Networking and Collaborating

Collaborations often grow out of networks with others in a school or community and involve two or more individuals who work together toward a common goal. For example, teachers work together in planning units of study, families connect with schools in developing educational plans for their children, schools network with businesses in creating mentoring opportunities, and universities collaborate with schools in conducting research to determine effective practices. During these interactions individuals may share their expertise, resources, responsibilities, and accountability for the outcomes. Networking and collaborating are important psychosocial skills and are recognized in most talent development models. For example, Bloom (1985) described the significance of mentors; Tannenbaum (1986), the significance of environmental factors where the individual creates and develops relationships; and Subotnik et al. (2011), the role of social skills and social capital in Talent Development. This issue of Gifted Child Today focuses on these important skills in a variety of contexts where families, educators, community members, and/or university faculty work together in identifying gifted students and creating learning opportunities. In the first article, Mahoney, Patrick, Pennington, Brown, Moon, and Brighton describe how the school developed relationships with families through evening literacy events. The school involved librarians, teachers, students, and families of English learners in rich and varied environmental print learning activities. The authors found that these events fostered positive home-school connections and supported parents in engaging their children in literacy experiences at home. Bailey and Newman connected students to professionals and a real audience by using a projectbased learning model. By compacting an English honors course, the teacher was able to create 20% of the students’ classroom time for interest-driven projects. They include examples where students worked with mentors, collaborated with professors at local universities, and presented their project using a “Ted-Talk Style” format. Halford, Imbeau, and Eilers collaborated on an action research project to examine a literacy intervention and its effects on increasing vocabulary knowledge of sixth grade students. The teacher not only learned about the research process but also found that the students’ confidence in vocabulary knowledge improved as they gained a deeper understanding of the nuances of language. Using Response-to-Intervention (RtI), McClurg, Codalata, Bell, and McCallum examined a curriculumbased measurement (CBM) in reading to determine whether the assessment was effective in identifying fourth grade students who were achieving above grade level. By incorporating giftedness into the RtI framework, which is frequently used to determine service needs for students who are underperforming, the authors were able to collaborate with all educators by providing an evidence-based method to screen for giftedness. They found that the CBM had a sufficient ceiling and was able to find advanced students, which might contribute to the identification of children from more diverse backgrounds. We hope you enjoy this issue and are able to use some of these authors’ ideas to create more opportunities for networking and collaborating within your school and community.