Journal for the Education of the Gifted
Spring 1998, Volume 21, Number 3

Gifted African American Women
Margie K. Kitano

This article describes factors affecting the life-span achievement of 15 highly accomplished African American women from a national retrospective study of gifted women from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Participants were nominated as gifted by national professional organizations in their respective fields. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews of the women and telephone questionnaires administered to "parent" informants. Participants perceived that civil-rights and affirmative-action policies opened doors if they were already qualified. Interpreted within a cultural-ecological framework, findings suggested that cultural strengths plus their high ability enabled simultaneous acknowledgment of the effects of racism, sexism, and other hardships and application of positive coping strategies that derive from these strengths.

Perceptions of Masculinity, Femininity, and Androgyny Among a Select Cohort of Gifted Adolescent Males
Jonathan L. Wilcove

This qualitative study explored the gender schemata of a select cohort of 13 gifted adolescent males. It revealed these adolescents as having an androgynous sex-role identity. However, the findings identified among the adolescents three distinct constructions of androgyny. The data also pointed out some of the intrapsychic problems encountered by the boys in their sex-role identity development--most notably anxieties about femininity and women stemming from demands placed upon the boys by their awakening sexualities. Finally, the study examined the role of their intellectual giftedness in the negotiation of their sex-role identities. Most of the adolescents employed a sophisticated critical rationalism to construct their gender schemata. However, several of the subjects acknowledged the limits of this rationalism to achieve a complete understanding of these complex issues and expressed an awareness of an asynchrony between their emotional and intellectual development.

The Application of Enrichment Clusters to Teachers’ Classroom Practices
Sally M. Reis, Marcia Gentry, & Lori R. Maxfield

This study investigated the impact of providing one type of gifted education pedagogy, enrichment clusters, to the entire population of two urban elementary schools. Enrichment clusters provided a regularly scheduled weekly time for students to work with adult facilitators to complete a product or provide service in a shared-interest area. Teaching practices of classroom teachers who participated as cluster facilitators were affected both in the enrichment clusters and in regular classrooms. Challenging content was integrated into 95% of the clusters through teaching specific authentic methodologies, advanced-thinking and problem-solving strategies. Approximately 60% of the teachers who facilitated clusters transferred some of the strategies used in clusters into their regular classroom practices.

Teacher Perceptions of Gifted Hispanic Limited English Proficient Students
Alberto T. Fernández, Lorraine R. Gay, Luretha F. Lucky, & Marisal Reyes Gavilán

The purpose of this study was to determine (a) whether teachers’ perceptions on the characteristics of gifted students in general differed from their perceptions of gifted students classified as Hispanic limited English proficient (LEP) and (b) whether these perceptions differed, based on the teachers’ ethnic backgrounds. There were 373 teachers from nine elementary schools in Dade County, Florida, who completed a 34-item Likert-type survey. Randomly, one-half of the teachers in each school received the survey labeled "Gifted Hispanic LEP," and the other half received the survey labeled "Gifted." Significant differences were found in responses by survey group and by ethnicity, and no significant interaction was found between group and ethnicity. Both survey groups perceived a similar order of importance for the characteristics. However, relative importance differed significantly in language-related items. There were also significant differences between the groups in the degree to which they rated the characteristics as important.

A National Survey of Current Legislative and Policy Trends in Gifted Education: Life After the National Excellence Report
Mary S. Landrum, Antonis Katsiyannis, & Jan DeWaard

Recent reports on the existence and nature of educational programs for gifted learners have indicated that current educational practices in gifted education vary in both availability and quality. One such report, National Excellence: A Case for Developing America’s Talent (U.S. Department of Education, U.S. DOE, 1993), identified critical issues and established 7 initiatives for the improvement of the education of gifted students. This study examined the nature and availability of state legislative and policy provisions for gifted students as well as state efforts to address the report’s 7 initiatives. Results indicated that progress in state efforts on the 7 initiatives have been mixed, with significant gains in some areas contrasted by minimal or no progress in others. Gains in gifted education, however, occurred at the same time that legislation and policy mandates in gifted education decreased.