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This study involved the creation, development, and evaluation of the HOPE Scale, a 13-item teacher rating instrument to help educators identify students from traditionally underrepresented populations such as those from low-income, Hispanic, African American, or Native American families. Scale items related to academic and social components of giftedness and talent. To accomplish this goal, the HOPE Scale was completed by approximately 350 teachers on their respective 5995 students in the fall of 2007. Subsamples of these data were then analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in order to determine the model that best fit the data. When these analyses were completed, the resulting model contained eight items on the Academic Scale, three items on the Social Scale, and two items were discarded. A Revised HOPE Scale was then created and administered by a new sample of 71 teachers on their respective 1700 students in the spring of 2008. A similar CFA was conducted which was followed by multi-group CFA (MCFA) procedures to evaluate across-group equivalence for gender, income, and racial/ethnic groups. The MCFA procedures indicated that differential item functioning was not present for income or racial/ethnic groups, but that some non-equivalence was present when comparing gender groups. The Revised HOPE Scale was also evaluated using multilevel modeling (MLM) to determine the effects of different predictor variables (income, gender, ethnicity/race) within the context of the classroom teacher as a clustering variable. These results indicated that low-income, African American, Asian, and Hispanic student status were all negative predictors of HOPE Scale subscores. However, each variable was only in the small range for effect size, indicating a relatively small influence on subscale score. In general, the HOPE Scale performed well for various gender, income, and ethnic/racial groups. Practitioners are cautioned to use local norms when making student comparisons as mean scores for certain groups (e.g., low-income students) are lower than for others. The creation of local, specific group norms will help educators better understand how certain students compare to others of similar background and experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Students with exceptional academic potential who come from low-income families are frequently not identified for and consequently are underrepresented in gifted and talented programs. Because of this, new means of identifying such children must be developed. This article presents the findings of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses conducted on the HOPE Scale, a 13-item teacher-rating instrument designed to identify academic and social components of giftedness in elementary-aged students. Participants included 349 teachers who completed HOPE Scales on 5,995 ethnically and economically diverse students from three rural and two metropolitan school districts in the Midwest. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was also used to evaluate measurement invariance between income groups. Findings suggest a two-factor model represents good fit for the data while remaining loyal to the latent constructs of academic and social giftedness. Although showing some legitimate mean differences, invariance test results suggested equivalence of model form, factor loading, and factor variances across income groups. Putting the Research to Use: This research has important implications for practice. Frequently, traditional measures of achievement or aptitude under-identify children from low-income families. Concerns exist about the usefulness of teacher-ratings forms or scales in gifted and talented student identification. However, when given specific items or descriptors, teachers can provide useful information concerning student performance. The HOPE Scale provides items that teachers can use to rate specific social and academic behaviors of their students. Findings from this study revealed that teaches can effectively nominate low-income students for gifted programs. Further, items on the HOPE Scale were not biased against low-income students as rated by their teachers, meaning that the social and academic scales provided similar information concerning students in either income group. However, mean scores for student from low-income families on both scales were lower than their non-low income peers, providing evidence that instruments need to be normed on the specific groups for which their use is intended. Practitioners, should not shy away from using teacher nomination instruments, but they should consider the psychometric information available concerning the use of these instruments or rating forms as used with students in demographic groups of intended use. The HOPE Scale, as developed with indicated revisions, will provide educators and researchers with a simple, psychometrically sound instrument to help with identification of underrepresented student for gifted education services. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

In this chapter, we choose to use the term advanced academics in place of gifted and talented for many reasons that will become clear later in this chapter. However, first we want to make a few points before we discuss this approach. We believe that the goals of gifted and talented education are the same as those of any advanced academics program: to assure that all students learn, are appropriately challenged, and have their academic needs met in school. Of course, not all references to "giftedness" deal with K-12 schools. This is the first major difference between the differentiation paradigm and the talent development paradigm, and is part of the reason why we have chosen to avoid the term gifted. The advanced academic model is concerned solely with the education of students in schools. It is not focused on adult learners, talent in other areas of the lifespan, or those individuals who are gifted or otherwise advanced in areas not addressed in schools (e.g., gifted welders or potters, unless those areas of study are part of the academic curriculum of a school, in which case these domains would fall under the advanced academic model). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

Current practices in study design and data analysis have led to low reproducibility and replicability of findings in fields such as psychology, medicine, biology, and economics. Because gifted education research relies on the same underlying statistical and sociological paradigms, it is likely that it too suffers from these problems. This article discusses the origin of the poor replicability and introduces a set of open science practices that can increase the rigor and trustworthiness of gifted education’s scientific findings: preregistration, open data and open materials, registered reports, and preprints. Readers are directed to Internet resources for facilitating open science. To model these practices, a pre peer-review preprint of this article is available at https://psyarxiv.com/nhuv3/. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

In this chapter, we outline contemporary efforts to create and implement “alternative” models of gifted education identification or program selection. We address where these models have been successful and where they have stumbled, and on the basis of these findings, we offer recommendations for practice for psychologists and teachers who are charged with developing and implementing identification practices in K–12 schools. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

When educational opportunities at any level are not offered as part of the public educational system, then some families will seek them at their own cost and some will not or cannot. This is one of the reasons that educational achievement and family income are so highly correlated—money is often directly linked to access educational opportunity. Families who are aware of supplementary options, can afford them, have the time to seek them out and enroll their children in them, and are willing to do so even when such content is not part of the local school’s curriculum, will take advantage of such opportunities in order to further their child’s learning. Some of this is due to financial capital and some due to cultural capital—the culture of knowing and being willing to challenge the system. All parents would want to provide advanced opportunities to their children, but only some have that option due to financial, cultural, logistical, or political barriers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)

The premise is that gifted education should have the same goal as any other educational intervention or curriculum in schools—that is, to assure that all students are challenged in their learning to the degree necessary to develop to their full potential. To meet this goal, we argue that gifted education programs and services are needed only when and if students are not otherwise having their instructional needs met. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)