The separated accelerated : A study of the perspectives of gifted primary students attending withdrawal acceleration options in schools

This study investigated perspectives on Withdrawal Acceleration Options (WAOs), a form of teaching intervention provided by some primary schools to cater to children displaying exceptional academic abilities. The notion of schools supporting intellectually advantaged students brings a unique range of strategic considerations for teachers, parents, researchers, and the gifted students central to this investigation.

Case study research and Grounded Theory explaining these considerations is not keeping pace with strategies such as WAOs, leading to a gap in the field of giftedness research. Acknowledging the dominance of US literature in this field, this study sought to generate knowledge of perspectives on this teaching strategy from an Australian context for the first time, with international implications. The importance of this study is seen to add literature that primary schools can access when considering or reinforcing WAOs for gifted students.

To raise awareness of WAO experiences, this thesis examined the perspectives of gifted children selected to this teaching option via the research question, what are the perspectives of gifted primary students attending acceleration options in schools? The aim of this research project was to explore observations, reactions, and predictions by gifted primary children of withdrawal accelerations and generated theories and recommendations to inform educational policies, practices, and further research in the field of giftedness.

Twenty-one primary school children attending WAOs in six schools provided almost 700 responses to an electronic questionnaire and semi-structured interviews between July 2019 and April 2020. Schools providing the participants in this study augment the efforts of their class teachers by funding personnel to withdraw gifted primary children from classes, who then deliver tasks targeting the advanced range and speed of those students.

Analysis of the data revealed indications of participants’ confusion, their observation of others’ ambivalence and wanting involvement in the planning, resourcing, and provision of their withdrawal acceleration options. These findings had not previously been interconnected in the literature when investigating accelerations for gifted students and validate the importance of this study. When seeking to contextualise the gifted students’ perspectives, an examination of contemporary theoretical frameworks revealed one model, the Education Situation/Quality model (Domenech-Betoret, Gomez-Artiga and Abellan-Rosello, 2019) informed the design of a unique, unifying conceptual model proposed by this thesis, which will be introduced as the Doorway model.

This research project advocates the Doorway model as a significant contribution to knowledge of gifted primary school experiences in withdrawal accelerations. The Doorway model depicts a 6-stage system mapping when influences on the perspectives of gifted children in WAOs occurred. Each stage impacts a subsequent stage and respondents indicated the perspectives were influenced before and after WAO lessons, a significant difference with other theoretical frameworks, further validating the importance of this investigation and the findings.

Analysis of the data and subsequent discussion resulted in a set of recommendations for primary schools developing WAOs. Wider policy and research implications are discussed addressing professional policies and research to widen this field further. Implications for the practices of class teachers selecting gifted students for accelerations and the WAO teachers providing these programs are discussed. The thesis advocates that an awareness of the perspectives of gifted children on Withdrawal Acceleration Options, mapped by the stages of the Doorway model makes is plausible for schools to reinforce professional policy, practices, and knowledge of interventions for the gifted to influence improved academic, affective, and creative outcomes.