Largely ignored by the social sciences, the study of gifted students is of utmost importance. Though there are varying degrees of giftedness, it is widely recognized that those with intelligence quotients of over 130 are "gifted", as these IQ’s place them in the top five percent of the population. Gifted children have an insatiable desire to learn, to explore. They learn with very little help from adults. They are also marked by their persistence, energy, and obsessive interests. Most of them can read by age four, some even earlier, for gifted children are endowed with prodigious memories for verbal and mathematical information. They not only excel at logical and abstract reasoning; they are also interested in philosophical issues.
Blessed with some many positive qualities, gifted children are often overlooked even when they’re plagued by problems. As gifted children represent only a small percentage of the student population, the public neglects many of their needs. Faced with pressures from their families, schools, peers, and themselves, gifted students become socially challenged. Thus, it is necessary for society to learn more about the stresses endured by gifted students, so that someday many of these problems can be eliminated.
The independent variables include pressures from family, school, and peers. The dependent variables are the socially challenged gifted children. The intervening variables include family support, the economic status of the family, the skills of the teachers, the student’s learning style, the age of the gifted children and their peers, and the motivational level of the gifted student.
Primary research was conducted through two interviews and 50 surveys. A teacher of gifted student was interviewe...
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A common misconception is intelligence is inherited and does not change, so therefore, gifted children do not need special services. However, this mindset is very dangerous when it comes to the development of gifted children. It is widely believed that gifted students will get by on their own without any assistance from their school. After all,
Gifted and talented programs are intrinsically valuable to many children’s education as they provide a system in which all students involved are engaged, challenged, and intellectually stimulated. In "How People Learn", Donovan, Bransford, and Pellegrino (1999) stress the importance of each student being given reasonable and appropriate goals based on his or her level of understanding and competency (p. 20). Gifted and talented programs help institutionalize the attempt to meet all student’s needs by providing uniquely appropriate challenges which aim to keep every student engaged, thus receiving the best chance at success. Although there are many valuable and important aspects of gifted education, there are also significant issues rooted in the base of America’s gifted and talented programs, one of which I will address throughout this paper. In my opinion, the most notable problem which troubles gifted and talented programs is the system by which students are selected to join their school’s gifted and talented program.
The Talents Unlimited Model was created under the philosophy that all students, both those identified as gifted and those not, would benefit from enrichment programs. The model is used to educate teachers on how to use differentiated instruction to use “higher order cognitive tasks to help students with varying abilities use their preferred thinking talents to manipulate instruction to solve problems, see broad relationships, evaluate varying perspectives, draw comparisons among disparate viewpoints, and predict causes and effects” (Schlichter, 2009, p. 434).
Based from the information provided by VanTassel-Baska, et. Al. (2009), gifted and talented students face the same issues as their regular peers but they have different way of viewing these issues and it affects them differently as well. The book discussed different issues that gifted learners face and recommendations on how to address these issues were also available for teachers, administrators and other school personnel. Also, Carol Strip Whitney (2011) in her book entitle Helping Gifted Learners Soar discussed stress as a factor that can distract and overpower anyone including gifted learners and for the gifted learners, there are many reasons and causes of stress. In this reflection, I will focus on two causes of stress, which are gifted learners as social capital and issues related to race and achievement.
Development of social skills is very important for children that are diagnosed with autism because of ...
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Heward, W. L. (2013). Exceptional children: An introduction to special education (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Autism is a disease. One of the main characteristics is having social problems. Children with Autism have trouble interacting with other children. They won’t play with other children. They could be so focus...
Critical thinking is a very important concept in regards to science, especially since science and the concepts therein have been fluctuating from the time of their origins. As stated in Kirst-Ashman’s book;
Lovecky, D. V. (1995). Highly Gifted Children and Peer Relationships. Counseling and Guidance Newsletter. Retrieved March 10, 2003, from http://print.ditd.org/floater=74.html.
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Parke, B. (n.d.). Challenging gifted students in the regular classroom. Retrieved March 1, 2004, from http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content/Challenging_gifted _kids.html