstrated at the adolescent stage, is to provide a range of learning options that is as diverse as possible. This approach greatly increases the chance that students can find and create circumstances they will experience as stimulating and meaningful, which in turn enhances their sense of autonomy and individualism, and also diminishes boredom and alienation problems. Offering a wide range of options from which students can select (with guidance) is an approach that has been recommended by many educators with considerable experience in gifted education (Cohn, 1988 ; Cox et al., 1988 ; Goldstein & Wagner, 1993; Keating, 1991; Robinson & Robinson, 1982 ).
Some of the most-frequently recommended options for educators to consider in meeting gifted adolescents' needs include subject-specific enrichment, whereby students with high-level needs in a given domain are offered enriched learning experiences in that domain (Cohn, 1988 ; Cox et al., 1988; Renzulli, 1986 ); subject-specific or full-grade acceleration, whereby students at higher instructional levels are placed in the grade levels appropriate to their mastery, in the appropriate subject areas (Callahan & Hunsaker, 1992 ; Cohn, 1988 ; Feldhusen, 1992 ; Shore, 1991 ; Stanley & Benbow, 1986); fast-pacing and curriculum compacting, enabling more content to be covered more quickly, keeping it interesting to many high-level learners (Cohn, 1988; Cox, et al., 1988; Keating, 1991; Lupart & McKeough, 1991; Renzulli, 1986; Stanley & Benbow, 1986; VanTassel-Baska, 1995); and project-based learning, whereby students are assisted in developing meaningful projects on which they can be helped to work in some depth over time (Blumenfeld, Soloway, Marx, Krajcik, Guzdial, & Palincsar, 1991 ; Gardner, 1991; Kornhaber, Krechevsky, & Gardner, 1990 ).
Curriculum compacting deserves special mention because of its serving as a classroom-based prerequisite for many of the other relevant options. By compacting what needs to be learned into a tighter package, a teacher helps a student achieve the scheduling flexibility needed for engaging in other options like project-based learning. Compacting can be done on an individual basis if there is only one student in a classroom who requires it, or with a group of students whose mastery levels are far enough along that the regular curriculum is going to incorporate more repetition and review than necessary. In either case, by the time students reach adolescence, compacting is usually best done as a collaborative effort, after the teacher has had an opportunity to observe classroom performance, and to obtain some understanding of students' learning strengths, needs, and styles. Ideally, it occurs as an interactive process between a teacher and students, undertaken in response to a teacher's observation of students' special needs, or the student's self-advocacy.
Compacting can be as radical as the Challenge Exams described in the Ontario Ministry of Education's emerging plans for reforming secondary education, whereby students can write the exam before they take a course. If they meet a certain standard, they can be excused from taking the course, be given credit for it, and move on to other higher level courses. Alternatively, highly able students can be excused from certain homework and other assignments, and help to design other more appropriate assignments, such that they cover certain curriculum topics in more depth or breadth than is typically the case. Students can be excused from attending selected classes, contingent on their having demonstrated mastery of the ideas and principles to be covered. To work well for adolescents, curriculum compacting requires a teacher working out a careful balance between the guidance and autonomy components of the relationship with her students. For further discussion of the details of curriculum compacting, two particularly good resources include work done by Renzulli (1986) and VanTassel-Baska (1995).
Very often, teachers can make best use of a range of options like this only when they have some help from specialists in gifted or adaptive education, educators who can help in the time-consuming process of assessing, identifying, and planning for meeting students' special needs.
Building Bridges from Classrooms into Schools, Communities, and Beyond
By connecting into as many and varied settings and experiences outside the classroom as possible, educators are better able to assist highly able adolescents in staying engaged in learning (Gardner, 1991 ; Goldstein & Wagner, 1993 ; Smyth & Matthews, 1994 ). This increases the likelihood of providing appropriate learning opportunities for the diversity of student needs that becomes obvious at this stage.
There are many ways to do this, including finding out what resources lie within a given school or school system that might not normally be available to a student in a particular classroom. Cross-grade and cross-panel expertise and resources should be investigated and perhaps catalogued, considering all available school-based resources (teachers, classes, materials, students) at all levels (pre-school through university) for meeting individual students' diverse domain-specific needs (Cohn, 1988; Cox, et al., 1988; Lupart & McKeough, 1991 ).
Creating a Resource Catalogue might be done as a year-long project for students who have demonstrated grade-level mastery in a certain subject area and so are excused from classes in that subject, and are interested in doing this instead. Alternatively, it could provide a theme for a cultural journalism project, as described below, and perhaps done collaboratively by a whole class. The Resource Catalogue might be updated from time to time by students and/or teachers who are interested in knowing what is available by way of alternative learning options at many levels of interest and ability. It can include as wide a range of resources as the imagination allows. Some items might be the names of teachers who have an interest in working with highly advanced students in certain subject areas, computer labs that can be made available on the weekends, a chess club operating at one of the local high schools, and kindergarten teachers who wouldn't mind some high school helpers who want to explore certain aspects of early childhood development.
In a discussion of how schools are failing to address the needs of learners, Gardner (1991) proposed that community institutions ought to be brought together, instead of being kept separate, that the boundaries between schools, work settings, museums, seniors' residences, and other activities, ought to be made more permeable. He argued that the benefits would transcend (although certainly including) educational relevance, and facilitate communities working better for their inhabitants in many ways. Toward this end, he suggested that we think about incorporating mentorships and apprenticeships into our schooling. Early and middle adolescence, Gardner suggested, "is a time for intensive involvement in apprenticeships with knowledgeable adults and for the opportunity to heighten basic skills in the context of meaningful and rewarding projects." (p. 204)
Mentorships in the community and/or educational system have been recommended frequently by gifted education advocates as ways of providing intensive and meaningful high-level learning experiences that are beyond the range and/or the time constraints of classroom teachers (Atkinson, Hansen, & Passman, 1992 ; Leroux, 1992 ; Runions & Smyth, 1985 ; Weiner, 1992 ; VanTassel-Baska, 1995; Wright & Wright, 1987 ). An allied concept is that of offering or creating apprenticeships for students, providing them with opportunities to work in areas related to their interests, with experts in those areas (Bloom, 1985 ; Howe, 1990 ; Kornhaber et al, 1990). An interesting twist on this idea is to ask adolescents to be mentors for young, disadvantaged children who may be gifted (Wright & Borland, 1992).
Another way of building bridges beyond the classroom is to provide access to special classes and events for top-level students, selected across large populations (Cohn, 1988; Cox et al., 1988; Goldstein & Wagner, 1993; Keating, 1991). This can be done along the lines of the talent search model (Goldstein et al, in press), whereby highly able students are identified as having special needs, and programs are devised to accommodate those needs. This is a model that is widely used in the United States, but (as far as I know) has not been explored much in Canada yet except for the Canada-wide Mathematics contests. These are sponsored by the University of Waterloo, starting at grade seven and leading to special events and activities for students who are gifted in mathematics. A talent search (TIP/Canada) is being initiated in the Greater Toronto Area this year (1996-97) by the University of Toronto, in collaboration with the Duke University Talent Identification Program.
Human Development as a Domain of Serious Study
By early adolescence, there should be in place a serious subject area of academic study that concentrates on various aspects of human development, including the Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Intelligences discussed by Gardner (1983), and otherwise understood as social and emotional functioning. These courses would build on each other over time, allowing students' self-awareness and understanding of others to grow systematically, such that they would be better able to analyze important and trivial life decisions as these are encountered, and have a more principled understanding of citizenship rights and responsibilities.
This should not be confused with the Guidance or Health Education or Family Studies classes that many students receive. These courses tend to act as dumping grounds for serious concerns that are not appropriate to other areas of the curriculum, and that teachers and students alike do not have enough time to deeply or meaningfully understand in the time allocated, things like sex education, drug information, and career planning. What is being suggested here would incorporate these important subjects, but be designed to be intellectually methodical and comprehensive, taking into account the diverse and complex realities and constraints of students' lives, with their understanding developing over several years, as is the case with traditional academic subject areas.
The suggestion being advocated here, of designing and offering courses on human development, is broadly consistent with the adaptive instructional point of view, because it emerges from an observation of what is important to many students at this stage (Gilligan et al., 1990; Matthews & Keating, 1995 ), and thus asks educators to adapt instruction to meet students' needs by responding to their serious interests. It is also highly consistent with the other two directions suggested above, in that an implementation of this suggestion would be best done using a range of learning options, including thinking about ways of moving beyond the classroom and into the school and beyond.
In a recent analysis of social/emotional issues as they pertain to life and education, Goleman (1995 ) wrote of the need to help students to understand this domain of functioning:
...childhood and adolescence are critical windows of opportunity for setting down the essential emotional habits that will govern our lives...I can foresee a day when education will routinely include inculcating essential human competencies such as self-awareness, self-control, and empathy, and the arts of listening, resolving conflicts, and cooperation. (p. xiii)
"Emotional life," Goleman (1995) went on to say, "is a domain that, as surely as math or reading, can be handled with greater or lesser skill, and requires its unique set of competencies (p. 36)...Learning these emotional skills at the cusp of adolescence may be especially helpful" (p. 246). Howard Gardner, who was interviewed for Goleman's book, was reported as having said, "'...in the day-to-day world no intelligence is more important than the interpersonal...We need to train children in the personal intelligences in school.'" (p. 42). For exceptionally able students, there is a world of relevancies in the social/emotional domain that can be explored very productively through school.
There are many areas that might be included in a formal course of study of the social/emotional domain, perhaps calling it "Human Development", to capture the research-based nature of the intellectual exploration that educators would need to emphasize in order to establish this as a credible academic pursuit, and in order that it become a valid source of intellectual growth for students.
Career development is a strong contender for inclusion in such a course. Although this is important for everyone, it has been argued that students with exceptional abilities need special help exploring a wide range of less conventional career possibilities (Jacobs & Weisz, 1994 ; Shore, 1991 ). Good career decision-making rests, of course, on healthy self-awareness and self-concept. In his neurologically-based discussion of emotion and cognition, Damasio (1994) described how learning to integrate emotion and cognition, and thereby developing conscious self-awareness, has important implications for understanding one's participation in the social domain, including career decision-making, relationships, sexuality, and human development generally.
A Human Development course, then, should take as one of its primary objectives the facilitation of realistic and positive self-understanding. One way of doing this is through the vehicle of exploring theories of personality. By thinking and talking seriously about what Freud, Jung, Rogers, Maslow, and Zen Buddhism have had to say about the self (examples included by Engler [1995 ]), students can be helped to work toward a way of figuring out their own approaches to questions of identity and personal philosophy. Another vehicle, perhaps for older or more scientifically-inclined students, is to consider neurological explorations linking cognition and emotion, such as those conducted by Damasio (1994) and others.
Another strong candidate for inclusion in a course on Human Development, with particular consideration of the needs of gifted adolescents, is the study of research methods, perhaps with particular (but not exclusive) emphasis on qualitative methods. Qualitative research by its very method encourages a recognition of the socially constructed nature of reality, as well as the multiple realities and perspectives that emerge from the diversity of individual and cultural experience (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992 ). Learning about qualitative research encourages active self-consciousness and reflectivity, disciplines observational skills, and leads to an awareness of possibilities for change. Bogdan and Biklen (1992) argued that the process of engaging in qualitative research requires and facilitates the development of empathy with subjects, resting as it does upon attempts to understand various points of view. They suggested that this kind of pursuit, sometimes called "cultural journalism", gives teachers and students opportunities to explore the complex environment of their schools and become more self-conscious and aware of their own values, and how these values influence others. Students engaged in cultural journalism can acquire many skills in the process, including observational, interview, technology use, note-taking, and lifestory gathering skills, as well as teamwork, writing skills, layout, and joint decision-making. Additional benefits of pursuing certain kinds of cultural journalism topics include preserving knowledge that is otherwise disappearing, and connecting with one's own heritage and culture, as well as strengthening intergenerational ties and reducing alienation.
One way to think about Human Development is as school-based, cognitively-enriched group counselling. In a consideration of the problem of suicide among gifted adolescents, Farrell (1989) concluded that there is a need for schools to offer supportive preventative counseling as a school subject area, "just like history or science" (p. 137). She recommended a focus on increasing students' awareness of the internal and external stressors being placed on them, and suggested various coping strategies that they could use, including humour, and learning to see mistakes and failures as stepping stones to learning and achievement rather than as triggers for blame or depression.
Offering Human Development courses would provide a vehicle for helping students make better decisions about family-making, perhaps even leading to wiser sexual involvements. One important focus of such courses, at appropriate grade levels, and building meaningfully over time, would be to prepare students to understand the important issues in early childhood development, an understanding that increases the likelihood of their being better parents when they have children of their own. By sharing the knowledge we have in this field as broadly as possible, we improve our chances for healthy future communities.
For a wide variety of reasons, many prominent educational theorists and developmental psychologists have made strong recommendations that educators should be considering social domain concerns much more systematically than is typically the case, at least by adolescence. These include (from a variety of perspectives) Bruner (1996) , the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development (1989) , Feldhusen (1992) , Feldman (1986), Gardner (1991), Goleman (1995), Horowitz (1987) , Levitt, Selman, and Richmond (1991 ), and Wentzel, Weinberger, Ford, and Feldman (1990 ). The Wellesley College Center for Research on Women (1992) stated: "Schools must help girls and boys acquire both the relational and competitive skills needed for full participation in the work force, family, and community." (p.2). In an investigation of the role of education in moral voice and adolescent development, Gilligan, Johnston, and Miller (1988) stressed the importance of adolescents' learning to validate differences, to value all kinds of differences, and to affirm relationships. They concluded that it is important for schools to help students develop a complex view of the differences among people.
Schools, then, need to provide explicit opportunities for guided learning about human development, incorporating a systematic, meaningful, and comprehensive exploration of realistic self-awareness, and "possible futures", including analyses of internal (e.g., identity-related) and external (i.e., perceived as "real") barriers to certain careers that might run counter to gender and ethnic stereotypes. This would require some work by teachers in upgrading their knowledge so that they would be competent to teach such courses, including preservice, graduate school, and inservice provisions. Such an endeavour could, if implemented in a context consistent with the other perspectives described here, go a long way to meeting the needs of many gifted adolescents.
Appropriate Learning Opportunities for Gifted Adolescents: Some Case Studies
Three different approaches are briefly discussed below, as examples of ways that various constraints have been and can be accommodated, and the domain-specific developmental needs of gifted adolescent students be met.
Mentorships
In a mostly rural school board operating under several geographic and economic constraints, an innovative teacher, working with a supportive team of other educators and citizens, implemented a successful mentorship program at the high school level. This enterprising young teacher, Maureen Swain, was hired on a shoestring budget to put together a gifted program that was to serve an entire Eastern Ontario school board that covers hundreds of rural miles and many schools (although it is small in comparison to the two Northern school boards described below). Her initial resources consisted of one classroom and a telephone. Margaret Boyd, in the process of doing her Master's degree, documented the implementation process (Boyd, 1993 ). It is a story of resourcefulness tied to good educational insight, involving many participants.
Ms. Swain began by finding a high school guidance teacher who was sufficiently interested in meeting gifted students' needs to invest some time in working overtime for no extra income, a situation which was remedied as the program proved itself. Together, they assembled a list of experts in a wide variety of subject areas, a list that included retired professors, ex-musicians who were glad for a musical escape from their day-job, teachers who had serious hobbies and interests, signers for the deaf community, parents who had professional or amateur expertise, artists of all descriptions--all people with skills they enjoyed passing on to interested learners. A network of people who knew about the project began to percolate, so that, after only a year in operation, they had compiled a substantial list of available mentorships.
All high school students in the board were invited to apply to the program; no one was included or excluded on the basis of formal giftedness identification. While the program consisted of many students who had been identified as gifted (usually in elementary school), it was also flexible enough to accommodate the domain-specific learning needs of the highest level learners, regardless of previous educational labels. This approach to programming, similar to the Magnet School approach, has the economic and psychological advantage that students self-select because they want the program. There are none of the conventional costs and problems associated with the gifted identification process: no expensive psychometric assessments, no parents clamouring to have their children labelled gifted, no students' (or parents') self-esteem damaged due to non-selection, and no students discovering after being identified and having entered a program not appropriate to their needs that they were not really gifted.
Each student was required to demonstrate commitment before a mentorship was formalized. He submitted a portfolio with some kind of proof of prior involvement and interest in the mentorship area, and a letter of application to the potential mentor, through the school mentorship co-ordinator, and was accepted (or rejected) on the basis of that, along with a contract with the mentor for a final product and a schedule of meetings.
In addition to the mentorship itself, which was conducted at a time and place arranged by both parties, participating students attended weekly classes at their local high school, in which they learned about and discussed various aspects of project-based learning, including creating a good final product that communicates their learning experience. At the end of the school year, a Project Fair was held which the students and many of their mentors attended. Displayed at the fair was some kind of product available for others to look at, describing or embodying the nature of the learning that had occurred. The students and mentors were involved in evaluating the process and working out a final grade for the student.
Because students were responsible for their own transportation and any other costs, and because the mentors were not paid for their involvement, this was virtually a no-cost program. The guidance teacher at the high school monitored the students in their progress and ensured that they were working productively. Along with preparing the weekly classes, this became a part-time job that served the special educational needs of dozens of students in a geographically disparate and economically restricted region.
This particular program actively engages student learning in the full spectrum of Gardner's Multiple Intelligences (1983). For example, in addition to activities in all of the standard academic subject areas, there were students involved in high-level musical experiences (forming mentorships with a wide spectrum of serious musicians, from players in a regional symphony orchestra to members of big-name rock groups from the sixties, now defunct), and in visual-spatial development (there were mentorships with artists working in many artistic modalities, from watercolours to stone).
Project-Based Learning
Working in an isolated Native community in British Columbia, Doreen Angus, a Native Canadian teacher, found many systemic, economic, health-related, and cultural factors working against high-level academic achievement for her students. Ms. Angus attended a graduate seminar on gifted education as part of her postgraduate studies, hoping to find tools that she could use to nurture and facilitate giftedness in students who have many reasons not to do well at school.
Ms. Angus thought it imperative that any programming she developed for this purpose be in harmony with Native values and spiritual practices. She did not want to supplant a wisdom-oriented, respectful Native tradition with aggressively competitive or spiritually-empty academic ambition. She wanted her students to leave school with the confidence, self-awareness, intellectual tools, and developing interests that would enable them to lead creative, productive, fulfilling lives, without feeling alienated from their Native heritage.
The domain-specific developmental approach to giftedness was easily familiar to Ms. Angus. It was obvious to her that intelligence develops in many domains, that diverse people have diverse educational needs, and that therefore students require as wide a range of learning opportunities as possible. What she became excited about, because it gave her a professionally respectable model consistent with her own philosophy, was the project-based learning approach, as this connects with portfolio assessment (Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Gardner, 1991; Kornhaber et al, 1990; Purves, 1993 ). In this approach, intelligence is conceptualized not as an individual trait or characteristic, but as a product of a dynamic process, involving an interaction between an individual and society, and operating in a social context, intertwined with social values. Project-based learning, seen this way, is consistent with Native understandings and distinctly different than much current North American gifted educational theory and practice.
With project-based learning, assessment is placed in the context of authentic domains and social environments, using domain projects and portfolios. Individual competencies are encouraged within a social framework, and formal schooling is complemented by apprenticeships in the community. Research in this area shows that the creation of cooperative, supportive environments in homes, schools, and communities has a positive effect on students' social and psychological well-being, which of course leads to higher academic achievement. This was exactly the perspective that Ms. Angus wanted to introduce. She saw how the disconnection of school from community and life made education even less relevant than it would otherwise be for students with so many problems before they began.
Because apprenticeships embed learning in a social and purposeful context, they encourage a wide range of positive outcomes. They build on students' interests and strengths; foster critical thinking through regular, informal assessment in the context of an authentic domain; provide greater community involvement with schools; and give students "models of serious study, reflection, and application in the world that is meaningful to [them]" (Kornhaber, et al., 1990, p. 186). This combination was exactly what Ms. Angus observed her students as requiring.
Domain projects can include several integrated components of assessment and programming, providing a cycle of perceptual, productive, and reflective activities. They provide opportunities for assessments by self, peers, and teacher or expert, over time and development, with opportunities for growth and learning throughout the assessment and learning process. Project-based portfolios contain a student's personal records of the steps through which she has passed in executing the projects and products. A typical portfolio might contain the student's initial plans, drafts, self-evaluations, feedback from peers, teachers, and other experts, as well as plans for subsequent projects. Creating such a portfolio enables a student to reflect on her learning, to see that she has made progress, which is critical to building the problematically low academic self-concept experienced by many of Ms. Angus' students.
For community schools with the severity of constraints experienced by Ms. Angus, the Project-Based learning approach is one way to provide appropriate gifted-level education to those students who need it, while simultaneously providing opportunities for "non-gifted" students to become intellectually engaged, academically competent, and even perhaps gifted. Simultaneously, there is learning occurring in the social/emotional domain. For schools that are not so seriously disadvantaged, these results can also be seen as valuable benefits.
Adapting Instruction to Individual Needs: Providing a Wide Range of Options
In another Native community in British Columbia (more isolated, and less economically disadvantaged), David Rattray, another Native educator, has been implementing an approach that is simply and naturally responsive to individual students' domain-specific developmental needs. As with Ms. Angus, Mr. Rattray did not have the categorical model of giftedness to unlearn. He knew from several years' professional observation and experience that development occurs by domains, that people become intelligent as they work in a domain, and that educational needs vary.
Although some who work in urban areas might see the huge mostly-unpopulated expanses of Northern Canada as a deprivation-experience, it gives educators like Mr. Rattray freedom and scope for creative pedagogy. He has used his professional freedom to create an approach to giftedness--and special educational needs generally--that is flexibly responsive to individual needs, incorporating a wide range of options that many urban educators would envy. Students who are ready to learn at higher levels are given harder work to do in the subject areas in which they excel, as recommended by the advocates of adaptive instruction. Students who respond well to project-based learning are given opportunities to develop projects under his guidance, with the use of other resources and teachers/experts/mentors as appropriate, building bridges to other situations wherever and whenever student needs dictate doing so. He organizes trips where useful, and naturally incorporates Native traditions and approaches where they make sense to the learning. In fact, he uses and has used all of the approaches recommended above.
Mr. Rattray's experience provides an example of what educators can do when they have the intellectual freedom to conceptualize what education can be, and the understanding that development is highly diverse, both within and across students. When teachers and administrators recognize that special needs are indeed special--unique and highly individual--, they move naturally toward a more flexibly responsive model of identifying and programming for giftedness, using a wide range of creatively flexible programming options.
Conclusions
Theoretically sound approaches to defining giftedness suggest a focus on matching special-needs learners with appropriate instructional opportunities on an individual basis. This is consistent with the "learner in context" and adaptive education approaches, in being directly connected with individual developmental needs, resulting in pedagogical flexibility to diversity both in assessment and programming. This is a concern that may be most urgently relevant at adolescence, when highly able students become more markedly domain-specific in their interests and abilities, at the same time as they are considerably more likely to question the value and meaning of their educational experience.
The case studies very briefly reviewed here, although quite different in some ways, share a commitment to developing giftedness across a wide spectrum of abilities, including the social/emotional, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, and visual/spatial domains, in addition to the linguistic and mathematical domains. They all view giftedness as an exceptionality best integrated into regular education whenever possible, rather than a separate entity requiring segregation and markedly different pedagogical approaches.
Although the domain-specific developmental approach to dealing with gifted education needs involves creative flexibility and is appropriate in the most advanced educational contexts, it is not expensive to implement. The benefits in learning outcomes are tremendous: students who are otherwise at risk of academic and/or psychological problems can be helped to find ways to stay engaged in learning, even to enjoy school. Highly able students who would otherwise be bored and unhappy with school find they can participate enthusiastically in at least some aspects of the school-based learning process.
Many of the ideas discussed here would occur naturally in the classroom learning communities described as "second order environments" by Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993 ). These perspectives and approaches are also consistent with the learning culture advocated by Bruner (1996 ), and the school climate discussed by Gardner (1991). Newmann (1990a, 1990b ), in his empirically-based discussions of classroom thoughtfulness argued that our educational goals ought to include the engagement of students in challenging problems, offering them guidance in their manipulation of information to solve such problems. He identified several elements as conducive to developing good critical thinking skills in students, which are consistent with the factors discussed here as appropriate for gifted adolescents: a deep consideration of a few topics, rather than a broad coverage of many; the teacher accepting alternative approaches or answers when they are based on sound reasoning; respect for individual differences in areas of competence; the teacher acting as guide or mentor, helping students to discover and develop their own interests; opportunities for discourse, that is, for open, reasoned discussion of what is being studied, with teachers and students; and a network of emotional supportiveness, the sense of belonging and being cared about as an individual.
The ideas presented here reflect nothing more than good pedagogy, at least from certain theoretical perspectives. They are ideas that have been argued as being good for all students: adapting instruction to meet diverse learning needs, providing a range of interesting learning options that include connections beyond the classroom, and creating opportunities for systematic learning about human development. The most important school-related difference experienced by gifted students is that they are likelier than their peers to experience an alienating mismatch between their abilities and interests on the one hand, and the school curriculum offered on the other. Thinking about meeting their needs provides some clues, perhaps, to learning communities that would work well for all adolescents.
All adolescents need opportunities to learn about autonomy, and to become independent, but as safely as possible. While gifted adolescents in particular need flexible responsivity from their parents and teachers, incorporating respect for their emerging independence and individuality, no matter what they say they also need attentive guidance and support, including clearly-defined boundaries from the adults in their lives. Like their peers, they require opportunities to develop realistic and positive self-concepts, and to learn about the world in ways that engage their minds and imaginations.
References
Archer, S. L. (1991). Identity development. In R. M. Lerner, A. C. Petersen, & J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Adolescence . New York: Garland Publishing (p. 522.)
Atkinson, C., Hansen, D., & Passman, B. (1992). The Mentorship Academy Program: A school-community partnership for developing talent. Gifted Child Today, 15 ( 3), 18-22.
Bailey, S. M. (1993). The current status of gender equity research in American schools. Educational Psychologist, 28 , 321-339.
Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (1993). Surpassing ourselves: An inquiry into the nature and implications of expertise. Chicago: Open Court.
Bloom, B. S. (Ed.). (1985). Developing talent in young people. New York: Ballantine.
Blumenfeld, P. C., Soloway, E., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A. (1991). Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. Educational Psychologist, 26, 369-398.
Bogdan, R. C., & Biklen, S. K. (1992). Qualitative Research for Education: An introduction to theory and methods (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Bolig, E. E., & Day, J. D. (1993). Dynamic assessment and giftedness: The promise of assessing training responsiveness. Roeper Review, 16 , 110-113.
Boyd, M. (1993). Mentorships as a service delivery model of gifted education. Unpublished Master's thesis. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MS: Harvard Press.
Callahan, C. M., & Hunsaker, S. L. (1992). To accelerate or not to accelerate: Evaluation gives the answer. GCT, March/April, 50-56.
Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development: The report of the task force on education of young adolescents. (1989). Turning points: Preparing American youth for the 21st century. New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Chodorow, N. J. (1989). Feminism and psychoanalytic theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Cohn, S. J. (1988). Assessing the gifted child and adolescent. In C. J. Kestenbaum & D. T. Williams (Eds.), Handbook of clinical assessment of children and adolescents (pp. 355-376). New York: New York University Press.
Cox, J. R., Kelly, J., & Brinson, P. (1988). The pyramid project: Implementing the Richardson Study recommendations. Roeper Review, 11 , 37-43.
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes' error: Emotion, reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Grosset, Putnam.
Delisle, J. R. (1986). Death with honors: Suicide among gifted adolescents. Journal of Counseling and Development, 64, 558-560.
Elkind, D. (1967). Egocentrism in adolescence. Child Development, 38, 1025-1034.
E ngler, B. (1995). Personality Theories: An Introduction (4th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity, youth and crisis. New York: W.W. Norton.
Farrell, D. M. (1989). Suicide among gifted students. Roeper Review, 11 , 134-138.
Feldhusen, J. F. (1992). Early admission and grade advancement for young gifted learners. GCT, March/April, 45-49.
Feldman, D. H. (1986). Nature's gambit: Child prodigies and the development of human potential. New York: Basic Books.
Fox, L. H. (1981). Identification of the academically gifted. American Psychologist, 36 , 1103-1111.
Fullan, M. G., with Stiegelbauer, S. (1991). The new meaning of educational change (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.
Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind. New York: Basic Books.
Gardner, H. (1991). The unschooled mind: How children think and how schools should teach. New York: Basic Books.
Gilligan, C., Johnston, D. K., & Miller, B. (1988). Moral voice, adolescent development, and secondary education: A study at the Green River School. (Monograph No. 3). Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of Gender, Education and Human Development, Harvard Graduate School of Education Project on Adolescence.
Gilligan, C., Lyons, N. P., and Hanmer, T. J. (Eds). (1990). Making connections: The relational worlds of adolescent girls at Emma Willard School. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Glaser, R. (1985). Cognition and adaptive education. In M. C. Wang & H. J. Walberg (Eds.), Adapting instruction to individual differences (pp. 82-90). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.
Goldstein, D., & Wagner, H. (1993). After school programs, competitions, school olympics, and summer programs. In K. A. Heller, F. J. Monks, & A. H. Passow (Eds.), International handbook of research and development of giftedness and talent (pp. 593-604). New York: Pergamon.
Goldstein, D., Stocking, V.B., & Godfrey, J.J. (in press). What we've learned from Talent Search research. In N. Colangelo & S. G. Assouline (Eds.), Proceedings of the Third Henry B. and Jocelyn Wallace National Research Symposium on Talent Development . Trillium Press.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam.
Hargreaves, A., & Earl, L. (1990). Rights of passage: A review of selected research about schooling in the transition years. Toronto: Queen's Printer for Ontario.
Harter, S. (1982). The perceived competence scale for children. Child Development, 53 , 87-97.
Harter, S. (1983). Developmental perspectives on the self-system. In P. H. Mussen (Series Ed.), & E. M. Hetherington (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: vol. 4 . Socialization, personality and social development (4th ed., pp. 275-385). New York: Wiley
Harter, S. (1990). Self and identity development. In S. S. Feldman & G. R. Elliott (Eds.), At the threshold: The developing adolescent (pp. 352-387). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hauser, S. T., & Bowlds, M. K. (1990). Stress, coping, and adaptation. In S. S. Feldman & G. R. Elliott (Eds.), At the threshold: The developing adolescent (pp. 388-389). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Henderson, V. L., & Dweck, C. S. (1990). Motivation and achievement. In S. S. Feldman & G. R. Elliott (Eds.), At the threshold: The developing adolescent (pp. 308-329). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hetherington, E. M. (1991). Presidential Address: Families, lies, and videotapes. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 1 (4), 323-348.
Horowitz, F. D. (1987). A developmental view of giftedness. Gifted Child Quarterly, 31 , 165-168.
Horowitz, F. D., & O'Brien, M. (1986). Gifted and talented children: State of knowledge and directions for research. American Psychologist, 41 , 1147-1152.
Howe, M. J. A. (1990). The origins of exceptional abilities. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Jacobs, J. E., & Weisz, V. (1994). Gender stereotypes: Implications for gifted education. Roeper Review, 16, 152-155.
Keating, D. P. (1990). Adolescent thinking. In S. S. Feldman & G. R. Elliott (Eds.), At the threshold: The developing adolescent (pp. 54-89). Harvard University Press.
Keating, D. P. (1991). Curriculum options for the developmentally advanced. Exceptionality Education Canada, 1 , 53-83.
Komarovsky, M. (1946). Cultural contradictions and sex roles. American Journal of Sociology, 52 , 184-189.
Kornhaber, M., Krechevsky, M., & Gardner, H. (1990). Engaging intelligence. Educational Psychologist, 25 , 177-199.
Leroux, J. A. (1992). Stretching the limits of learning: Mentorships for gifted high school students. The Vocational Aspect of Education, 44, 249-258.
Levitt, M. Z., Selman, R. L., & Richmond, J. B. (1991). The psychosocial foundations of early adolescents' high-risk behavior: Implications for research and practice. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 1 , 323-348.
Linn, M. C., & Hyde, J. S. (1991). Trends in cognitive and psychosocial gender differences. In R. M. Lerner, A. C. Petersen, & J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Adolescence (Vol. 1, pp. 139-150). New York: Garland Publishing.
Lupart, J., & McKeough, A. (1991). Toward an integrated model of gifted education. Exceptionality Education Canada, 1 , 1, 1-12.
Matthews, D. J. (1993). Linguistic giftedness in the context of domain-specific development. Exceptionality Education Canada, 3 (3), 1-23 .
Matthews, D. J. (in press). Diversity in domains of development: Research findings and their implications for gifted identification and programming. Roeper Review .
Matthews, D. J., & Keating, D. P. (1995). Domain specifity and habits of mind: An investigation of patterns of high-level development. Journal of Early Adolescence, 15, 319-343 .
Newmann, F. M. (1990a). Higher order thinking in teaching social studies: A rationale for the assessment of classroom thoughtfulness. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 22, 1, 41-56.
Newmann, F. M. (1990b). Qualities of thoughtful social studies classes: An empirical profile. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 22 , 3, 253-275.
Nicholi, Armand M., Jr. (1988). The adolescent. In A. M. Nicholi, Jr. (Ed.), The new Harvard guide to psychiatry (pp. 637-664). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Olshen (Solomon), S. R. & Matthews, D. J. (1987). The disappearance of giftedness in girls: An intervention strategy. Roeper Review, 9 (4), 251-254.
Powers, S. I., Hauser, S. T. & Kilner, L. A. (1989). Adolescent mental health. American Psychologist, 44, 2, 200-208.
Purves, Alan C. (1993). Setting standards in the language arts and literature classroom and the implications for portfolio assessment. Educational Assessment, 1 (3), 175-199.
Reis, S. M. (1989). Reflections on policy affecting the education of gifted and talented students. American Psychologist, 44 , 399-408.
Renzulli, J. S. (Ed.). (1986). Systems and models for developing programs for the gifted and talented. Mansfield, CT: Creative Learning Press.
Robinson, N. M., & Robinson, H. B. (1982). The Optimal Match: Devising the best compromise for the highly gifted student. In D. Feldman (Ed.), New directions for child development: Developmental approaches to giftedness and creativity (pp. 79-94). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Runions, T., & Smyth, E. M. (1985). Gifted adolescents as co-learners in mentorships. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 8 , 127-132.
Sadker, M., & Sadker, D. (1994). Failing at fairness: How America's schools cheat girls. New York: Scribner.
Shinn, M. R. (Ed.). (1989). Curriculum-based measurement. New York: The Guilford Press.
Shore, B. M. (1991). Building a solid professional knowledge base in gifted education. Education Exceptionality Canada, 1 (1), 85-102.
Smyth, E. M., & Matthews, D. J. (1994). Gains and challenges: Reflections on fourteen years of legislated programming for Ontario's gifted students. Exceptionality Education Canada, 4 (2), 33-52
Stanley, J. C., & Benbow, C. P. (1986). Youths who reason exceptionally well mathematically. In R. J. Sternberg & J. E. Davidson (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness (pp. 361-387). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Statistics Canada. (1991). School Leavers Survey. Ottawa: Education Culture and Tourism Division, Statistics Canada, Government of Canada.
Steinberg, L. (1990). Autonomy, conflict, and harmony in the family relationship. In S. S. Feldman & G. R. Elliott (Eds.), At the threshold: The developing adolescent (pp. 255-276). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Steinberg, L., Mounts, N. S., Lamborn, S. D., & Dornbusch, S. M. (1991). Authoritative parenting and adolescent adjustment across varied ecological niches. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 1 , 19-36.
Strober, M. (1986). Anorexia Nervosa: History and psychological concepts. In K. D. Brownell & J. P. Foreyt (Eds.), Handbook of eating disorders (pp. 231-246). New York: Basic.
VanTassel-Baska, J. (1995). The development of talent through curriculum. Roeper Review, 18, 98-102.
VanTassel-Baska, J., Olszewski-Kubilius, P., & Kulieke, M. (1994). A study of self-concept and social support in advantaged and disadvantaged seventh and eighth grade gifted students. Roeper Review, 16, 186-191.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1930).
Weiner, D. A. (1992). Mentors highlight the essence. Gifted Child Today, 15 (3), 23-25.
Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. (1992). The AAUW Report: How schools shortchange girls. Boston: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation and National Education Association.
Wentzel, K. R., Weinberger, D. A., Ford, M. E., & Feldman, S. S. (1990). Academic achievement in preadolescence: The role of motivational, affective, and self-regulatory processes. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 11 , 179-193.
Wright, L., & Borland, J.H. (1992). A special friend: Adolescent mentors for young, economically disadvantaged, potentially gifted students. Roeper Review, 14 , 124-129.
Wright, C. A., & Wright, S. D. (1987). The role of mentors in the career development of young professionals. Family Relations, 36 , 204-208.
