Trends in Gifted Education
Friday, January 04, 2008 - by CFertig - 984 Views -
4 Comments - Category:
Art,
Label of Gifted,
Math,
Music,
Parents and Educators,
Reading-Writing-L.A.,
Science,
Social Studies,
Technology,
General Education,
Gifted and Talented Children,
Gifted Education,
Parenting Gifted Children,
Teaching Gifted Children
The
NAGC (National Association for Gifted Children) Convention was held in November. Each year, I like to read through the entire catalog of presentations so that I can form general impressions about categories that were considered important.
Disclaimer: I do not have access to information about presentation proposals that were submitted nor do I have information about how the presentations were chosen. I do not look at this information to make judgments; only to observe trends.
Like everything else in society, certain topics wax and wane. Someone else may interpret this very differently than I do. But, for the record, this is what I see.
Some of the topics that were considered top priorities in the past 10-30 years that I see no longer getting the same attention include
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Underachievement
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Multiple Intelligences
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Pullout/enrichment
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Advocacy
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GT resource teachers
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Affective issues
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Identification
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Learning Styles
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Differentiation
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Theory of giftedness
Topic trends that I do see increasing are
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The integration of technology into the curriculum rather than treatment as a separate subject
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Interest of programs on an international level (in fact, at the NAGC convention this year, a strand was added titled “International”)
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Special schools and programs
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Less talk about specifically meeting the needs of the gifted and more emphasis on the need for an increase in general academic rigor, including the need to let students advance at a faster speed
I would love to hear the ideas of others on these trends. You can always leave a comment at this blog entry or email me if you would prefer that others do not see your comments.