Best Practices

Advice of a Recognized Authority in the Field

This filter for educational practices most often appears in the form of an introductory or intermediate textbook written by a respected and usually senior member of the community. U.S. examples that contain a strong emphasis on practice have included James J. Gallagher and Shelagh A. Gallagher's Teaching the Gifted Child (1994), Joyce VanTassel-Baska's Comprehensive Curriculum for Gifted Learners (1994), C. June Maker and Aleene B. Nielson's Curriculum Development and Teaching Strategies for Gifted Learners (1996), and Gary A. Davis and Sylvia B. Rimm's Education of the Gifted and Talented (2004). International volumes with an emphasis on practice, although all much less comprehensive, include Catherine Clark and Ralph Callow's Educating the Gifted and Talented (2002) and Clark and Shore's Educating Students With High Ability (2004) for UNESCO. The advice given in these volumes is generally supported by research and authorial preference, but not all the supporting evidence is of the same quality.

Compendia of Models Based on Multiple Authorities

Previous research and practical experience are often gathered by a single editor. The two main examples are Joseph Renzulli's Systems and Models for Developing Programs for the Gifted and Talented (1986) and a new edition in press that presents the models as written by the original authors, and June Maker and Shirley W. Schiever's Teaching Models in Education of the Gifted (2009), in which all the models are presented in terms of Maker's own template for curriculum adaptation. In general, these compendia do not favor one set of practices over another, but they do present the models with brief summaries of evidence about them. The choice is left to the reader, and selection of defensible practices is still an educated decision, even when a particular model is selected.

...