Secondary Advanced Academic Courses: Instructors' Attitudes and Differentiated Practices for Gifted Students in Heterogeneous AP and IB Courses

Advanced secondary academic programs such as Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) were traditionally reserved for challenging gifted and high-ability students to engage in college-level coursework while still in high school. The landscape of secondary gifted services is changing, however. College admissions formulas now have expanded to include participation in advanced coursework, and several financial, accountability, and scholarship incentive programs have been developed across the United States at federal, state, and local levels to entice students with a wider range of ability levels to enroll in AP and IB courses. Consequently, AP and IB classes have become a "cornerstone of American high school reform" and increasingly are becoming more heterogeneous (Bruley, 2014; Bunnell, 2009; Colangelo et al., 2004; College Board, 2014; Gallagher, 2009, p. 117; "National Inventory," 2006). With AP and IB courses continuing to serve as the most prevalent method of secondary gifted services, there are growing concerns that as these classes become more heterogeneous, their appropriateness for gifted students will decrease (Callahan, 2003; Gallagher, 2009; Lichten, 2000; Winebrenner, 2006). Secondary Advanced Academic Courses: Instructors' Attitudes and Differentiated Practices for Gifted Students in Heterogeneous AP and IB Classrooms responds to this concern. This dissertation study explored AP and IB instructors' attitudes toward gifted education, how frequently they differentiated curriculum and instruction for their gifted students, and how their attitudes as well as contextual variables ultimately impacted their differentiated classroom practices. A survey invitation was delivered electronically to a national, random sample of 9,787 AP and IB instructors, and 377 surveys were returned, yielding a return rate of 3.85%. Respondents expressed their attitudes toward gifted education by completing Gagné and Nadeau’s Attitude Scale (Gagné, 1991-a), indicated how frequently they used specified instructional practices for both their gifted and non-gifted students by completing Archambault et al.'s (1993) Classroom Practices Teacher Survey, and completed a teacher information questionnaire collecting contextual data. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and structural equation modeling (SEM). Additionally, participants' optional comments were categorized, and a set of themes emerged from the data. The data suggested AP and IB instructors' attitudes about gifted education ranged from ambivalent to very positive overall. Instructors reported ambivalent attitudes concerning school acceleration and the perception that gifted education is elitist. They reported somewhat positive attitudes about the social value of gifted persons, the idea that gifted students need more than what the regular school program can provide, and the idea that gifted students need equal opportunities for learning compared with other student groups. They showed very positive attitudes about the need to offer and support gifted education. AP and IB instructors indicated they offered multiple types of differentiated practices several times per a month, sometimes daily, with their gifted students. The data showed instructors encouraged higher-level questions daily, modified the curriculum and instruction and allowed students to pursue individual interests several times a month, and assigned projects and reports slightly more than once a month. Instructors rarely, if ever, assigned seatwork or provided learning or enrichment centers. With the exceptions of seatwork and learning or enrichment centers, when the frequencies of these practices with gifted students were compared with the frequencies of these practices with non-gifted students within the same class, the differences seemed quite small, as instructors reported engaging in all activities only slightly more with their gifted students as compared with their non-gifted students. Although the differences seemed small, however, they were statistically significant. Optional comments instructors provided indicated that they treated all students the same because they felt the AP and IB course content is sufficient to meet gifted students' needs, the curriculum does not allow time to differentiate, and non-gifted students are as equally capable as gifted students. Only one attitudinal factor significantly influenced instructors' classroom practices with their gifted students. Educators with more positive attitudes about the need to offer and fund special educational services for the gifted more frequently offered differentiated activities for their gifted students in all measured areas. No contextual variable examined in this study had a significant impact on any of the classroom practices factors. Two contextual variables, however, significantly impacted instructors' attitudes. Having 0-3 years of experience teaching gifted students had a statistically positive effect on instructors' attitudes about school acceleration. Additionally, having some degree of training in gifted education, as opposed to no training, had a statistically significant positive effect on attitudes about gifted students' being equally important to serve compared with other student groups. Although respondents indicated they offered differentiated activities for their students several times a month, sometimes daily, their providing only slight modifications for gifted students as compared with their non-gifted students support other studies suggesting modifications for gifted students typically are limited (Draper & Post, 2010; Hertberg-Davis, Callahan, & Kyburg, 2006; MacFarlane, 2008). This study also adds to the conversation about instructors' attitudes toward gifted and how attitudes may influence classroom decisions, as research in this area has shown mixed results (Copenhaver & McIntyre, 1992; Cramond & Martin, 1987; Gagné, 1983; Megay-Nespoli, 2001; McCoach & Siegle, 2007). When considering that only slight modifications for gifted students are being made in mixed-ability AP and IB classrooms, and considering that instructors' justifications for their lack of differentiation revolved around "rigid" AP and IB requirements, it seems logical this problem should be addressed by the entities responsible for the programs and AP and IB teacher preparation‒the College Board and the International Baccalaureate. With an increasing diverse student body in terms of preparation and ability, it is imperative that AP and IB instructors not only help all students be successful in an accelerated and rigorous environment, but also understand how to provide optimal learning experiences for gifted students within this changing landscape.Curriculum and Instruction, Department o

Irishness and the culture of the Irish abroad

Introductory article from a special issue of Irish Studies Review about the Irish diaspora

Homesickness in John McGahern's short stories "Wheels" and "A slip-up"

This article focuses on two stories by John McGahern, “Wheels” and “A Slip-up”, and investigates how they relate to the representation of home and place in McGahern’s novel Amongst Women (1990). It explores how the stories take up some of the most pressing concerns in Amongst Women in the way that they productively complicate the powerful connection with the land so vividly rendered in McGahern’s wor

"A Sort of Rathmines Version of a Dior Design": Maeve Brennan, Self-Fashioning, and the Uses of Style

This article explores the politics of style in the writing of Maeve Brennan. Brennan's concern with style, subjectivity and power is strikingly visible in her short stories and ‘Talk of the Town’ essays for the New Yorker. While in some of her short stories published in the New Yorker in the 1950s, Brennan seems to offer an extended critique of dandyism, elsewhere in her writing self-fashioning takes on an altogether more positive value and is steeped in the political as well as literary commitments of her work. The article argues that Brennan's interest in the politics of style, both personally and in her writing, is informed by the different strategies she deployed as an Irish woman writer establishing her place amongst a New York literary elite in the mid twentieth century.This work began as a conversation with Neil Sammells about Irish women's writing and self-fashioning, and his encouragement and insightful responses to ideas in development were invaluable to the progress of the research. I am also very grateful to Maureen O'Connor and Caitríona Clear, whose work on the Irish woman writer and dandyism, and women and magazine culture, lays an all-important foundation for the arguments developed here. Archival research for the article was made possible by a Fulbright Scholarship in the Humanities (September 2012—January 2013), and I am most grateful to my host institution, Fordham University in New York. I would like to thank the literary estate of Maeve Brennan for kind permission to cite from Maeve Brennan's letters and unpublished material held in the Special Collections at the University of Delaware and the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library. The work was completed with the assistance of a Moore Institute Visiting Fellowship to the National University of Ireland, Galway in 2015, which provided a valuable opportunity to present work in progress as part of the seminar series hosted by the Centre for Irish Studies. Finally, I am grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers and editors at Women: A Cultural Review for their thorough and expert responses to the article

Exploring the impact of social axioms on firm reputation: a stakeholder perspective

This study proposes a model of how deeply held beliefs, known as ‘social axioms, moderate the interaction between reputation, its causes and consequences with stakeholders. It contributes to the stakeholder relational field of reputation theory by explaining why the same organizational stimuli lead to different individual stakeholder responses. The study provides a shift in reputation research from organizational-level stimuli as the root causes of stakeholder responses to exploring the interaction between individual beliefs and organizational stimuli in determining reputational consequences. Building on a conceptual model that incorporates product/service quality and social responsibility as key reputational dimensions, the authors test empirically for moderating influences, in the form of social axioms, between reputation-related antecedents and consequences, using component-based structural equation modelling (n = 204). In several model paths, significant differences are found between responses of individuals identified as either high or low on social cynicism, fate control and religiosity. The results suggest that stakeholder responses to reputation-related stimuli can be systematically predicted as a function of the interactions between the deeply held beliefs of individuals and these stimuli. The authors offer recommendations on how strategic reputation management can be approached within and across stakeholder groups at a time when firms grapple with effective management of diverse stakeholder expectations

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

The impact of corporate volunteering on CSR image: a consumer perspective

Received: 29 June 2013 / Accepted: 15 January 2014Abstract Corporate volunteering (CV) is known to be an effective employee engagement initiative. However, despite the prominence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in academia and practice, research is yet to investigate whether and how CV may influence consumer perceptions of CSR image and subsequent consumer behaviour. Data collected using an online survey in Australia show perceived familiarity with a company’s CV programme to positively impact CSR image and firm image, partially mediated by others-centred attributions. CSR image, in turn, strengthens affective and cognitive loyalty as well as word-of-mouth. Further analysis reveals the moderating effect of perceived leveraging of the corporate volunteering programme, customer status and the value individuals place on CSR. The paper concludes with theoretical and managerial implications, as well as an agenda for future research.Carolin Plewa, Jodie Conduit, Pascale G. Quester, Claire Johnso

Margaret Atwood’s Canadian hunger artist: Postcolonial appetites in the edible woman

In Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman (1969), food serves a crucial function in the novel’s engagement with the feminist and postcolonial paradigms fundamental to Atwood’s writing. In her introduction to the novel, Atwood describes how early inspiration for the novel came from pondering the seemingly consumable figures of the bride and groom frequently placed on top of wedding cakes