From Terman to Today

Thursday, August 16th, 2018

David Lubinski of Vanderbilt University reviews a century of findings on intellectual precocity:

As Terman launched his longitudinal study in 1921, Hollingworth, Pressey, Thorndike, and others advocated for the special educational needs and the importance of studying intellectually precocious students (Witty, 1951). In a compelling publication in Science, “The Gifted Student and Research,” Seashore (1922) argued that for every 100 incoming college freshman chosen at random, the top five assimilate five times as much information as the bottom five and stressed that these differences necessitate different opportunities for meeting their respective needs. He emphasized that optimal learning environments for all students avoided the undesirable extremes of frustration and boredom destined for appreciable numbers of students when inflexible, lock-step learning environments were enforced upon all.

Adjusting the depth and pace of the curriculum to the rate at which each student learned would “keep each student busy at his highest level of achievement in order that he may be successful, happy, and good” (italics in original, Seashore, 1922, p. 644). For the gifted, Seashore recommended that instead of whipping them into line, we “whip them out of line.” Seashore (1930, 1942) leveraged this idea when he marshaled his campaign for establishing honors colleges throughout major U.S. universities. Although his name does not always surface in historical treatments of the gifted movement, Seashore’s impact was profound (Miles, 1956). He traveled to 46 of the contiguous states within the United States meeting with university officials to discuss the importance of honors colleges and more challenging curricula and opportunities for the most talented university students.

Large-scale empirical evidence for these considerations was introduced a few years later by the extensive longitudinal findings of Learned and Wood (1928, 1938). Figure 1 is reproduced from their extensive analysis of tens of thousands of high school and college students, many of whom were tracked for years and systematically assessed on academic knowledge. For decades, major textbooks on individual differences (Anastasi, 1958; Tyler, 1965; Willerman, 1979) and policy recommendations for restructuring classrooms (Benbow & Stanley, 1996; Pressey, 1949; Terman, 1954a) cited this important study. It was cited as empirical evidence for why instruction needs to be adjusted to the individual learning needs of each student — and intellectually precocious students, in particular.

From Terman to Today Figure 1

When Terman (1939) reviewed Learned and Wood (1938) for the Journal of Higher Education, he regarded it as the most relevant research contribution that addressed higher education problems in the United States. Terman (1939, p. 111) maintained it “warrants a thorough overhauling of our educational procedures,” because it documented the extent to which vast knowledge differentials exist among students in lock-step systems. It demonstrated that the range of individual differences in knowledge among high school seniors, college sophomores, and college seniors, across wide varieties of professionally developed achievement tests, was vast. For example, about 10% of 12th-grade students younger than 18 years of age had more scientific knowledge than the average college senior. Within all grade levels, younger students were more knowledgeable than the older students. And, if graduation from college were based on demonstrated knowledge rather than time in the educational system, a full 15% of the entering freshmen class would be deemed ready to graduate. Indeed, they would make the top 20% cut on the broad-spectrum 1,200-item achievement test in the combined (Freshman + Sophomore + Junior + Senior) college sample.

(Hat tip to Eric Raymond.)

Comments

  1. Sam J. says:

    All I’ve read from gifted students is that they were harassed and treated like lab rats in the “special” programs.

    I think the gifted programs are run by…the not gifted.

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