Giftedness-underrepresentation of African Americans students in gifted Term Paper

Giftedness-underrepresentation of African Americans students in gifted programs - Term Paper Example Although all gifted individuals have varied traits, characteristics and behaviors but the most common of these elements found in gifted students were: humor, capability to understand and comprehend symbols, highly creative, proper reasoning and decision making skills, well shaped cognition, highly motivated and excellent ability to communicate. All these elements are necessary for an individual to perform well in different settings. These researchers even figured out that other than previous stated elements, gifted students even have high amount of emotional intelligence. People such as the great Martin Luther King, Lady Diana, and Rachel Carson were the ones who made a huge difference to the gifted students, the traits and behaviors exhibited by these great individuals include: they were quite courageous, they had a very high desire to turn things around, the degree of cognitive as well as physical energy vested in them was quite high. These people even had team work, leadership ski lls. The existence of the myth that the gifted students are those who have one similar standard of ability, behavior and traits is due to the fact that various gifted students have not been able to gain education and training due to which they have failed to develop their abilities and skills. The researchers even figured out that gifted students are not gifted with all these abilities and skills since birth, and there are not few special chosen ones who have been awarded with these skills and abilities and these skills and abilities are developed by those individuals who have high potential. Thus giftedness is not inborn, rather it is learned (Reis 2009). According to John O’ Neil’s (1992) findings, focus on performance assessment tests have increased due to the increase in importance of students graduating with skills and abilities required to solve new problems (O'Neil 1992). Performance tests refers to tests taken for a specific ability or skill, for example to che ck whether a student has learned a particular foreign language, a test that makes him speak in that language is the most appropriate as compared to multiple choice tests. Multiple choice tests cannot help in accomplishing whether a student has learned what he was trained for and whether he has acquired the skills and abilities for which he had gained education. These tests are even conducted on state level; the state conducts performance assessment tests to check how well individual students are performing at the state level. Teachers are even experiencing immense pressure from these tests, teachers are focusing their teaching methods and syllabus according to these tests, and these tests are used to rank different educational institutes. These tests have even changed the teaching system, for example: previously educational centers used to base their teaching criteria on multiple choice tests and they used to assign less writing tasks to students, but now more writing tasks are assi gned to students so students can compete well in writing performance assessment tests. These tests even benefits the teachers as these teachers experience development themselves, they are involved in the creation of these tests and the marking and the ranking systems designed for these tests. John O’