front cover of Educating Able Learners
Educating Able Learners
Programs and Promising Practices
By June Cox, Neil Daniel, and Bruce O. Boston
University of Texas Press, 1985

American education has long been under a microscope. In a time when all aspects of our school system face close scrutiny, educators, administrators, and parents are asking critical questions about how we educate those superior students we call “able learners.”

Our schools reward behavior inappropriate for an independent thinker, researcher, or artist. Programming for our most capable students is fragmented and discontinuous. And yet there are schools and programs that hold significant promise.

This four-year national study from the Sid W. Richardson Foundation provides a broad database, looks into the backgrounds of a few unusually creative individuals, and examines programs with a record of success. It argues in favor of comprehensive programming for able learners, providing a steady challenge for all students, helping to insure that no individual talent withers for want of opportunity. Included are recommendations for discovering and nurturing talent in students (including traditionally neglected groups, the economically disadvantaged, and the culturally diverse), building and administering sound programs, developing appropriately trained staff and teachers, and evaluating effectiveness of programs to assure accountability and add credibility.

Compiling data from diverse sources—including 35 MacArthur Foundation Fellows, 400 schools, 1,172 school districts, and countless school personnel and students—the study looks at programs for able learners throughout the country, from Project Pegasus in Iowa to Oaks Academy in Texas, from Bronx High School of Science in New York to Bishop Carroll High School in Alberta, Canada. The authors’ conclusions based on this broad investigation provide an impassioned call for coordinated schooling and cooperation among all segments of society to develop a new generation of creative, self-motivated students.

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front cover of Individual Differences in Online Computer-based Learning
Individual Differences in Online Computer-based Learning
Gifted and Other Diverse Populations
Patrick Suppes
CSLI, 2013
In 1894 John Dewey established his experimental laboratory school at the University of Chicago, with a focus on teaching each student according to their individual differences. This concept indicated a shift away from the emphasis on communal, classroom teaching, which marked educational practices in the nineteenth century during the advent of widely available public education.
            With the introduction of computer-based online instruction in schools, curricula are able to be fully informed by individual difference, subtly and quickly tracking students’ progress. In these courses, teachers play the role of troubleshooters instead of lecturers. Individual Differences examines a large number of studies on computer-based and online instruction, with special attention paid to gifted students in the fields of mathematics, science, technology, and engineering. Other chapters also focus on a wide variety of student populations: deaf students, American Indian rural students, and underachieving, impoverished students.  
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front cover of A Nation Empowered, Volume 1
A Nation Empowered, Volume 1
Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America's Brightest Students
Susan G. Assouline, Nicholas Colangelo, Joyce VanTassel-Baska, Mary Sharp
University of Iowa Press, 2015
This new report, A Nation Empowered: Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America's Brightest Students builds on the momentum of the 2004 report, A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students. A Nation Deceived initiated a critical dialogue about academic acceleration, an under-used intervention. A Nation Deceived exposed to the nation the inconsistencies between research and practice and brought acceleration to prominence in the field.

Volume 1 and 2 of A Nation Empowered: Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America's Brightest Students equips students, families, and educators with facts to refute biased excuses. A Nation Empowered shifts the impetus from conversation to action. Empowerement  galvanizes determination with evidence. Volume 1 portrays the determination of students, educators, and parents to strive for excellence. Volume 2 reveals the evidence that trumps the excuses that hold bright students back.
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front cover of A Nation Empowered, Volume 2
A Nation Empowered, Volume 2
Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America's Brightest Students
Susan G. Assouline, Nicholas Colangelo, Joyce VanTassel-Baska, and Ann Lupkowski-Shoplik
University of Iowa Press, 2015
This new report, A Nation Empowered: Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America's Brightest Students builds on the momentum of the 2004 report, A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students. A Nation Deceived initiated a critical dialogue about academic acceleration, an under-used intervention. A Nation Deceived exposed to the nation the inconsistencies between research and practice and brought acceleration to prominence in the field.

Volume 1 and 2 of A Nation Empowered: Evidence Trumps the Excuses Holding Back America's Brightest Students equips students, families, and educators with facts to refute biased excuses. A Nation Empowered shifts the impetus from conversation to action. Empowerement  galvanizes determination with evidence. Volume 1 portrays the determination of students, educators, and parents to strive for excellence. Volume 2 reveals the evidence that trumps the excuses that hold bright students back.
 
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front cover of Producing Excellence
Producing Excellence
The Making of Virtuosos
Wagner, Izabela
Rutgers University Press, 2015
Driven by a passion for music, for excellence, and for fame, violin soloists are immersed from early childhood in high-pressure competitions, regular public appearances, and arduous daily practice. An in-depth study of nearly one hundred such children, Producing Excellence illuminates the process these young violinists undergo to become elite international soloists.
 
A musician and a parent of a young violinist, sociologist Izabela Wagner offers an inside look at how her young subjects set out on the long road to becoming a soloist. The remarkable research she conducted—at rehearsals, lessons, and in other educational settings—enabled her to gain deep insight into what distinguishes these talented prodigies and their training. She notes, for instance, the importance of a family culture steeped in the values of the musical world. Indeed, more than half of these students come from a family of professional musicians and were raised in an atmosphere marked by the importance of instrumental practice, the vitality of music as a vocation, and especially the veneration of famous artists. Wagner also highlights the highly structured, rigorous training system of identifying, nurturing, and rewarding talent, even as she underscores the social, economic, and cultural factors that make success in this system possible.
 
Offering an intimate portrait of the students, their parents, and their instructors, Producing Excellence sheds new light on the development of exceptional musical talent, as well as draw much larger conclusions as to “producing prodigy” in other competition-prone areas, such as sports, sciences, the professions, and other arts. Wagner’s insights make this book valuable for academics interested in the study of occupations, and her clear, lively writing is perfect for general readers curious about the ins and outs of training to be a violin soloist.
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