GIFTED CHILDREN

An Electronic Journal of the AERA SIG Research on Giftedness and Talent.

Volume 2 Number 2 Summer 2008

Contents Hello from the Editor

Introduction
Dona Matthews .................... 1 Wherever you are, I hope this finds you well, and enjoying a welcome change of season.
We have one longer article in this edition of the AERA Research on Giftedness and
Letter from Chair Talent SIG’s e-journal, Gifted Children: an article by David Lohman and Maureen
Karen Rogers ........................ 2 Marron at the Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration at the Belin-Blank Center
for Gifted Education and Talent Development, The University of Iowa. Their article,
Article
entitled “Studying acceleration with national datasets and surveys: Some suggestions,
David F. Lohman and
some results, and our experiences,” gives us an update of the pioneering investigations
Maureen A. Marron ............ 3
of acceleration that they and their colleagues are doing at the Belin-Blank Center. In
Book Review addition to the research that they are conducting on this vitally important topic, it is
The Cambridge Handbook of worth noting that the experts at the Belin-Blank Center are providing consulting services
Expertise and Expertise to state departments of education and school districts that are considering writing or
Performance revising their policies on acceleration. If my professional experience is anything to go by,
Reviewer: that includes—or soon will include—practically every jurisdiction in North America, and
Renate Otterbach ..................... 9 many internationally too.

Elegy to Michael Pyryt
Jane Piirto ............................ 11
Request for Articles for
SIG Newsletter ....................... 12
AERA Research on Giftedness
and Talent
Officers .................................... 13
Working Committees ........... 13
Expertise is another of the fascinating frontiers of research for those of us interested in
giftedness and talent development. I’m delighted that Renate Otterbach (who wrote a
review for Roeper Review of the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance)
has agreed to write a short article for us about the impact and implications of expertise
studies on our work. This could make an interesting topic for a symposium or
roundtable discussion at AERA next year; if you are interested in participating, get in
touch with Renate (see contact info with her article).
The original name of this publication – Gifted Children – was decided on quickly as a
placeholder because we had to settle on a name just to get it going. But based on
comments I have received, I think that it may not be as descriptive as it might be of our
collective efforts at understanding the processes and practices related to gifted
development and education. It would be great if we could find something more dynamic
and less categorical. All suggestions are welcome! I look forward to hearing from you
with your thoughts on a name change, and also with submissions for upcoming issues.
This semi-annual e-journal is a quick and timely forum for sharing short (or longer)
articles on what’s interesting, engaging, and controversial in your work with high-ability
learners, and what you’re learning or reading or thinking about investigating in your
own research.
(continued on page 12)

Undernourished, intelligence becomes like the bloated belly of a starving child: swollen, filled
with nothing the body can use.
Andrea Dworkin

AERA Special Interest Groups Web Site: http://www.aeragifted.org/

From the Chair

Karen Rogers
President, AERA ROGAT SIG

It is difficult to believe that more than two months have
passed since we all gathered for the AERA meeting in New
York. What an eventful conference that was for our SIG.
Professor Abraham Tannenbaum provided us with such a
good send-off at our Monday evening business meeting and
the rest was only up from that very high point. Professor
Tannenbaum spoke to a packed room, many of whom were
former students or acolytes, but many who were new to our
field and anxious to hear from one of our history makers. His
retrospective survey of the past 50 years in gifted education
was enlightening. I suspect everyone present learned
something they hadn’t known before that evening. What a
pleasure and privilege it was to listen to one of the true
scholars of our field. It makes one proud to be in it.
Dr. Michael Pyryt’s loss was greatly felt by all who were
present. His wonderful sister read the paper he had had the
foresight to prepare before he had left for Australia and all the
events that followed. It was of his usual high quality – a meta-
analysis of research. We will share this paper with you in
future editions of our SIG’s publications.
The SIG held a celebration of Michael’s life and a tribute to
him on Tuesday of AERA week in the mid-afternoon. Again,
the room was packed with friends, colleagues, and family.
We were happy to find several of his Calgary colleagues
present and only wish they had freely spoken of their own
perspectives on Michael’s greatness at his home university.
As it was, many thanks are accorded to the great number of
people who did speak about their relationship with Michael
and who shared many stories of his very unique and
wonderful ways. His sister was particularly eloquent about
the Michael she knew best. It helped us all to know Michael
just a little bit better, even when we thought we did know him
pretty well. He will be missed. As it was, we had the
opportunity to speak our piece (or peace?) about Michael at
this conference while his demise was still fresh in our minds.
I believe next year’s conference will be even more difficult for
us when his true presence will have been missed at two of the
conferences he (and we) loved best.
In the meantime, our SIG goes on, with potential changes in
the structure of the organization to come. We will keep you
informed in the issues to come. In the meantime, my
invitation still stands. I would love to hear from you about
initiatives you think we should undertake, projects we should
begin, and new directions we should follow. Please contact
me with your ideas via email at kbrogers@stthomas.edu
Until we see each other again! ™

CONGRATULATIONS MIRACA GROSS!

We are proud and delighted to congratulate Miraca Gross on her being awarded the Order of Australia.
The Director of the Gifted Education Research, Resource and Information Centre at the University of New South
Wales, Miraca was acknowledged for her service to education as an academic, researcher and author,
from the design and delivery of programs and policies for gifted students and their teachers,
to professional development and educational practice.

Gifted Children Volume 2 Number 2 Summer 2008 Page 2

Studying Acceleration with National Datasets and Surveys: Some Suggestions,
Some Results, and Our Experiences
David F. Lohman and Maureen A. Marron
Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration
Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development
The University of Iowa
The Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration (IRPA)
was established in 2006 at The Connie Belin & Jacqueline N.
Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent
Development at The University of Iowa through the support
of the John Templeton Foundation. IRPA is unique in that its
sole focus is the study of curricular acceleration for
academically talented children. Academic acceleration is an
educational intervention that moves high-ability students
through an educational program at a rate faster or at an age
younger than typical (Pressey, 1949). Acceleration helps
match the level, complexity, and pace of the curriculum with
students’ intellectual abilities.
The founding of IRPA is a direct outcome of the success of the
2004 two-volume report by Nicholas Colangelo, Susan
Assouline, and Miraca Gross. The report, entitled A Nation
Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students
(2004), synthesizes the 50 years of robust and consistent
research on academic acceleration. The recurring refrain from
this research is that both grade-based (e.g., grade skipping)
and content-based (e.g., Advanced Placement classes)
acceleration are effective, though underused, interventions in
academic and social-emotional domains for high-ability
students. Although grade-accelerated students generally out-
perform their chronologically older classmates academically,
both groups show approximately equal levels of social and
emotional adjustment (see Assouline et al., 2003; Colangelo,
Assouline, & Gross, 2004; Kulik & Kulik, 1992, 2004;
Lipscomb, 2003; Sayler & Brookshire, 1993; Southern & Jones,
1991). Longer term, accelerants attain advanced degrees,
produce scholarly works, and contribute professionally at
rates well above societal baselines (Lubinski et al., 2001, 2006).
It is fair to say that extant research has answered many basic
questions about acceleration. At the most fundamental level,
we know that acceleration is an effective intervention for
high-ability students, particularly when the decision is
carefully considered and supported by the school. At the
same time, there are nuances to the research and unanswered
questions about the factors that moderate success with the
different forms of acceleration. Additionally, with the increase
in public awareness of acceleration, changes in attitudes and
policies need to be monitored. We report on two lines of
research—secondary analyses of existing national datasets
and nationally distributed surveys—that we hope will add to
the existing knowledge of acceleration.
Secondary Analyses of Existing Datasets
We recently have begun using datasets from the National
Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to investigate
questions about the predictors and outcomes of acceleration.
These datasets, specifically NELS and ELS, are a valuable
Gifted Children Volume 2 Number 2
resource because they provide information on representative
national samples of students, some of whom have been
academically accelerated and many who have not been
accelerated. Many of the existing studies of acceleration (and
giftedness, generally) fail to include an appropriate
comparison group such as non-accelerated students of similar
ability or achievement. Consequently, it is difficult to attribute
the positive outcomes to acceleration per se rather than to
other characteristics of the students (such as general ability).
The relatively large number of accelerated and similar-ability
unaccelerated students in the NCES datasets helps resolve
this situation. Furthermore, the cross-sectional design used in
many studies fails to provide information on how accelerated
students perform over time. Students in the NCES datasets
are followed for many years, and so the long-term
consequences of accelerative decisions made in grade school
can be assessed at high school and beyond. (Regional talent
searches also gather longitudinal data, often with much larger
samples which allow greater confidence in the statistical
analyses that are performed. However, one cannot easily
make inferences about the population of students beyond
those who participated in the talent search.)
Others also have recognized the potential in using large
datasets in studies of high-ability students. Konstantopoulos,
Modi, and Hedges (2001) used NELS:88 to describe the
characteristics of gifted students; Renzulli and Park (2002)
studied gifted high school dropouts with NELS:88; Wyner,
Bridgeland, and Diiulio (2007) used NELS:88 and ECLS-K to
identify the achievement trap in which high-achieving, lower-
income students lose ground to high-achieving, higher-
income students; and Robinson, Lanzi, Weinberg, Ramey, and
Ramey (2002) have looked at longitudinal achievement data
from high-achieving students enrolled in Head Start. Sayler
and Brookshire (1993; Sayler, 1996) have used NELS:88 to
examine the social and emotional outcomes of acceleration for
8th graders.
Methodological and Analytical Issues in Conducting
Acceleration Research with National Datasets
NCES used a two-stage sample selection process to obtain a
nationally representative sample of students. First, a stratified
random sample of schools was drawn, and then a stratified
random sample of students from within each school. This
two-stage method requires that analyses account for the
complex survey design and multilevel nature of the data.
(continued on next page)
Summer 2008 Page 3
(Lohman and Marron, cont.)
Identification of accelerated students. Following Sayler and
Brookshire (1993), we indicated that students had been
accelerated if their parents reported (on the parent
questionnaire) that their child had been grade skipped and if
they were at least two years younger than the normal age for
students in that grade, or if they were one year younger than
normal but were born on or after January 1st of the
appropriate year. We did not include students who were one
year younger than normal at the beginning of the school year
and who had a birthday between September and December of
that year because the district might have had a late cut-off
birth date for admission. These students would be young for
their grade but still within the district-recommended ages.
The NELS and ELS data sets used in this study contain 23,341
and 11,344 students, respectively, from the public and
restricted-use data who were systematically sampled to be
representative of the nation. However, even with samples of
this size, only 336 students (1.4%) were accelerated in the
NELS data and 100 students (0.6%) in the ELS data.
So that we could compare accelerated students with similar-
ability students who were not accelerated, we used a
composite of students’ mathematics and reading test scores at
the time of the first data collection (8th grade in NELS and 10th
grade in ELS) as a control for achievement, Note that this is
not a measure of student ability at the time of the skip.
Accelerated students in these analyses are compared to their
post-skip classmates who have achievement scores with a
similar mean and variance in 8th or 10th grade.
Analysis issues. A common procedure in this type of research
is to compare the means of accelerated and non-accelerated
cohorts (e.g., Sayler & Brookshire, 1993). Though informative,
these comparisons typically use only a fraction of the data and
provide too little control for confounding variables. Logistic
regression is also preferable to a means comparison when the
assumption of normality is violated (Press & Wilson, 1978).
Therefore, in addition to a means comparison using a cohort
of similar-achievement students, we used logistic regression
so that the entire sample of students was included in the
analyses. The binary dependent variable (whether a student
was accelerated or not) is then regressed on all of the
independent variables simultaneously. We included a
variable for academic achievement as a key control.
A rule of thumb in logistic regression is that the number of
positive outcomes (i.e., accelerated students) must be larger
than the number of independent variables. Our design met
this criterion. However, results can be biased when the
percentage of the sample that experiences a positive outcome
(in our case, grade-acceleration) is very small. Thus, we used
recommended procedures in Stata (King & Zeng, 2001) to
account for rare events data in logistic regression. Our results
did not differ substantively from the results using traditional
logistic regression, likely due in part to the large overall
sample sizes (N=23,341 for NELS, and N=11,344 for ELS).
Although our results from traditional (i.e., non-rare events)
logistic regression do not differ from rare-event regression,
we caution that the rarity of acceleration needs to be a
consideration for those using national datasets. The issue is
particularly vexed when samples are small and the weights
for some cases are very large. When this happens, fixing the
Gifted Children Volume 2 Number 2
upper and lower weights at some less extreme value can be
helpful.
We conducted two sets of analyses on these data. The first
examined which students were most likely to be accelerated
and the second examined some of the outcomes of
acceleration. For the first set of analyses, we compared 275
accelerants in the NELS:88 data with 275 students who
showed similar levels of achievement in reading and
mathematics on 55 variables. We divided the variables into
seven categories: descriptive characteristics (e.g., sex and
ethnicity), psychosocial characteristics (e.g., self-confidence,
self-reliance), socioeconomic status (e.g., family income above
median, father is a professional), home environment (e.g.,
parents check homework and limit TV watching), school
characteristics (e.g., public, large, percent minority),
community characteristics (e.g., urban, rural, south, west),
and academic activities at school (e.g., taking advanced math,
warning about a grade).
Table 1 shows selected results. Asian-American and Black
students were more likely to be accelerated and White
students less likely to be accelerated than non-accelerated
students with similar levels of achievement. Accelerated
students reported less self-reliance, were more likely to expect
to finish college and get a graduate education, were much less
likely to cut class, and less likely to participate in religious
activities. Mothers of accelerants were more likely to have
graduated from college and fathers more likely to have
professional occupations.
In terms of home environment, accelerants were more likely
to have a study room, access to a computer, and to have
parents who limited their TV watching and checked their
homework. However, the largest effect of the home
environment variables was for immigrant status. Children of
immigrants were more than twice as likely as children of non-
immigrant parents to have been accelerated.
Among school characteristics, children in Catholic and other
private religious schools were more likely to have been
accelerated while those in public schools less likely to have
been accelerated than similar-achieving peers.
Region of the country and community characteristics also
mattered. Children in the Northeast and those who attended
suburban schools were more likely to have been accelerated.
Accelerated students were more likely to report being in the
highest math group, to have participated in a gifted and
talented program, and were less likely to have received a
warning about grades. All other indices of problem behaviors
were also less frequent among accelerants although not
statistically significant.
We next controlled for other variables that might be expected
to moderate some of these effects. For example, might the
effects due to ethnicity be explained by SES? Might effects for
region of the country be explained by urbanicity? We did this
first by introducing a second control variable using the data
set with 275 accelerants and 275 students of similar
achievement. We then used the entire NELS data set and
controlled for multiple variables simultaneously. Introducing
the second control variable (recall that achievement was
already controlled) produced only modest changes in the
observed odds ratios. Controlling for several variables
simultaneously using the full data set sometimes resulted in
Summer 2008 Page 4
larger changes. For example, using the full data set and
multiple logistic regression, we found that girls were more
likely than boys to be accelerated. This effect, though in the
same direction, was not significant in the analyses of the
smaller data set.
The second set of analyses examined the outcomes of
acceleration. When comparing students who had been grade-
accelerated to older, similar-achievement, non-accelerated
students in 1992 (the NELS:88 sample), grade-accelerated
students were more likely to have been in a gifted and
talented program during high school and have improved
their achievement test scores more between 8 th and 12 th
grade. Grade-accelerated students were also more likely to
score higher on 12 th grade exams than non-accelerated peers,
even without controlling for 8 th grade achievement. The
smaller ELS data set gave only marginally significant results.
We have also investigated the effects of the timing of
acceleration in elementary school, both the characteristics of
students most likely to be accelerated earlier or later in
elementary school, and the academic performance of early
versus late accelerants in high school. However, sample sizes
in these analyses become perilously small and so
generalization is difficult. Small samples can also exacerbate
the effects of applying the customary case weights. Up-
weighting particular cases by a factor of 10 or more has little
effect when the full data set is used but can distort results
when cell sizes are small.
Survey Research from IRPA
In addition to secondary analyses of the NCES datasets, IRPA
has been engaged in survey research over the past year. The
importance of survey research is that it is an efficient way to
assess changes in attitudes, practices, and policies. Our Nation
Deceived survey, conducted in fall 2007, examined the impact
of the report three years after its publication. We found that
99 percent of the 3,868 U.S. respondents who completed the
survey believed the report will have a positive influence on
gifted education in the long-run, 85 percent indicated the
report has had a positive impact on their attitudes toward
acceleration, and 77 percent said that the report has had a
positive impact on the field of gifted education. Fifty-one
percent of those responding believe that the report has had a
positive impact on the field of education in general, and 25
percent believe that the report has had a positive impact on
training provided in colleges of education. Fourteen percent
of respondents said they believe that acceleration policies
have been written or revised as a result of A Nation Deceived
(cf., recent policies from Ohio, Minnesota, and Georgia)
Acceleration policies and personal attitudes are perennial
roadblocks in the implementation of acceleration practices.
Whittling away at some of the resistance is a large step
forward in bringing acceleration into the general education
community.
The purpose of a second IRPA survey, our Acceleration
Survey, also conducted in fall 2007, was to provide recent
descriptive information on attitudes and practices of
acceleration from various constituencies (i.e., administrators,
classroom teachers, and gifted and talented
teachers/coordinators, parents, gifted education researchers).
We were interested in the attitudes these groups hold and the
beliefs they ascribe to others with whom they interact when
making decisions about acceleration (e.g., other teachers,
Gifted Children Volume 2 Number 2
school counselors, parents). We also collected information on
the acceleration decision-making process. These results are
used to write policy templates and to develop materials (e.g.,
how-to guides for acceleration) for use by parents, teachers,
and administrators.
Our Acceleration Survey reveals several key findings
regarding attitudes and practices of acceleration. First,
although survey respondents self-reported a positive attitude
about acceleration, the respondents felt that others’ attitudes
were not as favorable. This belief could affect the respondent’s
willingness to discuss or propose acceleration with others (for
example, a parent may be unwilling to propose acceleration if
she feels that the teacher will not welcome the discussion).
Second, approximately one-third of schools did not have a
written acceleration policy, a complementary result to the
Nation Deceived survey result indicating that some states
have recently developed policies. Unfortunately, absence of a
formal policy might invite practices that discourage
acceleration. Third, most schools did not include a school
counselor as part of the acceleration decision-making process.
A school counselor can have an instrumental role in helping
an accelerated student learn, if necessary, study skills,
strategies for organizing school work, approaches for
handling academically challenging work, and methods for
adjusting into a new social climate with older students.
The primary limitation of this survey research is that
respondents voluntarily chose to complete the surveys. Most
of the respondents had a vested interest in acceleration:
parents of gifted children, teachers of the gifted, and gifted
education researchers and advocates. Therefore, it is not
surprising that their attitudes toward acceleration were
generally positive. A randomly selected set of respondents
would support more dependable generalizations about
attitudes toward academic acceleration. Nonetheless, our
survey research indicates that much work remains to be done
in assessing and changing attitudes, policies, and procedures
about acceleration.
Grant Support for Acceleration Research
A Nation Deceived was successful in making acceleration a
topic of national conversation. IRPA is working to make sure
that acceleration remains part of these discussions by
encouraging new research and assisting in the dissemination
of existing research on acceleration. In 2007, IRPA awarded
nine research grants on acceleration. The topics of the funded
work (and the lead researchers) include selection of high
school students for Advanced Placement (AP) classes (Phil
Ackerman), recruitment and retention of minority students
into AP classes (Holly Hertberg-Davis), acceleration of
minority students (Seon-Young Lee), reasons for attrition
(Elizabeth Connell) and success (Michael Sayler) in early
entrance programs, acceleration practices in Canada (Lannie
Kanevsky), teacher and administrator attitudes toward
acceleration and the creation of professional development
module on acceleration (Del Siegle), reflections of profoundly
gifted students 20 years later from participants in the Study
for Mathematically Precocious Youth (Rose Mary Webb), and
a meta-analytic update on the research published since A
Nation Deceived (Karen Rogers). Abstracts from the 2007
(continued on next page)
Summer 2008 Page 5
 (Lohman and Marron, cont.)
recipients are available at www.accelerationinstitute.org.
Recipients of the 2008 IRPA grants will be announced in
April.
Conclusions
Through its research, policy, and advocacy efforts, IRPA
hopes to maintain interest in academic acceleration, to
support research on acceleration, and to become a resource for
anyone (parents, teachers, administrators, researchers, etc.)
who has questions about acceleration. Also, IRPA will act as a
consultant to state departments of education and school
districts that are considering writing (or revising) policy on
acceleration.

References

Assouline, S.G., Colangelo, N., Ihrig, D., Forstadt, L., Lipscomb, J., & Lupkowski-Shoplik, A.E. (2003, November). The Iowa
Acceleration Scale: Two validation studies. Paper presented at the National Association for Gifted Children Convention,
Indianapolis, IN.
Colangelo, N., Assouline, S., & Gross, M. U. M. (2004). A nation deceived: How schools hold back America’s brightest students, Volume I
(The Templeton National Report on Acceleration). Iowa City, IA: The Connie Belin & Jacqueline N. Blank International Center
for Gifted Education and Talent Development.
King, G., & Zeng, L. (2001). Logistic regression in rare events data. Political Analysis, 9(2), 137-163.
Konstantopoulous, S., Modi, M., & Hedges, L. V. (2001). Who are America’s gifted? American Journal of Education, 109(3), 344-382.
Kulik, J.A., & Kulik, C.C. (1992). Meta-analytic findings on grouping programs. Gifted Child Quarterly, 36, 73-77.
Kulik, J.A., & Kulik, C.C. (2004). Meta-analytic studies of acceleration. In N. Colangelo, S. Assouline, & M. U. M. Gross (Eds.), A nation
deceived: How schools hold back America’s brightest students, Volume II (pp. 13-22). Iowa City, IA: The Connie Belin & Jacqueline N.
Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development.
Lipscomb, J. M. (2003). A validity study of the Iowa Acceleration Scale. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Iowa.
Lubinski, D., Benbow, C. P., Webb, R. M., & Bleske-Rechek, A. (2006). Tracking exceptional human capital over two decades.
Psychological Science, 17(3), 194-199.
Lubinski, D., Webb, R. M., Morelock, M. J., & Benbow, C. P. (2001). Top 1 in 10,000: A 10-year follow-up of the profoundly gifted.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(4), 718-729.
Press, J., & Wilson, S. (1978). Choosing between logistic regression and discriminant analysis. Journal of the American Statistical
Association, 73, 669-705.
Pressey, S. L. (1949). Educational acceleration: Appraisals and basic problems. Bureau of Educational Research Monographs, No. 31.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Renzulli, J. S., & Park, S. (2002). Giftedness and high school dropouts: Personal, family, and school-related factors (RM02168). Storrs, CT: The
National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, University of Connecticut.
Robinson, N., Lanzi, R. G., Weinberg, R. A., Ramey, S. L., & Ramey, C. T. (2002). Family factors associated with high academic
competence in former Head Start children at third grade. Gifted Child Quarterly, 46(4), 278-290.
Sayler, M. F. (1996). Differences in the psychological adjustment of accelerated eighth grade students. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting
of the American Educational Research Association. New York.
Sayler, M. F., & Brookshire, W. K. (1993). Social, emotional, and behavioral adjustment of accelerated students, students in gifted
classes, and regular students in eighth grade. Gifted Child Quarterly, 37(4), 150-154.
Southern, W. T., & Jones, E. D. (Eds.) (1991). The academic acceleration of gifted children. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Wyner, J. S., Bridgeland, J. M., & Diiulio, J. J. (2007). Achievement trap: How America is failing millions of high-achieving students from
lower-income families. Report by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and Civic Enterprises. Lansdowne, Virginia.

Gifted Children Volume 2 Number 2 Summer 2008 Page 6

Table 1. Percentages of background factors between accelerators and
non-accelerators with similar achievement test scores in Grade 8 (N=550)

Percent non-
Percent accelerated
accelerated comparison
group groupa
Explanatory Variables (N=275) (N=275) Odds ratio

Descriptive characteristics:
Female 55.64 51.27 1.19
Asian 17.45 6.18 3.21**
Hispanic 13.09 13.45 0.97
Black 15.27 5.82 2.92**
White 54.18 74.55 0.40**
Psychosocial characteristics:
Self-esteem 92.00 91.27 1.10
Self-reliance 72.73 80.00 0.67*
Plan to finish college 81.82 72.73 1.69*
Plan to continue education past college 45.09 32.36 1.72**
Expecting a professional job at age 30 53.09 45.45 1.36†
Cuts class less than once a week 3.27 8.36 0.37*
Participates in sports outside school 34.55 31.64 1.14
Participates in religious activities 28.73 38.91 0.63*
Socioeconomic status:
Family income above median 49.82 47.27 1.12
Mother graduated from college 38.55 28.00 1.61**
Father graduated from college 43.27 38.18 1.24
Father is a professional 23.64 15.64 1.67*
Mother employed outside of home 92.00 90.91 1.15
Home environment:
Study room 47.27 38.91 1.41*
Owning computer 59.64 47.27 1.65**
Limiting TV watching 53.82 40.36 1.72**
Checking homework 76.00 68.36 1.47*
Mother’s expectation on going to college 77.45 72.73 1.29
Immigrant (From a main home language) 38.18 22.18 2.17**
Student is only child 12.36 8.36 1.55
School characteristics:
Public school 58.91 73.09 0.53**
Private school 10.18 12.36 0.80
Catholic school 17.45 9.45 2.03**
Private, other religious school 13.45 5.09 2.90**
Large school (1,000 and above students) 17.09 12.36 1.46
Percent minority (20% and below) 53.09 59.64 0.77
Percent free lunch (10% and below) 49.45 44.36 1.23
Community characteristics:
Urban 34.55 32.73 1.08
Suburban 54.55 37.82 1.97**
Rural 10.91 29.45 0.29**
Northeast 35.64 22.91 1.86**
Central 16.73 22.91 0.68†
South 24.73 37.09 0.56**
West 22.91 17.09 1.44†

(Table continued on next page)

Gifted Children Volume 2 Number 2 Summer 2008 Page 7

 (Table 1 – cont.)
Percent non-
Percent accelerated
accelerated comparison
a
group group
Explanatory Variables (N=275) (N=275) Odds ratio
Academic activities at school:
The highest ability group for math 50.55 40.00 1.53*
The highest ability group for science 30.18 24.00 1.37
The highest ability group for English 34.18 30.91 1.16
Taking advanced/accelerated math 54.18 46.91 1.34†
Taking advanced/accelerated science 34.55 28.73 1.31
Taking advanced/accelerated English 41.45 37.09 1.20
Taking regular math 45.82 53.09 0.75†
Taking algebra 57.09 48.73 1.40*
Enrolling talented/gifted program 32.36 24.73 1.46*
Sent to the office by misbehaving 21.45 26.91 0.74
Sent to the office by bad school work 6.18 9.45 0.63
Warning about attendance 7.64 8.36 0.91
Warning about a grade 19.64 33.82 0.48**
Warning about behavior 15.64 19.27 0.78
Warning about a physical fight 16.36 22.18 0.69†
Felt bored at school 40.00 46.18 0.78
†
p <.10; * p < .05; ** p < .01
a
group controlling for academic achievement (reading and math)

Gifted Children Volume 2 Number 2 Summer 2008 Page 8

Book Review
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expertise Performance.
By Ericsson, K. A., Charness, N., Feltovich, P. J., & Hoffman, R. R.
(2006). New York: Cambridge Press (899 pp., pb. $65 ISNB 0-521-60081-2)
Review by: Renate Otterbach
Senior Research Analyst, University of San Francisco
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expertise Performance
provides a synthesis of expertise research from multiple
theoretical perspectives and across multiple domains. One of
the recurring themes in this handbook is that deliberate
practice is an essential component of the development of
expertise. Whereas competence may be achieved through
instruction, training, and experience, expertise can only be
developed through deliberate practice, which differs
significantly from general practice both in its purpose and
design. The goal of general practice is to solidify a skill, but
the goal of deliberate practice is to systematically push
beyond one’s current level of reliable performance. Deliberate
practice is comprised of a set of exercises designed by an
expert that help the learner to move beyond current
proficiency levels, thereby continuously decreasing the gap
between what a learner has already mastered and what he or
she still has to master in order to achieve expertise.
Vygotsky demonstrated that the Zone of Proximal
Development – that area of knowledge just beyond what is
already mastered – is where maximum learning can take
place. Thus, deliberate practice might be conceptualized as a
systematic method for moving though the Zone of Proximal
Development in incremental steps until one develops
sufficient expertise to design one’s own learning experience,
and thereby continuing one’s growth independently.
Zimmerman summarizes the steps of deliberate practice as a
process of “task analysis, goal setting, strategy choice, self-
monitoring, self-evaluation, and adaptation” (Zimmerman,
2006, p.705). Generally, deliberate practice opportunities are
designed by a coach or expert until the student has developed
sufficient skills to develop his or her own deliberate practice.
From the viewpoint of developing expertise, deliberate
practice is a lifespan endeavor.
Deliberate practice has been shown to be such a crucial factor
in expertise studies across multiple domains that some
expertise researchers minimize the role of aptitude. The
consensus in the expertise literature seems to be that long-
term, sustained engagement in deliberate practice is the key to
the development of expertise. Thus, anyone who wants to
develop expertise in a given area can do so, provided they are
willing to invest sufficient time in deliberate practice.
Gifted Children Volume 2 Number 2
These findings echo the mantra of mastery learning: all
students can learn provided they are given sufficient time to
learn. This may cause grave concern for parents, teachers, and
researchers in the area of gifted and talented education,
whose gifted children often have to endure endless repetitions
of familiar content in mastery learning classrooms, until
everyone learns the concept. While there is a potential danger
that a misinterpretation of the findings of expertise studies
may lead to a similar situation, the essence of the findings can
also be viewed as beneficial to gifted students. Expertise
studies can be used to enhance gifted and talented education,
or be detrimental to it, depending on how it is synthesized,
presented, and integrated into the educational system. Based
on the research, it appears that high aptitude is most
beneficial in the initial stages of learning, until the level of
competence is reached and its benefits level out. At the point
where a plateau is reached, deliberate practice becomes
essential to break through to the next level, and continue on
the path of expertise development.
Expertise research acknowledges that talented students may
reach the plateaus earlier than their peers. This implies that
these students may need earlier opportunities to engage in
deliberate practice. These opportunities are essential to keep
gifted students from disengaging from the content. Continual
engagement in deliberate practice can contribute to the mental
growth of gifted students, especially to the development of
specific areas of interest where expertise is desired.
There are however, some caveats to consider. First, deliberate
practice requires a high level of concentration, and generally
can only be pursued for short periods of time even by experts,
generally no longer than 30 minutes per session. Thus, while
the discipline and the habit of deliberate practice may be
essential to high performance in an area, it would be neither
realistic nor wise to encourage students along this path in
multiple areas. The time needed for deliberate practice
severely limits the time and energy available for other
activities, and an attempt to develop expertise in multiple
disciplines simultaneously can lead to burnout, even for
gifted students. Students should be encouraged to choose
their fields wisely, and parents should be discouraged from
(continued on next page)
Summer 2008 Page 9
 (Otterbach, continued)
thinking that more fields of concentration are better than
fewer. Furthermore, for some gifted students, expertise is not
their goal. Whether or not such students should be
encouraged to engage in deliberate practice to develop
disciplined habits of learning is a question for further
research.
A second caveat that is especially salient for gifted students is
that during deliberate practice, an acquired skill often gets
worse before it improves, resulting in a temporary loss of
competence. For students who have previously found that
learning comes easy, this can be especially disconcerting. The
relationship between giftedness and perceived loss of
competence, even if only temporary, is a promising focus for
research. Another area of further research is suggested by
Robert Sternberg (2003), who argues that high aptitude may
be in itself a form of expertise. If that is the case, what would
be the components of deliberate practice that facilitate the
Reference
Sternberg, R. J. (2003). Wisdom, intelligence, and creativity synthesized. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Gifted Children Volume 2 Number 2
development of high aptitude? Rephrasing the question this
way may further research agendas that provide us with a
deeper understanding of the interaction between innate
abilities and environmental factors.
Finally, from a programmatic point of view, does an
understanding of the nature and importance of deliberate
practice provide a rationale for the necessary enrichment
activities for gifted students in regular classrooms? Can the
concept of deliberate practice be integrated into gifted and
talented teaching models that focus on expertise development
such as Renzulli’s Triad Enrichment model? ™
Editor’s Note: If you are planning to attend AERA in San Diego
next year, and want to participate in a symposium on the role and
impact of expertise studies in gifted education, get in touch with
Renate at otterbach@usfca.edu. (The proposal deadline is August 1,
2008, so get in touch with her as soon as possible.)
Summer 2008 Page 10
Conference Friends
An Elegy to Michael Pyryt
Jane Piirto
Director of Talent Development Education
Ashland University
We were conference friends.
We would see each other at
NAGC, Wallace, ECHA, the World,
at least two times a year.
He also went to CEC-TAG but I don’t.
We met in 1979.
my husband and I had just split.
NAGC was at that crummy
Holiday Inn in Baltimore.
I met Michael at the motel bar.
I told him my sad story.
It was the beginning of our long
Conference friends friendship.
We never saw each other’s homes;
we seldom communicated between times,
though I did do a profile on him,
and we exchanged Christmas cards.
We had dinner, attended meetings,
sat on committees, and had fun in the way
that conference friends do. In fact,
many professional people count their
conference friends among their most dear;
these are the people who understand,
who know what the work is about.
I would ask him about research strategies over that
delicious breakfast at the University of Iowa.
I would tease him about being too quantitative
over dinners in San Francisco, Louisville, Minneapolis,
Denver, Indianapolis, and the like,
and he would say he doesn’t “get” qualitative.
“How can that be research, Jane?”
“And your postmodern buddies. Who gets them?”
When we didn’t volunteer to run for offices
In the SIG in San Diego,
the three of us--Rose, Michael, and I--
asked ourselves—What have we done?
over dinner at a seafood house nearby.
He and Rose appeared at the Cathedral of Seattle
while I was scrawling lines into my notebook;
“Oh, Jane. We thought you’d be here writing poems.”
The three of us shared a spiritual seeking.
I particularly remember our talks in Rhodes, Greece,
sharing the vodka he’d found in Poland,
talking conference talk, with a little bit
about our kids, their spouses, and work.
Gifted Children Volume 2 Number 2
At Barcelona we sat in the back, Janneke,
her husband, Michael, and I,
had a banquet at the banquet,
a long, delicious, talkative, funny
dinner that lasted for hours, through all the
speeches and entertainment. We went
on a train to Figueres, to the Dali home
and museum, a long day trip,
sharing love of surrealism.
In Adelaide, Australia, we took another day trip
to a vineyard owned by growers I’d met
at the Kakadu National Park.
Since I had driven so many kilometers
on the left hand side of the road
in a rented Camry
all across the country, he
made me drive to the vineyard,
where we sampled the Shiraz.
Which I only tasted, since, after all,
I had to drive.
A few years later,
he asked me to come to Calgary
to be the external reviewer for Janneke’s Ph.D.
which used qualitative research and Dabrowski
who better than you? He said
He took me to lunch at Lake Louise near Banff.
And to dinner in a small town
Where I bought this scarf I always
seem to choose to wear. See?
It reminds me of him.
Green blending into orange.
Rather than statistics, research design, or God, our last
private conversation was about Shakespeare.
The Stratford version of Richard II last summer.
We spent a whole breakfast debating it at Warwickshire.
I had been bored, and thought it was one of
the worst plays Shakespeare ever wrote.
He had been enthralled; thought it was one of the best plays
Shakespeare ever wrote.
Little did we know it would be the last time we would meet.
That our conferences friendship was over. ™
This poem was read at the memorial session for Michael Pyryt on
March 22, 2008, at the American Educational Research
Association meeting in New York City ™
Summer 2008 Page 11
Request for Articles for SIG Newletter, SIGnificance

Jill Adelson
Editor, SIGnificance

Would you like to share a short abstract or article about recent
research you have conducted on giftedness and talent? Do
you have some insights and thoughts into methodological
issues in researching giftedness and talent? The Research on
Giftedness and Talent SIG wants to hear from you! We now
are accepting articles for our SIGnificant Research, SIGnificant
Research Methodology, and SIGnificant Researcher sections,
and we are open to considering other pieces for the SIG
newsletter, SIGnificance. We would like to start a tradition of a
bi-annual newsletter, so please submit an article for
consideration by August 1 for inclusion in the first fall issue of
SIGnificance. Submissions should not exceed 1,000 words. For
more information or submission, please contact Jill Adelson,
newsletter editor, at jill.adelson@uconn.edu. You can access
current and past issues at http://www.aeragifted.org. ™

(“Hello from the Editor” – continued from page 1)

Finally, none of us is unaffected when a colleague dies, and this year in losing Michael Pyryt we lost someone who has made
important contributions to our field and touched many of our lives. Several people have written and delivered tributes to him,
and in this issue we include the poem that Jane Piirto wrote and read in New York at the memorial service at AERA on March
25. Michael is sadly missed, and I thank Jane for allowing us to include this poem.
Before closing, I also want to say thank you to our layout editor, Leigh Kupersmith at the University of Indiana. She continues
to be a wonderful partner in the efforts to bring this publication to life. I couldn’t ask for anyone more cooperative, creative, and
generous with her expertise. We all benefit from her attention to this project.

Looking forward to the ongoing dialogue with you all,

Dona
Dona Matthews, Ph.D.
Visiting Professor,
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto
dmatthews@oise.utoronto.ca

Gifted Children Volume 2 Number 2 Summer 2008 Page 12

AERA SIG AERA SIG
Research on Giftedness and Talent Research on Giftedness and Talent
Officers Working Committees

Chair Constitutional Review Committee

Karen Rogers Tarek Grantham (grantham@uga.edu)
k.rogers@unsw.edu.au (June 2008 -June 2010) Tonya Moon (tonya@virginia.edu)
Mary Rizza (mrizza@bgnet.bgsu.edu)
Chair Elect
Marcia Gentry
Membership Committee
mgentry@purdue.edu
Carol Tieso (clties@wm.edu)
Secretary Betsy McCoach (betsy.mccoach@uconn.edu)
Cheryll Adams Bonnie Cramond (bcramond@uga.edu)
cadams@bsu.edu Susannah Richards (susannahr@commongroup.net)
William Bart (bartx001@umn.edu)
Treasurer Jean Gubbins (ejean.gubbins@uconn.edu)
Catherine Brighton
brighton@virginia.edu Program Planning Committee
Carol Tieso (clties@wm.edu)
Program Chair
Betsy McCoach Cheryll Adams (cadams@bsu.edu)
Betsy.mccoach@uconn.edu Dona Matthews (donamatthews@gmail.com)

Assistant Program Chair Awards Committee

Dona Matthews (becomes program chair 2008-09) Catherine Brighton (brighton@virginia.edu)
donamatthews@gmail.com Cheryll Adams (cadams@bsu.edu)
Frank Worrell (frankc@berkeley.edu)
Members-at-Large Michael Matthews (matthews@coedu.usf.edu)
Catherine Little (Term ends June 2010)
catherine.little@uconn.edu Business Meeting Committee
David Lohman (Term ends June 2009) Betsy McCoach (betsy.mccoach@uconn.edu)
david-lohman@uiowa.edu Marcia Gentry (mgentry@insightbb.com)
Jane Piirto (Term ends June 2009)
jpiirto@ashland.edu Publication Committee
David Dai (Term ends June 2010) Del Siegle (del.siegle@uconn.edu)
DDai@uamail.albany.edu Jonathan Plucker (jplucker@indiana.edu)
Student Representative Dona Matthews (donamatthews@gmail.com)
Kristina Ayres Paul (Term ends June 2010)
kristina.paul@uconn.edu

Newsletter Editor
Jill Adelson (Term ends June 2009)
jill.adelson@uconn.edu

Webmaster
KathleenO’Craven
kathyo@quinda.com

Past Chairs
Carolyn Callahan
Michael Pyryt

GIFTED CHILDREN
An Electronic Journal of the AERA SIG Research on Giftedness and Talent.

AERA Special Interest Groups Web Site: http://www.aeragifted.org/