Who Is Gifted? The Stability of Scores on the DISCOVER Assessment and the Raven's Progressive Matrices in Dine Gifted Children (original) (raw)

2018, Turkish Journal of Giftedness and Education

The purpose of this study was to investigate the sta- bility of the Discovering Intellectual Strengths and Ca- pabilities through Observation while allowing for Varied Ethic Responses (DISCOVER) assessment, when used across time, to identify 74 Diné gifted chil- dren, and the Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM), when used across time, to identify 52 Diné gifted chil- dren. Students were tested when they were in the sec- ond, third, and fourth grades. An analysis of the data using three methods (viz., calculating the change dif- ferences on each student’s scores, obtaining correla- tion coefficients, and applying a linear single regres- sion analysis across the three testing periods) pro- vides evidence of the stability of three of the five DISCOVER activities—Spatial Analytical, Spatial Artistic, and Oral Linguistic, as well as the overall score. The overall DISCOVER score provides greater evidence of stability than do students’ scores from the RPM, which varied from year to year. Based on the results of this study, the authors concluded that the DIS- COVER assessment is a culturally fair instrument, and is more appropriate when used to identify Diné gifted children than traditional tests. Future researchers may consider conducting a long and large-scale longitudi- nal investigation into the same research problem, as well as designing a mixed-method study to investi- gate how Diné children understand the RPM prob- lems to highlight any potential cultural components.