Evaluation of a project to train public school administrators in appropriate education of the gifted and talented
Abstract
The two purposes of this study were to develop a model to train school administrators in gifted education and then to do an evaluation of the new model's effectiveness. A three-credit, graduate course to educate school administrators in gifted education was developed as the training model. Forty-five administrators participated in the experimental group's full, graduate course. Fifty-one administrators participated in two half-day, minimal-training workshops offered the control group as an incentive to come to a central location for testing purposes. The second major goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the new training model. A pre-post, control-group design was selected to evaluate if the new training program increased public school administrators' perceptions of knowledge of, and positive attitudes toward, the gifted and talented. The experimental and control groups were pre- and post-tested using the Gifted Education Knowledge Scale for assessing perceptions of knowledge of gifted education and the Administrative Survey for Gifted Education for assessing administrator's attitudes toward gifted students and gifted education. Repeated measures analysis of variance, followed by t-tests and paired t-tests, revealed: (1) experimental and control groups were comparable in perceptions of knowledge of and attitudes toward the gifted and talented at the beginning of the training period and following training; (2) experimental-group administrators demonstrated large positive increases in perceptions of knowledge of and more positive attitudes toward gifted education; and (3) control-group administrators indicated increased perceptions of knowledge only, but at a level far below that achieved by the experimental group. A Course Evaluation was also completed at the conclusion of the graduate course by each administrator in the experimental group. The Course Evaluation Form indicated very high levels of administrator satisfaction with the entire course and most aspects of it. Forty-four out of 45 course participants agreed or strongly agreed that the course was worthwhile for them, while all 45 agreed or strongly agreed that the course should be made available for other school administrators.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Feldhusen, Purdue University.
Subject Area
School administration|Special education|Teacher education
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