ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND References to depth and complexity applied to gifted education can be traced throughout time within the literature. These references address depth and complexity as a curricular concept, instructional technique, and/or programmatic feature. Increased variety and depth of subjects, to accommodate the “apt student with more indepthful subject matter” was advocated in the 1962 document The Gifted Student: A Manual for Program Improvement (Southern Regional Project for Education of the Gifted, 1962). Martinson (1968) addressed the need to respond to the “complex array of multiple interests” that gifted students manifest by addressing the inclusion of new and appropriate fields of knowledge (depth) beyond fact, detail, and repetition. The California Department of Education (1971) advocated that “the gifted learners (mathematics) curriculum as a whole achieve depth, provide selective emphasis, and promote in children a desire for complexities beyond the requirements of the standard curriculum,” and generally provide “movement in depth” and progression to deeper understanding as an element of enrichment in any subject. Complexity has been defined recently by Rogers (2002, p. 89) as a content modification strategy “providing more difficult and intricately detailed content.”
