ABSTRACT
The real payoff of any new idea is how it affects the practices that take place in the classrooms and programs that serve the young people who are the object of our work in gifted education. Typical school-based programs consisted mainly of accelerated content or conglomerations of disconnected enrichment activities, frequently based on individual teachers’ favored topics and units of study, the most recent trendy make-it-and-take-it workshops attended, or prescriptive curricular materials with the word “gifted” in the title. The literature on the gifted and talented indicated that there are two generally accepted purposes for providing special education for high-potential youth. General consensus about the several purposes of special education for the gifted served as a rationale for both the conception of giftedness and the programming theories. The main audience for persuasive communication vehicles has been teachers, gifted program coordinators, and building principals.
