Gifted students in secondary schools: Differentiating the curriculum.

Gross, M.U.M, Sleep, B., & Pretorius, M. (1999). Gifted students in secondary schools: Differentiating the curriculum. Sydney, NSW: GERRIC, University of New South Wales (172 pp., $24 US paper, ISBN-073340517-7). Email: [e-mail]. Website: www.arts.unsw.edu.au/gerric.

According to the authors, this book was designed for teachers who recognize that every child needs a challenging and enriched curriculum but also acknowledges that for gifted and talented children, lateral extensions are not enough. In a poignant manner, these authors distinguish between student strengths in an academic area and talent in that area. Although both strength and talent require attention, the instructional strategies differ when talent is involved because enrichment of grade 7 material for a student who chooses books and materials preferred by students in grade 10, is providing material at a level the student passed through years earlier. Thus, the intellectual rigor of the material designed for academically able or gifted students must be dictated by their level of ability. The book was intended to be of immediate practical use to Australian teachers working in secondary schools.

This book is of immediate practical use to any secondary teacher, from any country, with any amount of background in gifted education. It is a clear and concise account of some options employed by some secondary teachers in their particular content areas. Like a site visitation, the book provides viable, qualitatively different exemplars to begin discussions of curriculum modifications within one's own educational community. It does not provide one model from one theorist to replicate nor will it be of value to someone unable to see past the language nuances that characterize its Australian origin. This resource, like appropriate instructional strategies for the gifted, provides thoughtful choices in an elegant form.

This teacher resource book is the first in a series of products emerging from a three-year collaborative research project that involved two large Australian secondary schools (grade 7-12, one rural, public, and just beginning to address the needs of high ability students; the other one suburban, independent, and has a long term involvement with gifted education). Both schools wished to develop a range of curricula and programs to meet the varied learning needs of gifted and talented students. Funded by the Australian Research Council, the adhesive catalyst in this development project is Dr. Miraca Gross, Director of the Gifted Education Research, Resource and Information Centre (GERRIC) at the University of New South Wales.

Approximately 30 teachers from each of the two schools engaged in long-term staff development experiences that provided these professionals with various concepts and curriculum models. This ecumenical approach of offering a menu of choices reverberates in each of the fourteen chapters. Six teachers from each school took courses with American experts such as Nick Colangelo, Joyce Van Tassel-Baska, Susan Assouline, and Michael Saylor through the Centre's Advanced Certificate Program in Gifted Education. In addition, Karen Rogers (University of St. Thomas in Minnesota) spent four months in the two schools working with teams from every faculty to develop skills in modifying the pace, content, level and required outcomes for gifted/talented differentiation. The depth and breadth of their understanding and the practical applications of their choice of curriculum models are reflected in the myriad of examples found in each chapter.

As a workbook/resource guide intended for staff development, brevity is the operative word regarding theoretical underpinnings. In 0 pages, the first five chapters address: Concepts of Giftedness and Talent, Characteristics of Gifted Students, Off-Level Testing and Curriculum Compacting, and Principles of Curriculum Development. Practical and user-friendly charts, tables, and examples cogently depict what was found useful in earlier research (e.g. Passow's Test of Appropriate Curriculum) as well as current North American techniques. The next five chapters are dedicated to five models of curriculum development (Maker, Bloom/Krathwohl, Kaplan, Taylor, and Williams) with a variety of units in each chapter that were designed by the secondary teachers and Karen Rogers. The last five chapters address Developing Units of Work, Evaluating a Unit of Work, Putting It All Together: An Example of a Unit if Work, More Sample Activities, and Cross-Curricular Units of Work. Although the chapter on evaluation is a mere two and a half pages, the authors distinguish between evaluation of curriculum and evaluation of instructional strategies, between student progress and curriculum effectiveness, and provide examples of a student unit evaluation, teacher evaluation of a unit of work and evaluation of the same unit of work by external responses (department with parent observation). This sets the stage for curriculum work that includes a thorough evaluation component.

Reviewed by Sandra I. Kay, District Coordinator of Gifted Programs, Monroe-Woodbury Central Schools, Vice President N.Y.S. AGATE, Contributing Editor for the Roeper Review, and Visiting Scholar: Teachers College, Columbia University.