Faculty of Education - Theses

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    Cooperative learning : a viable teaching strategy for gifted students in heterogeneous classrooms?
    Wee, Wei-Wah Clare ( 1998)
    In recent years, there has been a strong movement towards educational restructuring and reform. Cooperative learning is one instructional strategy which many supporters see as central to the goals of the reform movement. While these cooperative learning methods hold promise for many students, the research is concentrated on the average and low-ability students. Its impact on the gifted students remains inadequately assessed. The problem escalates when many educators view cooperative learning as a panacea to address the difficulties brought about by educational reform, such as teaching a class with mixed academic abilities. In addition, cooperative learning has also been used to justify the move to reduce differentiated programmes for the gifted population. This study addresses the controversy regarding the use of cooperative learning with the gifted students in a heterogeneous classroom. This is done by comparing gifted students learning cooperatively with those learning individually in a typical regular classroom. Viability of the teaching method is determined by investigating which learning environment better caters to the learning as well as affective needs of the gifted and talented students with the use of achievement tests and attitude measures. 19 gifted students were randomly assigned to a cooperative and individualistic learning condition. The students participated in a six X 55-minute instructional course based on social studies. The cooperative learning model used in this study was the Jigsaw method. The results indicate that cooperative learning experiences promoted higher achievement and the use of higher-order thinking skills among the gifted students. The results also suggest that the gifted students in a heterogeneous class felt more supported and accepted by their peers and teachers in the cooperative condition. It is concluded that cooperative learning can be beneficial to gifted students in a heterogeneous classroom if steps are taken to ensure that the students are suitably challenged. Well-trained teachers, appropriate structuring of the groups and differentiating the curriculum to suit the needs of the gifted students are identified as some of the factors crucial to the success of the cooperative learning strategy.
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    Acceleration of gifted students: a study of the opinions of teachers and parents
    Mackenzie-Sykes, Lynne ( 1998)
    The purpose of the study was to investigate the opinions of teachers and parents on the educational acceleration of gifted students. Gifted education has a relatively short history in Australia, although the education of gifted and talented students in the USA has been an issue of strong interest since the early 1920s. Many topics continue to be vigorously debated including definitions, identification and assessment and appropriate educational and instructional approaches. One of the most contentious issues surrounds the use of acceleration procedures. A review of the literature revealed that despite positive evidence concerning the appropriateness and associated benefits of educational acceleration, it is not a popular or widely practised procedure for gifted students. A barrier to the wider acceptance of acceleration procedures would appear to be the general apprehensiveness or negative attitudes of some teachers and parents. A literature review indicated that most of the studies have focussed on the intellectual, educational and socio-emotional benefits of acceleration. Typically, gifted students have been assessed to determine the influence of educational acceleration on the growth and development of these skills and attributes. The opinions of teachers and parents who have had direct experience with acceleration have not been frequently investigated. The studies that have been undertaken have resulted in generally consistent findings. Teachers and parents were mainly concerned about possible deleterious socio-emotional consequences of acceleration. In this study, the opinions of teachers and parents were explored using a specially prepared questionnaire. Twenty-six teachers and 23 parents returned completed questionnaires. An item analysis of the questions indicated their general suitability for the purposes of the study. Analysis of the teachers' and parents' responses revealed no overall statistically significant difference in their opinions. Investigation of the responses of both groups of respondents on each of the 26 questions in the questionnaire resulted in only one statistically significant outcome. Further analyses of the data showed interesting similarities and differences in response trends and patterns of the teachers and parents. In general, teachers and parents held very similar opinions on acceleration. While both groups expressed positive views about certain aspects of acceleration, they also shared several negative opinions. Teachers were found to be more uncertain about the social and emotional/behavioural benefits of acceleration and were generally less supportive of acceleration than parents. These findings are in general agreement with the results of previous research. It was concluded that teachers would benefit from professional development programs on gifted education, especially the efficacy and positive benefits of educational acceleration.
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    The gifted child who has literacy learning disabilities
    Munro, Kate ( 1995)
    The present research examines the learning characteristics of a group of children who displayed the characteristics of being both gifted and literacy learning disabled (that is, GLitD students). Such a group had not, in the review of the literature, been specifically targeted previously. The approach taken was from the combined perspectives of giftedness and literacy learning disabilities. Because the investigation is exploratory, the focus is on a detailed analysis of patterns in reading for individual readers, rather than on the analysis of group trends. This design ensured that differences between the readers were not masked by combining the performance patterns of individual subjects. The performance of eleven students, ranging in age from 8 to 15 years, in several reading-related areas was measured; reading words both in connected prose and in isolation, phonemic awareness and orthographic knowledge. Information about each reader's cognitive performance was used to examine trends in these areas of reading. The reading disabilities were shown to be attributed to an immature orthographic knowledge of words. This lack of knowledge at the word level of reading meant that these students needed to invest a comparatively large amount of their attentional resources in deciding the words in the text read. As a consequence, they had comparatively little attention for tapping into their well-developed general knowledge and using this to facilitate either word recognition or reading comprehension. This lack of knowledge was shown to be related to immature phonemic awareness knowledge. As a consequence, some of the GLitD students activated either attention-demanding non-orthographic reading strategies or distinctive visual feature processing strategies. They also had difficulty using their orthographic knowledge of some words to recognize others through analogy processes. The second part of the investigation examines the success of an intervention program with one of the GLitD students. The program was developed from a synthesis of gifted students learning and effective teaching strategies for literacy-disabled learners and focussed on teaching three types of knowledge (1) a knowledge of word structure, (2) a range of mental actions or strategies for constructing a text representation and (3) a range of attitudes about reading. The program was implemented by the investigator over 22 one hour sessions and was associated with an improvement in reading performance. Future directions of research with GLitD students are discussed.