Legal issues in gifted education continue to be of interest to parents, teachers, school administrators, and concerned citizens. Dr. Frances Karnes is collecting information on court cases and due process hearings. If you have such information from your state, contact her at the University of Southern Mississippi, Box 8207, Hattiesburg, MS 39406-8207.
A new guide to help teachers develop more authentic instruction, assessment, and student performance is available from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Authors Fred M. Newmann, Walter G. Secada, and Gary G. Wehlage base their suggestion on studies of 24 restructured elementary, middle, and high schools nationwide. The $9.00 guide is available from Document Service, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, 1025 W. Johnson Street, Room 242, Madison, WI 53706, phone (608) 263-4214.
Genesis: Breathing Life into Learning through the Arts a three-day working conference for teachers, artists, and administrators, will be held on the University of Montana campus in Missoula on June 19-21, 1996. Featured presenters include Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, David O’Fallon, and Mary Clearman Blew. A $110 pre-registration is required and enrollment will be limited. For information contact: The Creative Pulse, UM School of Fine Arts, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, phone (406) 243-4970.
A new book by Robert Abelman examines television-related issues pertinent to children in general and intellectually gifted kids in particular. Reclaiming the Wasteland offers parents and teachers a prescription for accentuating the positive and avoiding the negative outcomes of children’s television viewing. Paperback copies of Reclaiming the Wasteland may be purchased for $18.95 plus $3.50 postage and handling from Hampton Press, 23 Broadway, Suite 208, Cresskill, NJ 07626, phone 800-894-8955, fax (201) 894-8732.
School reformers and curriculum designers may find their efforts to shake up schools complicated by the way in which secondary school teachers view the subjects they teach. A study published in the November 1995 issue of Educational Research, a journal of the American Educational Research Association, indicated that math and foreign language teachers rated their subjects as significantly more sequential and more defined than did teachers of science, English, and social studies. These findings suggest that teachers work in contexts defined by the subject matter they teach.