Gifted education

Teachers are frequently involved in the process of identifying students for gifted education services (Coleman & Gallagher, 1995; Schack & Starko, 1990; National Association of Gifted Children, 2013). Scholars (Heller & Perleth, 2008; Jarosewich, Pfeiffer, & Morris, 2002; Renzulli, 2005a) have recommended their inclusion because they can observe students in diverse learning and achievement-related situations, have a professional educational background, and can compare students against a broad reference group of other students in a class or school. If involved, they either initiate the giftedness assessment with their nominations of possibly gifted students, provide information about students during a multimethod assessment, or both (McBee, Peters, & Miller, 2016;

McClain & Pfeiffer, 2012; Renzulli, 2005a). In praxis, teacher judgments are given great weight in decisions about interventions (Hoge, 1983), and sometimes are the sole selection method for gifted education programs (e.g., Deku, 2013; Freeman & Josepsson, 2002). Using teacher nominations as a screening instrument for potentially gifted students is often seen as pragmatic. It limits the number of students who undergo a more thorough assessment that might be costly and time-consuming. Putting teachers in this position of responsibility as “gatekeepers” has been recently criticized, especially due to the implication that students who are not nominated will not have a chance to be assessed (Acar, Sen, & Cayirdag, 2016; McBee et al., 2016).

1.2.1.1 Consequences for students’ academic development

Overall, many but not all studies illustrate positive effects of gifted education on students’ academic achievement. Wai, Lubinski, Benbow, and Steiger (2010) could show with two longitudinal studies among persons who were gifted in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) that participation in diverse advanced and intellectually challenging educational interventions during one’s school years is associated with higher academic achievement as an adult. Research on the effectiveness of specific kinds of gifted education have also been conducted. Gifted education can be separated into acceleration and enrichment or is a combination of the two (Fischer &

Müller, 2014): First, acceleration is progress through the school system at a faster rate or at a younger age than same-age peers (Pressey, 1949, as cited by Southern & Jones).

Examples are grade skipping and earlier entrance to school or university. Many but not all studies have shown positive effects of acceleration on students’ academic achievement (Kretschmann, Vock, & Lüdtke, 2014; Kulik & Kulik, 1984; Steenbergen-Hu & Moon, 2011). Second, enrichment provides students with instruction or learning content in addition to the regular school curriculum, like extracurricular courses or visits to a museum. Enrichment can be vertical (i.e., more in-depth studies of topics in the curriculum) or horizontal (i.e., activities beyond the curriculum) and can take place during or outside of school time (Nogueira, 2006). Predominantly positive effects on students’

academic achievement have been reported for enrichment (Kim, 2016; Vaughn, Feldhusen, & Asher, 1991). Furthermore, a meta-analysis by Kulik and Kulik (1992) on different kinds of ability grouping showed small effects for within-class grouping on students’ academic achievement but stronger effects for gifted classes.

1.2.1.2 Consequences for students’ social-emotional development

The consequences of participation in gifted education services on social-emotional development seem to be mostly positive for enrichment (Kim, 2016) and neutral to slightly positive for acceleration (Steenbergen-Hu & Moon, 2011). Specifically, the academic self-concept (i.e., students’ subjective ratings of their own abilities in school generally or in specific academic areas; Trautwein, Lüdtke, Köller, & Baumert 2006) of gifted students in different educational settings has received great attention (Preckel &

Vock, 2013) and is discussed under the terms of the Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect (BFLPE;

Marsh & Parker, 1984) and the Basking-In-Reflected-Glory Effect (BIRGE; Marsh, Kong,

& Hau, 2000). The BFLPE describes that students’ academic self-concept is negatively associated with class-average or school-average ability levels because students perceive the contrast between themselves and others. Hence, a student who is in a class with a lower average level of ability will have a higher self-concept than a student with the same abilities who is in a class with a higher average level of ability. However, students might also perceive their similarity to a group, resulting in the assimilation effect BIRGE. For instance, a student can have a higher self-concept because she or he belongs to a higher-ability group than a same-higher-ability student in a group with a lower average higher-ability level.

Marsh et al. (2000) indicated that both effects are active simultaneously but that the BFLPE is stronger than the BIRGE. Concerning gifted students, Preckel and Vock (2013) reported that gifted students’ academic self-concept in gifted classes is mostly but not always higher than that of average-ability students in regular school classes. If students with the same ability level are compared, gifted classes seem to be associated with negative to neutral effects (Marsh, Chessor, Craven, & Roche, 1995; Preckel & Brüll, 2010; Zeidner & Schleyer, 1999) and summer programs with neutral to positive effects (Cunningham & Rinn, 2007; Makel, Lee, Olszewki-Kubilius, & Putallaz, 2012) on students’ academic self-concept.

1.2.1.3 Consequences of misnomination

If gifted students are overlooked, they might not receive gifted education but face continually unchallenging situations, which have been linked to behavioral and social problems (Heller & Schofield, 2008). A review of over 25 years of phenomenological qualitative research on gifted students’ experiences in school (Coleman, Micko, & Cross, 2015) summarized that gifted students in schools that did not support their strengths more often reported feeling that they were different from other students, that they had to wait in class, were intellectually unchallenged, and were victims of bullying. Also, as already mentioned, gifted students who participated in gifted education had higher achievement as adults than gifted students who did not receive gifted education (Wai et al., 2010). If teachers falsely nominate a student for gifted education, the consequences of students’

failure can differ according to the kind of gifted education. McBee et al. (2016) noted that dropout from an out-of-school enrichment program might be associated with only minimal negative consequences, whereas in a case of unsuccessful grade skipping,

reintegration into the original classroom might be logistically consuming and socially negative.