Minnesota Gifted Education Master's Program. Evaluation Report, 1977.

Overview & Synopsis

The Minnesota Gifted Education Master's Program (MGEMP), a project of the Minnesota State Department of Education, is designed to train elementary and secondary teachers for gifted education. The MGEMP had three specific objectives: (1) to teach candidates techniques for educating both achieving and underachieving gifted students; (2) to give candidates practicum experiences where these techniques could be applied through student-teacher interaction; and (3) to train leadership personnel who could plan, implement and conduct local, district or regional programs for high potential students. To achieve these goals, 25 MGEMP students participated in a special 10-week summer program, which granted 11 graduate credits in gifted education, four additional credits of practicum, and included presentations by 15 resource persons. The MGEMP evaluation included two measures of cognitive growth, measurement of participant attitudes toward gifted students, and a needs assessment of gifted education in Minnesota. Both cognitive measures showed significant growth in the participants' knowledge of gifted education. The attitude measures showed strong support for gifted programs, personal preference for teaching the gifted, and trends toward a clearer perception of the characteristics of gifted students. In the needs assessment, these teachers rated current programs in their own districts as inadequate on several dimensions. (Author/BW)