Fri 19.09.2014 - 15:20-17:30 - Plečnik 1

Access Granted: Multinational Approaches to Finding and Developing Talent  Symposia  Presentation 

Presenters:

The last decade has brought good news for academically talented students: educational programs and resources, both online and in-person, are growing tremendously. But at the same time that we champion these initiatives, we know that they do not reach everyone who needs them. Students from low-income families, students from underrepresented groups, and twice exceptional students deserve full access not only to strong educational programs in specific disciplines but also to those programs’ inherent benefits—true intellectual peers, adult role models, and academic habits of mind. This symposium focuses on access and on efforts to make high quality, challenging, and inspiring education available to the world’s most talented students.

First, Dr. Linda Brody from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, examines CTY’s efforts over the past 35 years to expand access for underrepresented, low-income, and twice exceptional students. Dr. Colm O’Reilly, Director of CTY Ireland at Dublin City University, discusses CTYI’s efforts at skills reinforcement and deepening connections between the university, CTYI, and marginalized populations. Mr. Antonios Apostolou, Director of the newly launched CTY Greece at Anatolia College, examines the challenges of launching a foundation-supported, nationwide talent search in a political setting that is both in flux and not entirely supportive of finding and developing academic talent. Finally, Zhamilya Yessanova, Director of Centre for Pedagogical Measurements, and Miras Baimyrza, Project Manager, from the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools in Kazakhstan shares lessons learned while launching twenty trilingual schools for the country’s most promising young mathematicians and scientists.

Collectively, these speakers come from organizations that provide programs to tens of thousands of students. Moreover, they represent a range of models for both uncovering top talent in previously overlooked areas and providing support—economic and programmatic—to help truly level the playing field.
 


Opening Opportunities for Underrepresented Students: a View from the US  Symposia contribution  Presentation

Presenter: Linda Brody

The Center for Talented Youth (CTY) was established in 1979 at the Johns Hopkins University to find and serve high ability students. Today, over 40,000 students participate annually in CTY’s talent searches, 10,000 students enroll in CTY’s academic summer program, another 10,000 students take courses through CTY’s online offerings, and still more students avail themselves of other opportunities. As CTY has grown in size and breadth of services, we have also worked increasingly hard to identify talented students who might be overlooked in traditional testing approaches: students from traditionally underserved populations, especially high ability students from underrepresented minority groups, low-income gifted students, and twice-exceptional students whose high abilities may go unrecognized because of their disabilities. We have now developed numerous strategies to identify students from these populations as well as special programs to meet their needs. In this session, we summarize the challenges we’ve encountered through CTY’s efforts to find and serve traditionally underrepresented gifted students, as well as some solutions to these challenges. In particular, we describe the following CTY initiatives: 1) special outreach efforts to identify traditionally underserved gifted students from urban areas, 2) special outreach efforts to identify low-income gifted students from rural communities, 3) scholarship support for low-income students to attend CTY programs and special support for them at CTY program sites, 4) testing and programmatic accommodations for students with disabilities, 5) supplemental programs to provide skills reinforcement for at-risk students, and 6) special counseling initiatives for low-income students and/or those from traditionally underserved backgrounds. We will offer a summary of what we have learned from these programs, challenges that remain, and our recommendation
 

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Building a Path to Potential: CTY Ireland  Symposia contribution  Presentation

Presenter: Colm O'Reilly

Opening Opportunities for Underrepresented Students: a View from the US Dr. Linda Brody The Center for Talented Youth (CTY) was established in 1979 at the Johns Hopkins University to find and serve high ability students. Today, over 40,000 students participate annually in CTY’s talent searches, 10,000 students enroll in CTY’s academic summer program, another 10,000 students take courses through CTY’s online offerings, and still more students avail themselves of other opportunities. As CTY has grown in size and breadth of services, we have also worked increasingly hard to identify talented students who might be overlooked in traditional testing approaches: students from traditionally underserved populations, especially high ability students from underrepresented minority groups, low-income gifted students, and twice-exceptional students whose high abilities may go unrecognized because of their disabilities. We have now developed numerous strategies to identify students from these populations as well as special programs to meet their needs. In this session, we summarize the challenges we’ve encountered through CTY’s efforts to find and serve traditionally underrepresented gifted students, as well as some solutions to these challenges. In particular, we describe the following CTY initiatives: 1) special outreach efforts to identify traditionally underserved gifted students from urban areas, 2) special outreach efforts to identify low-income gifted students from rural communities, 3) scholarship support for low-income students to attend CTY programs and special support for them at CTY program sites, 4) testing and programmatic accommodations for students with disabilities, 5) supplemental programs to provide skills reinforcement for at-risk students, and 6) special counseling initiatives for low-income students and/or those from traditionally underserved backgrounds. We will offer a summary of what we have learned from these programs, challenges that remain, and our recommendations. Building a Path to Potential: CTY Ireland Dr. Colm O’Reilly CTY Ireland is a successful application of the CTY model in a European context. Based at Dublin City University (DCU) the programme offers college like courses to high ability students aged 6 to 16. For the last 20 years CTY Ireland has expanded rapidly and to date over 50,000 students have attended this programme including 5,000 students in the last academic year. Even with the great success of the programme we believed that we were still underrepresented by students from lower income backgrounds on the course. In 2006 with the help of the DCU Access service The Centre for Academic Achievement (CAA) programme was founded to allow primary school students from socio-economically disadvantaged areas of Dublin to attend special after school classes at Dublin City University. The goal was to encourage high ability students who traditionally would not have access to university resources and materials towards an academic path and to fulfill their potential. The programme has been a great success, with over 1,600 students attending courses at the CAA programme, including 400 students during the current academic year. In the last three years the CAA programme has been further expanded to incorporate the low income students on to the main CTY programme. To date 300 students have availed of this opportunity. The programme has been the subject of two doctoral research thesis and findings have included an increase in the number of students hoping to attending university in the future and a boost in self confidence for the participants.

This paper will describe setting up the programme and outline the benefits for the participants and the challenges moving forward to expand the initiative.

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Providing Hope in Greece: a Foundation-supported Effort to Find and Develop Talent  Symposia contribution  Presentation

Presenter: Antonios Apostolou

In 2012, in response to the economic collapse in Greece, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation decided to invest in education and, more specifically, to invest in identifying and developing the brightest young minds amongst Greek pre-university students. The Foundation entered into the project in an environment where most groups were curtailing their funding and amidst a politically unstable and highly charged situation. Against this backdrop of anxiety and growing governmental mistrust, the Foundation was particularly sensitive to charges of favoritism, of perpetuating pre-existing privileged positions that had helped lead to the collapse, and to charges of elitism. Therefore, from the launch, the project to establish a CTY Greece necessitated a robust effort to ensure fairness and transparency in the selection process and a concentrated drive to find students from not only the elite schools in places like Athens and Thessaloniki but also students from the most poorly-resourced governmental schools in the more remote areas of the country.

This presentation examines the challenges of launching a nationwide talent search in shifting political environment and shares the lessons learned during the false starts of working through governmental channels. More importantly, this presentation is a story of grassroots efforts using both non-governmental and local connections to build an effective awareness campaign, to launch a nationwide talent search, and to identify students from Athens to Thessaloniki and Sofades to Rhodes. The talk further discusses the programmatic opportunities and issues of bringing together students from urban and rural settings and from the most elite private schools and most humble governmental schools in a highly stratified country.

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A National Response to Talent Development: Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, Kazakhstan  Symposia contribution  Presentation

Presenter: Miras Baimyrza

In 2008, President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev initiated the reform of Kazakhstani secondary education. Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) project was established as a government-supported, autonomous educational organisation set to build and support the network of twenty high-performing schools dedicated to nurturing and developing high-quality, competitive secondary schools in Kazakhstan. The main vision is to invest in Kazakhstan’s capacity to sustain its development trajectory.

Every Nazarbayev Intellectual school is tri-lingual (Kazakh, Russian, and English) and focuses on mathematics and science, specifically in two main streams: mathematics/physics and chemistry/biology. These experimental schools are open to every student in Kazakhstan; some have boarding facilities for students from rural areas. Most schools start at grade seven, though some of the schools start at an even younger age.

To find qualified children from across the country, the school network moves far beyond the major cities like Almaty and Astana to remote regions of Kazakhstan. Students are chosen based on academic achievement as well as academic ability. Selection has been an evolving process that has consistently placed a high premium on openness and transparency.

This presentation offers an overview of Nazarbayev Intellectual schools’ mission and pays particular attention to the issues of accessibility by focusing on issues of selection, site location, and teacher training. It further examines the challenges of multiple international partnerships and the importance of not just adopting but also adapting the best practice to fit the educational needs and cultural contexts. Lastly, we discuss the aspects of transferring the experience of Nazarabayev Intellectual schools to the mainstream schools of Kazakhstan.

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A National Response to Talent Development: Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, Kazakhstan  Symposia contribution  Presentation

Presenter: Leila Nurakayeva

In 2008, President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev initiated the reform of Kazakhstani secondary education. Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) project was established as a government-supported, autonomous educational organisation set to build and support the network of twenty high-performing schools dedicated to nurturing and developing high-quality, competitive secondary schools in Kazakhstan. The main vision is to invest in Kazakhstan’s capacity to sustain its development trajectory.

Every Nazarbayev Intellectual school is tri-lingual (Kazakh, Russian, and English) and focuses on mathematics and science, specifically in two main streams: mathematics/physics and chemistry/biology. These experimental schools are open to every student in Kazakhstan; some have boarding facilities for students from rural areas. Most schools start at grade seven, though some of the schools start at an even younger age.

To find qualified children from across the country, the school network moves far beyond the major cities like Almaty and Astana to remote regions of Kazakhstan. Students are chosen based on academic achievement as well as academic ability. Selection has been an evolving process that has consistently placed a high premium on openness and transparency.

This presentation offers an overview of Nazarbayev Intellectual schools’ mission and pays particular attention to the issues of accessibility by focusing on issues of selection, site location, and teacher training. It further examines the challenges of multiple international partnerships and the importance of not just adopting but also adapting the best practice to fit the educational needs and cultural contexts. Lastly, we discuss the aspects of transferring the experience of Nazarabayev Intellectual schools to the mainstream schools of Kazakhstan.

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