Marion Porath

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor Emeritus at University of British Columbia

The “Superkids,” a group of highly gifted students, were first portrayed in a 2004 documentary. In response to the question of what happened to these students after the original film, a second documentary has been produced. The sequel focused on these individual’s lives, their retrospective insights about gifted education, their educational and car...

Over the past century, strong applications of psychometrics have resulted in an ideology and practices of identification in the field of gifted education. In recent years, an alternative ideology that construes giftedness in an inclusive light and promotes democratic practices has emerged. This ideology posits a new meaning-making system of giftedn...

After nearly a century of development, gifted education has evolved into a complex educational discipline with well thought out pedagogy and research agendas. However, while the number of studies escalates, the field as a whole has been criticized for producing fragmented and piecemeal results. One of the reasons for these shortfalls is that the fi...

Despite changes, gender differences in math and science continue to exist in some countries. We examined whether the actiotopes of boys and girls at the high school level in math and science differed and the extent to which (a) their actiotope components, (b) the progressive development of their actiotopes (dynamic perspective), and (c) the co-adap...

How is the intangible act of learning imagined and imaged? In this essay, I play with the notion of patterns in thinking about how learning has shaped my more tangible identity as an educator. My early learning experiences influenced my feelings about teaching as a career and, ultimately, my teaching philosophy. These early experiences also played...

A conceptual framework based in developmental psychology is used to trace how students' epistemic beliefs, or personal perspectives on learning, teaching, and knowledge, develop. Epistemic beliefs become more sophisticated as children mature and acquire more educational experience, moving from action-oriented ideas about what takes place in school...

Literature on the personality traits of individuals considered gifted is equivocal, influenced by variation in definitions of both constructs and a focus on individuals that fails to take account of contextual variables in exceptional achievement. Potential characteristics of a "gifted personality" may be intense love of learning and powerful intui...

Thirty-one middle school students (grades 4-7) were interviewed at length about their perspectives regarding academic and social inclusion of students with disabilities; the barriers they perceive to a compassionate, inclusive learning community; and what they believe helps overcome these barriers. In discussing the inclusion of students with disab...

This paper proposes a model to explain the characteristics of gifted students with learning disabilities (GLD) in terms of general and domain-specific aspects of intelligence. A three-step conceptual analysis was used to interpret literature on GLD through categorization of characteristics, comparison and evaluation of these characteristics in ligh...

Emotional and behavioral outcomes of the Respecting Diversity (RD) program, a social and emotional learning (SEL) intervention to develop self-awareness, self-respect and respect for diverse others, were investigated with 218 students in Grades four to seven and their teachers. Intervention and control groups were assessed pre and post intervention...

Children’s understanding of teaching and the conceptual relationships of this understanding to self-regulation and epistemic beliefs were explored by interviewing children identified as gifted, aged 6 to 17, about how they would like to be taught core academic subjects and how they would teach them to their own class. Data were analyzed using a con...

Mentoring is considered among the most effective pedagogical measures, yet it is rarely used in gifted education. One of the main reasons for this neglect seems to be the lack of a thorough analysis of its conceptual foundations from the point of view of giftedness research. This contribution starts with a discussion of conceptual and definitional...

This chapter explores what characterizes and underpins social giftedness. Drawing on work on social intelligence conducted within Case’s neo-Piagetian perspective as the theoretical framework, current knowledge about giftedness in the social domain and relevant neuropsychological research are discussed. Neuropsychological research has identified li...

The current study aimed to explore and articulate some of the key issues in problem-oriented learning (POL), in the context of health care education. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with faculties representing four different health care disciplines around common issues identified in a prior survey study. Thematic analysis of the interview...

This paper focuses on gifted children's and adolescents' narrative interpretations of learning using a neo-Piagetian theory of conceptual development (Case, 1992; Case & Okamoto, 1996) as a framework. Children's narratives develop from action based reasoning to intentional reasoning that incorporates understanding of their own and others' mental st...

Social competence is an essential capability to bring to school because of its relationship to academic success. Development and consolidation of social understanding in early childhood ensures that young children have a solid foundation of social expertise when they begin formal schooling. Social expertise, conceptualized within the framework of C...

What characterizes the ability to work with students in ways that appear to surpass notions of effectiveness or competence? What is the quality that makes some teachers “a teacher” in a deep sense? Research and conceptual frameworks that attempt to answer these questions are examined and a model is proposed for understanding and researching gifted...

This study explored Ndebele culture of Zimbabwe's views of giftedness. Using questionnaire narratives, data were collected from thirty Zimbabwean teachers and lecturers of Ndebele cultural background. The study established that Ndebele culture views giftedness as an unusually outstanding ability blessed in an individual from birth, which manifests...

This paper describes a developmental psychological approach to understanding giftedness. A theoretical model of exceptional expertise is used to frame our understanding of how gifted children's conceptual knowledge develops in a variety of domains and how the interplay of this conceptual knowledge with domain‐specific skills results in rich, elabor...

The childhoods of five British boys, who were born between 1880 and 1933 in low socioeconomic conditions, and who became eminent in adulthood, are examined through a content analysis of written biographical and autobiographical accounts. The influences of mother, organizational structure within the home, and mentors were found to be positive factor...

This paper presents the results of a survey administered during the spring of 2005. At this time, graduates of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program from two public schools in a large city in British Columbia, Canada, were asked to respond to 20 statements on a 4-point Likert-type scale, and to 7 open-ended questions. Graduates from the year...

The purpose of this study was to identify common and domain‐specific cognitive characteristics of gifted students based on an integrated model of human abilities. This study is based on the premise that abilities identified by tests can appear as observable characteristics in test or school situations. Abilities proposed by major models of intellig...

In an exploratory study designed to investigate Shona culture of Zimbabwe’s views of giftedness, data were collected from sixteen Zimbabwean academics of Shona cultural background. Using questionnaire narratives, the study established that Shona culture views giftedness as an unusual ability blessed in an individual through ancestry which enables h...

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among global self-worth (GSW), competencies in various domains, discrepancy between these perceptions of competence and their ratings of importance, and perceived social support of children who were exposed to marital violence using Harter's (1985a, 1985b) theoretical model. Participants we...

This study examines the relationships among maritally abused women's educational level, their satisfaction with social support, their children's perceived maternal support, and their children's global self-worth (GSW; Harter, 1985a). The participants, 38 pairs of maritally abused women and their children (aged 7 to 13 years), were recruited through...

This study focused on the nature of interpersonal understanding in 4- and 5-year-olds. Early childhood constitutes a critical transition period during which children become able to understand their own and others’ “inner world” as it relates to actions. A neo-Piagetian theoretical and analytic framework was used to study children’s understandings o...

Goelman and co-authors review research in early childhood education. The authors provide a brief overview of how historical issues in early childhood education set the stage for contemporary research. Section one reviews research in learning and teaching across the domains of play, art, music, and literacy. In section two, issues of diversity and c...

This study was designed to ascertain the prevalence of written output deficits in young gifted children, to delineate the relationship between written output performance and reading performance, and to identify possible mechanisms for specific written output deficits in such children. Data from a sample of children scoring >120 on at least one IQ o...

Current thinking about what makes a gifted teacher is presented. Examples of teaching in action and the resulting work of children are described that illustrate the principles of what is believed to constitute the kind of teaching where teachers' and students' minds connect. The importance of understanding educational context and the learners' poin...

This study focused on gender differences in young children's interpersonal understanding. Of particular interest was the articulation of the structure and content of young girls' social cognition, since this is an area where girls are believed to excel. Children from preschool (11 girls and 10 boys) and kindergarten (12 girls and 9 boys) responded...

Gender differences in young highly able children''s psychosocial development were investigated using child and teacher ratings of prosocial behavior and peer acceptance. Developmental patterns were addressed by studying two groups – children in the primary grades (1 and 2) and children in grades 3 to 7. No gender differences were found on teacher o...

An exploratory study of gifted children's understandings of intelligence showed that between the ages of 6 and 12, external indicators of smartness are synthesized with internal factors of feelings and judgments about intelligence. This synthesis becomes more complex with age. At age 12, children's definitions took on an interpretive quality with r...

This study compared parent and teacher perceptions of gifted children's social skills and the importance these adults attach to different social skills. No significant differences were found on overall ratings of social skills. However, differences were found on specific social skills. Teacher ratings of cooperation were significantly higher than p...

Artistic giftedness in 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds was investigated from a neo-Piagetian perspective, which articulates the increasingly complex structures for representing spatial relations in drawing during middle childhood. Composition, color use, and competence in human-figure drawing also were studied. Gifted young artists structured the spat...

Two studies done from constructivist perspectives were considered for their complementarity in understanding the development of gifted young artists. Study 1 used Case's (1992) neo-Piagetian theory as a framework and investigated the developmental progression in ability to represent spatial relations in children aged 4,6,8, and I0 years. Children i...

The inclusion of measures of self‐perception and motivational orientation in assessment may contribute to understanding the dynamics underlying the relationships between self‐concept, motivation, and achievement in gifted learners. The research literature suggests that individual differences in gifted learners’ achievement motivation and perception...

Young, verbally gifted children were compared to chronological- and mental-age controls on a number of variables pertaining to narrative ability. Using a structural-developmental analysis, the gifted children were found to organize their story plots in a way typical of children two years older. Elaborations on the basic plot structure were even mor...

From a cognitive‐developmental perspective, an investigation of gifted young artists revealed that, in ability to render perspective, there are age‐related trends which are similar to those of children with average ability. Flexible and elaborate use of these perspectival abilities was, however, apparent in the work of the gifted subjects. Artistic...