Deferential differentiation occurs when the curriculum modification process defers to students' preferred ways of learning rather than relying on teachers' judgments. The preferences of 416 students identified as gifted (grades 3-8) for features of differentiated curriculum recommended for gifted students were compared with those of 230 students not identified as gifted. While thinking of their favorite school subject, they responded to the 110 items on the Possibilities for Learning survey. Most and least popular items are reported in nine thematic categories (pace, collaborative learning, choice, curriculum content, evaluation, open-ended activities, expert knowledge, teacher/student relationship, and sharing learning). Self-pacing, choice of topic, and choice of workmates were most popular with students in both groups. Compared with nonidentified students, more of the students identified as gifted wanted to learn about complex, extracurricular topics and authentic, sophisticated knowledge and interconnections among ideas; to work with others some of the time; and to choose the format of the products of their learning. More students identified as gifted also disliked waiting for the rest of the class and asking for help. Overall, the groups' preferences differed in degree rather than kind, and reflected cognitive abilities frequently cited as distinguishing characteristics of learners with high ability.
Research literature has offered educators little guidance in their efforts to respond to demands for qualitatively Afferentiated education for the gifted. 'Ib address this state of neglect, an interactive assessment environment was designed to explore a number of qualitative and quantitative Amensions of young children's learning as they generalized a problemsolving strategy learned on one version of the lbwer of Hanoi to a similar but different version of the task. Eighty-nine 4-to 8-year-olds were assigned to one of four groups based on their IQ and age: young average IQ (n = 20, C A = 58.3 months, IQ = 105.2); young high IQ (n = 22, C A = 59.3 months, IQ = 153.5); older average I Q (n = 22, C A = 94.5 months, IQ = 103.2); and olderhigh IQ (n = 25. C A = 94.8months, IQ = 155.4).Quantitative comparisons of the children's performances on the two tasks confirmed the expected benefits of intellectual ability and age on the generalization of learning. The qualitative data suggest that the high IQ children had a more accurate conception of the problem; preferred to "own" their solution t o the problems; learned more from their illegal moves, and more frequently recognized the similarity of features of the two tasks. In some cases the 4 and 5 year-old high IQ children were superior to the 7 and 8 year-olds of the same mental age. Based on these findngs recommendations for the design of appropriate learning opportunities for high IQ children are offered.?b date, a great deal more is known about the extent of intellectual strength than about the essence of human intellect.
Acknowledgement: This research could not have been completed without the sup-
School in the Park is a museum-based intervention intended to nurture the resilience of inner-city students in third grade to fifth grade. The academic resilience and personal development of participants were compared to those of nonparticipants for 2 years. Although the groups differed in academic resilience for the duration of the study, they did not differ in their positive self-perceptions of three psychosocial variables (character, self-efficacy, and attitude toward school). The only significant difference between groups was in academic self-concept; program participants' and younger nonparticipants' ratings were stable, whereas those of the older nonparticipants declined. All groups' attitudes toward school declined. The independence of these two sets of measures was an unexpected finding, as they have been highly correlated in the majority of previous studies.
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