Although a general understanding of the phenomenon of giftedness is evident in the literature, missing is a body of information on the thoughts and actions of gifted persons in those situations that we suspect influence the emergence of extraordinary accomplishment. In this article I propose a change in direction for the study of the advanced development. Grounded in the theoretically based res…
The paper argues that educators of the gifted have overlooked important evidence on the power of special environments because of our habit of considering cognitive outcomes and an outsider view of evidence as the standard for judging the benefits of special environments. The author proposes that social context be used as a construct to help rethink how to study the benefits of special environme…
The emotions experienced by teachers while teaching is a relatively unexplored avenue of research. One teacher, Alex, was studied using phenomenological interviews and participant observation to understand the emotions he experienced while teaching in a special program for gifted and talented children. Data were analyzed using inductive procedures. Alex experienced a variety of emotions genera…
Teachers have many methods available to them for instructing students. This article presents a teacher’s perspective on conducting a discussion with a group of children who were gifted and talented. I studied one teacher using participant observation and ethnographic interviewing as he taught in a special program. I used the concept of professional practical knowledge to describe the informat…
Most of our information on how teachers of the gifted and talented think while they plan and implement instruction is from the perspective of the researcher, not from the teacher’s perspective. One expert teacher was studied in great detail using ethnographic and phenomenological techniques. More specifically, a teacher was studied as he planned and taught two philosophy courses. After extens…
The paper explores the question of how gifted and talented adolescents experience being gifted in high school. Fifteen subjects were interviewed twice while attending a special summer program in order to answer this general question. The data were analyzed and interpreted using a set of research questions which postulated that the subjects would voice feelings of difference and would make state…
The development of human potential occurs in a vast array of settings across the world. In the United States, in addition to the options of both public and private schools, parents homeschool their children and send them to academic summer programs, often resulting in able students developing to a point of extraordinary accomplishment. Some talents are typically developed early in life (e.g., p…
A study of the effects of schooling on the social cognition of gifted adolescents is reported. A student attitude questionnaire (SAQ) exploring the cognitive behavioral strategies utilized to manage the stigma of giftedness was developed after conducting phenomenological interviews of fifteen gifted adolescents attending the Tennessee Governor’s Schools (Coleman & Cross, 1988). The questionna…
The paper argues that educators of the gifted have overlooked important evidence on the power of special environments because of our habit of considering cognitive outcomes and an outsider view of evidence as the standard for judging the benefits of special environments. The author proposes that social context be used as a construct to help rethink how to study the benefits of special environme…
The emotions experienced by teachers while teaching is a relatively unexplored avenue of research. One teacher, Alex, was studied using phenomenological interviews and participant observation to understand the emotions he experienced while teaching in a special program for gifted and talented children. Data were analyzed using inductive procedures. Alex experienced a variety of emotions generat…
Teachers have many methods available to them for instructing students. This article presents a teacher’s perspective on conducting a discussion with a group of children who were gifted and talented. I studied one teacher using participant observation and ethnographic interviewing as he taught in a special program. I used the concept of professional practical knowledge to describe the informat…
Most of our information on how teachers of the gifted and talented think while they plan and implement instruction is from the perspective of the researcher, not from the teacher’s perspective. One expert teacher was studied in great detail using ethnographic and phenomenological techniques. More specifically, a teacher was studied as he planned and taught two philosophy courses. After extens…