Promoting Achievement in Gifted Children

Is Homogeneous or Heterogeneous Grouping Better?

For years there has been ongoing controversy concerning the best kinds of programs for gifted and talented children. There is no single right answer. A great deal depends upon the nature of the children, their specific types of giftedness, and the needs and resources of the school and community. Philosophical arguments continue concerning the relative advantages and disadvantages of homogeneous or heterogeneous grouping of gifted children, and it is the purpose of this paper to carefully examine those various viewpoints and arrive at some logical conclusions and recommendations regarding the best approach to promote achievement in gifted and talented children.

Some educators feel that gifted children cannot get an education that will nurture their gifts, suit their learning style, and be sufficiently stimulating unless they are totally segregated. These educators believe that regular classroom teachers are untrained in teaching for the talented and merely give the gifted students extra homework while paying lip-service to enrichment (NSPRA, 1979, p. 66). If one views achievement strictly in terms of academic advancement measurable by test scores, then separate, exclusive programs may be viable.

Hunter College Elementary School in New York and the highly competitive gifted high schools in New York would espouse this theory of separate, highly achievement-oriented

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subject matter is more interesting than material that is too easy. Rice and Banks did a survey in 1974 which revealed that acceleration is one of the most appropriate means of providing gifted learners with advanced studies (Alexander & Muia, 1982, p. 145). The accelerated approach seems to be the most workable when tempered with a subject-by-subject assessment of abilities. The accelerated approach focuses on the productive use of time, enabling the student to start a career at an earlier age. Connected with issues of productivity are the economic advantages from earlier professional training. The student becomes a self-supporting individual earlier, and the school system profits financially by having to invest less in the education of the gifted student than if he had remained in the system longer. These dollars and cents achievements are extremely important in terms of eventual adult self-sufficiency. The accelerated approach requires no special adjustments to institutional administration, a further advantage. Types of accelerated formats fall into several styles--grade telescoping (moving rapidly through all the grades), continuous progress (nongraded work at own pace), advanced placement (repositioning as a result of
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Approximate Word count = 2217
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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