Academic Talent Research Articles

A Comparison of Short and Long Einsteinian Physics Intervention Programmes in Middle School

The need to modernise school physics to encompass the fundamentals of Einsteinian physics is widely recognised. While the ability of students to comprehend qualitative Einsteinian concepts has been demonstrated, little information exists to determine the best student age and the duration of instruction required for introducing Einsteinian physics concepts. Here, we compare 1-day excursion-based interventions with longer 10- and 20-lesson interventions spread over 3 and 10 weeks, respectively. The programmes covered similar materials with quantitative evaluations for students in year 7 and 9 (13–15 years old). While short-duration interventions are shown to be adequate for introducing core concepts, the longer-duration interventions led to significantly improved uptake of derived concepts. Differences in uptake according to academic talent and gender were observed, particularly for derived concepts. The students tested had generally positive attitudes to science, which changed little during the interventions. The results provide valuable information for introducing Einsteinian physics at schools.

Evaluación de la aplicación del programa educativo para el entrenamiento de los estudiantes que participan en las Olimpiadas de Química

La educación en Cuba ha prestado gran atención al entrenamiento de los estudiantes que participan en los concursos de conocimientos y en las olimpiadas. Por esta razón, los estudiantes ganadores de la Olimpiada Nacional realizan un proceso de preparación especial, con el fin de participar en los eventos internacionales. El proceso que se desarrolla constituye una de las vías de atención al talento académico en química, pues la mayoría de ellos optan por carreras relacionadas con esta ciencia. Esto justifica el objetivo de este trabajo: evaluar el programa educativo aplicado a los estudiantes que participaron en el proceso de entrenamiento para su participación en las Olimpiadas de Conocimientos de Química, desde las esferas cognitiva-instrumental, motivacional-afectiva y psicosocial, aspectos que forman parte de una investigación realizada. Los métodos investigativos utilizados a fin de cumplir este objetivo fueron: análisis documental, análisis y síntesis, la prueba estadística, determinación del coeficiente de correlación multidimensional, técnicas y pruebas psicológicas. Como resultado se presentan las acciones a realizar para la ejecución del programa, la información obtenida luego de la aplicación de varios instrumentos y la utilización del coeficiente multidimensional en la determinación de la coherencia entre los indicadores propuestos en las tres analizadas durante la investigación.

Can Psychological Questionnaires Predict the Academic Talent during Higher Education Studies?

The space between secondary-school gifted education and starting one’s academic career is what is termed higher education talent management in this context. The “talent management”, in the aspect of the Hungarian higher education, refers to academically talented students, who prepare to the scientific career. So, the talent management in higher education can be imagined as a bridge between formal school studies and scientific career. In this research, I investigated empirically, with psychological questionnaires and other indicators what features and personality-traits contribute to academic/scientific success (number of scientific activities). 144 talented students were recruited to this research; all of them participated in a talent program or conception. The 5-page test pack included mainly professional psychological tests. The data was analyzed with linear regression statistical method, where the dependent variable was an index calculated from the students’ scientific activities. The regression model has been significant (F=3,453; df=128; p<0,05), but owing to the weak R-square value (0,226), the results are not suitable to the practical adaptation and talent identification.

The Importance of Developing Youth Academic Specific Talents Through Effective Interpersonal Communication

Each individual is born with diverse talents. One of the types of self-talent is the specific academic talent that potentially benefits for children's future. In this case, effective interpersonal communication between parents and children may influence the process of exploring and developing specific academic talents. This study aims to describe influential factors in the development of special self-talent and analyze how interpersonal communication can be used to assist the process. Accordingly, qualitative research conducted using observation, interviews, and documentation. This study interviewed 4 students with high achieving scores in the specific academic subject and their parent, as well as 1 teacher of supervising coordinator in SMA Negeri 3 Samarinda. The results show that effective interpersonal communication between parents and children played an important role to help the development of adolescent talents.

Differentiating Among High-Achieving Learners: A Comparison of Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory on Above-Level Testing

This study investigated the application of item response theory (IRT) to expand the range of ability estimates for gifted (hereinafter referred to as high-achieving) students’ performance on an above-level test. Using a sample of fourth- to sixth-grade high-achieving students ( N = 1,893), we conducted a study to compare estimates from two measurement theories, classical test theory (CTT) and IRT. CTT and IRT make different assumptions about the analysis that impact the reliability and validity of the scores obtained from the test. IRT can also differentiate students based on the student’s grade or within a grade by using the unique string of correct and incorrect answers the student makes while taking the test. This differentiation may have implications for identifying or classifying students who are ready for advanced coursework. An exploration of the differentiation for Math, Reading, and Science tests and the impact the different measurement frameworks can have on classification of students are explored. Implications for academic talent identification with the talent search model and development of academic talent are discussed.

Developing academic talent as a practicing school psychologist: From potential to expertise

AbstractIn this article, we explore how school psychologists who adopt a talent development perspective can play a larger role in cultivating the talent of academically gifted students. Utilizing the talent development megamodel and Ackerman's model of expertise, we outline how school psychologists can consult with school administrators, teachers, and parents to meet the general and domain‐specific academic needs of academically gifted students at home and in school. In addition, we discuss how school psychologists can leverage systems of assessment (e.g., universal screening, continued assessment) to identify academically gifted students across academic talent trajectories as well as provide students with multiple opportunities to exhibit their academic talents. We conclude by highlighting some diversity and multi‐cultural considerations that school psychologists should keep in mind while developing academic talent, as well as a policy implication of school psychologists adopting a talent development approach to their work.

How Can Be Academic Talent Measured During Higher Education Studies? - An Exploratory Study

Many articles claim that talent management is a very important aspect of higher education. Despite of this, the studies, which investigate this topic empirically, are very rare. The Hungarian higher education talent management focuses mainly on academic-, scientific aspect of talent. So, the main purpose of talent-management is the academic reinforcement, namely, growing up a new generation of scientist/university teachers. The talent management in higher education can be imagined as a bridge between formal school studies and scientific career. In this study, I search answer for the (research) question: how should academic talent be measured during higher education studies? Moreover, does it have any sense to identify the academic talents during even their higher education studies? The research is based on opinion of 170 university teachers who supervised talented students during a young-researcher competition. The method was questionnaire-method. The questions gathered round two main topics: (1) identifying of talented students and cooperation with talented students; (2) own career of supervisor university teachers. The results had been analyzed with descriptive statistics which show the mostly chosen talent-identifying methods and features of talented students. The open-ended questions had been content-analyzed. The data of university-teacher’s career had been analyzed with mathematical statistical tests (ANOVAs, Two-sample T tests, correlations) where the dependent variable was the number of publication (as indicator of the scientific performance). The results may suggest conceptions for talent-programs (honor programs) based on academic talent; for doctoral schools, and for any other institutes who works with career entrant scientist. The scientific reinforcement would be more effective if scientific programs/scholarships/PhD-programs used professional methods during selection process, instead of subjective choices, based on CV and motivation letter.

Talent management practices: perceptions of academics in Egyptian public business schools

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to focus on 3 out of 24 business schools in Egypt in order to investigate their talent management practices of academics.Design/methodology/approachA total of 350 academics were contacted and 245 of them were interviewed in 49 face-to-face focus groups. The interview length for each focus group is about 45 min and is conducted in Arabic, the mother tongue of all respondents. Upon conducting the interviews, the authors used thematic analysis to determine the main ideas in the transcripts.FindingsThe authors did not detect any systematic approach for the management of academic talent in the chosen public business schools. Instead, there were irresponsible unorderly procedures undertaken by these business schools in staffing, empowering, motivating, evaluating and retaining those talents. Furthermore, the authors realized an absence of many cultural and technical dimensions like adaptability, consistency and knowledge sharing which may hurdle academic staff desires to do their best effort in teaching and conducting research. Moreover, these addressed academic members narrow perception of the concept “talent” that includes only musical and sports figures – the matter that reflects their lack of understanding for one of the hottest concepts in HR academic and practical arenas nowadays.Research limitations/ implicationsThe focus is only on a single perspective (academics) and a single area (Upper Egypt) – a matter that neglects a variety of views (e.g. minister of Egyptian higher education and schools’ deans). Additionally, the results/findings of this study cannot be generalized to academic settings in other countries because the data are collected only from public business schools in Upper Egypt.Originality/valueThis paper contributes by filling a gap in HR management, in which empirical studies on the practices of managing talents have been limited so far.

A glimpse inside the lives of the academically talented: What merit scholars and their parents reveal

ABSTRACT To gain a deep and integrative understanding of the conditions associated with academic talent development, a cross-case qualitative study was conducted wherein six National Merit Scholars and their parents were interviewed. Findings from each case study pertaining to home, school, and personal conditions were revealed. Cross-case analysis revealed that the Scholars were raised in enriched two-parent homes with multiple children by well-educated parents. In that home environment, the Scholars showed precocious abilities and acquired positive values about educational success. Children emerged from their early home environments highly motivated, independent, and hard-working. Thereafter, parents had minimal involvement in students’ academic success. Schooling played an important role too. Scholars benefited from an assortment of special educational opportunities such as home-schooling and programs for academically gifted. Scholars were also positively influenced by peers, and they engaged in many activities outside academics. Results generally fit with the talent literature with two exceptions: (a) Scholars did not demonstrate a singleness of purpose and (b) parents seemingly had minimal involvement in their child’s academic success during the school years.

Mobilidade acadêmica internacional e depósito de patentes no país de origem

Resumo Este artigo tem por objetivo verificar a existência de relação positiva entre a mobilidade acadêmica internacional (MAI) e a inovação (depósito de patentes) no país de origem do talento acadêmico. A tese defendida é que existe relação positiva para o país de origem. Se em um primeiro momento os efeitos positivos dessa relação beneficiam os países de destino, em um segundo momento há efeito positivo para os países de origem. Fazendo uso de abordagem metodológica quantitativa, de caráter descritivo, esta pesquisa explorou dados primários cedidos pelo Instituto Nacional de Propriedade Industrial (INPI) e dados secundários extraídos da Plataforma Lattes. Considerando as duas universidades que reuniram o maior número de patentes publicadas em 2014 - Universidade de São Paulo (USP) e Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) - chegou-se ao nome dos 30 inventores mais produtivos em número de patentes depositadas, em cada uma das instituições. Dados relativos à trajetória acadêmica e profissional de 472 pesquisadores foram extraídos da Plataforma Lattes dos 282 inventores da USP e dos 190 da Unicamp. Os resultados confirmam a tese, contribuindo para o campo de estudos sobre a MAI e os efeitos para os países envolvidos. Ademais, este artigo apresenta contribuições para a esfera de políticas públicas vinculadas à ciência e tecnologia do país.

FACTORS TRIGGERING ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR, FAILURE AND SUCCESS: A CASE STUDY OF A HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION

Purpose of Study: In today's digital era, every individual is claimed must be able to create and innovate in order to be able to thrive in the future so that the resilience of the company will be strengthened. Currently higher education institution is in need of change in order to maintain the survival and development within the competitive world. Organizational citizenship behavior, is a role that exceed the basic obligations undertaken by an employee. This research aims to reveal the influence of transformational leadership, organizational climate, work motivation, and job satisfaction towards Organizational citizenship behavior. Methodology: Data was retrieved via survey method using questionnairesmethod of data collection. The population of the present srudy is thelecturers of Pembangunan Nasional "Veteran" University of East Java. Purposive sampling method has been used, with approximately 187 lecturers already working for more than 5 years. Hypothesis testing are conducted using Partial Least Square analysis (PLS). Main Findings:The results exhibited thattwo hypotheses were accepted and two other hypotheses were rejected. Organizational climate and job satisfaction have an influence on Organizational citizenship behavior, while transformational leadership and work motivation have no effect toward Organizational citizenship behavior. Implications/ Applications: The results provide a guidance for the reasons for success and failure of OCB. The success of OCB is characterized by an organizational climate that is able to improve performance and provide job satisfaction. Whereas the failure of OCB implementation was caused by transformational leadership who were unable to change behavior and motivated lecturers to voluntarily help friends in doing their jobs.Based on the findings, it is suitable to emphasise the need for improving workplace climate as well as job satisfaction. Employers that would like to retain talented academics in their academic institutions should not be concerned about leadership quality and work motivation which has no impact on the citizenship behaviour. The insights are particularly useful in the case of Indonesia trying to develop its national education system to be on par with more developed economies and produce graduates who are employable on a global scale.

Development of Talent Model based on Publication Performance using Apriori Technique

The main problem or challenge faced by Human Resource Management (HRM) is to recognize, develop and manage talent efficiently and effectively. This is because HRM is responsible for selecting the correct talent for suitable positions at the right time, aligned with their existing qualifications, talents and achievements. Furthermore, the decision in identifying talent for a position must be fair, truthful and appropriate. In the academic field, publication is a core component in the evaluation of academic talent that is affected by research, supervision and conference. Therefore, this study proposed an academic talent model based on publication factor using the Apriori technique for the purpose of promotion. This study applies the Apriori based Association Rules algorithm to identify a set of meaningful rules for the assessment of significant relevant talents for the promotion of academic staff in local universities. The findings have successfully developed a model based on talent acquisition of knowledge related to the issuance and have been evaluated by comparing the guidelines for the promotion of academic experts. This knowledge helps to improve the quality of the evaluation process of academic talent management and future planning in HRM.

Lecturers’ Perceptions of Factors that Attract Talent in a Ghanaian Higher Learning Institution

Creating a sustainable competitive advantage requires higher learning institutions to attract, motivate, develop and retain the talented staff they need now and in the future. However, the technical universities in Ghana are facing significant challenges in attracting and retaining talents to academic positions since their conversion. Besides, there exists limited research on factors that attract talented academics to these institutions as preferred employers. The main objective of this study was therefore to examine lecturers’ perceptions of factors that attract talents to academic positions within a Ghanaian higher learning institution; in this instance, Sunyani Technical University (STU). A qualitative approach was adopted for this study; semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain data. The study participants comprised of 23 lecturers selected from the university under study. The findings show that nine themes are related to the attraction of talents to the universities: career development and advancement, opportunities to make a contribution, employer branding and prestige, job security, flexible working hours, intellectual stimulation, innovation, opportunity to apply skills and autonomy. The results challenge higher learning institutions to develop a superior employer brand with a strong employee value proposition (EVP) that would attract, develop and reward talented academics for their work efforts. The study provides important practical guidelines that could assist the university studied and other higher learning institutions to attract talented lecturers and become employers of choice.

Синергетика особистісно-орієнтованого розвитку академічної обдарованості

Синергетика особистісно-орієнтованого розвитку академічної обдарованості

Prediction of Academic Talent Capacity Based on Gradient Boosting Decision Tree

Talent introduction is an important force of academic development in universities. As the core of talent introduction, prediction of academic talent capacity is an essential and valuable research. However, it is hard to apply traditional statistical methods to extract knowledge from the mass and multi-dimensional talent information. Data mining approaches as up-to-date and efficient technologies are good at analyzing information, extracting patterns or rules from a big dataset and then making a prediction based on the relationship among extracted information. In this study, a series of data mining approaches are employed to evaluate the academic capacity of talent and to analyze the correlation between features. The Principal Component Analysis and Random Forest are used to feature extraction for improving the accuracy of prediction. A classical classification model, Gradient Boosting Decision Tree, is used as the primary analytic model to prediction. In order to validate the effectiveness of the model, other five classification models are used to conduct a comparative experiment based on prediction accuracy values and the F-measure metric. Further, to investigate the contribution of some important features, we make a marginal utility analysis of important features which have a high correlation with academic talent capacity. The experiment results reveals the important features for academic capacity and the positive factors for the academic production of talents.

Islamic Finance Education: Is There a Misallocation of Resources Between Curriculum and Academic Talent?

The numerical global growth rates of Islamic Finance (IF) have been impressive over the last two decades, albeit a slight slow-down in recent years. As a response to this impressive growth rate, Islamic Finance education boomed during the last decade, with the aim of filling the apparent demand for graduates in Islamic Finance. This presentation will shed light on two specific issues. Firstly, what is the actual demand for human resource in Islamic Finance and is there really an excessive demand for Islamic Finance graduates? Secondly, is there a misallocation of resources between curriculum requirements of a standard Islamic Finance curriculum and the structure of academic talent teaching Islamic Finance? The presentation will share findings from the Malaysian Islamic Finance Education Report 2016 that highlights areas of concern. With the tremendous growth of Islamic Finance education in Pakistan in recent years, it is hoped that these findings will lead to a healthy debate about the curriculum structure and human resource planning that should be given serious attention by all stakeholders involved in Islamic Finance education.

Talent management in transnational higher education: strategies for managing academic staff at international branch campuses

ABSTRACT The study investigates the practices of academic staff talent management at international branch campuses, with the aim of identifying a range of practical strategies that may address the unique challenges of managing talent in campuses located far away from the home country. These strategies are intended to improve service quality and add value to institution profiles. Based on an online questionnaire, ad hoc email correspondence and publicly available information, five case studies are presented. Talent management emerges as a key strategic area, directly managed at dean/president level. Referrals and online portals are commonly utilised as channels to attract talent, and the need to sometimes uplift local packages to recruit and retain talent is recognised. It is concluded that the development of academic staff should be viewed as an investment, and the availability of research funding and teaching awards on campus may be used to attract, develop and retain talent.

Do crib sheets improve student performance on tests? Evidence from principles of economics

This study uses individual-level data to examine whether the use of a crib sheet can boost the test performance of students in principles of economics. We find that crib sheets have the potential to significantly improve student performance, an outcome that is largely attributable to performance in principles of macroeconomics. Based on our findings, there is no clear indication that cooperative crib sheets, as implemented in this experiment, are more effective than individual crib sheets. In fact, we find that the collaborative process may hinder performance. We find that female students do worse on tests generally and that students with a higher academic classification and more academic talent tend to do better. However, we don’t find that crib sheets heterogeneously impact performance within these groups.

Aceleración y enriquecimiento curricular para estudiantes con altas capacidades: una perspectiva de la situación en el Perú

It is proposed to theoretically review the main strategies of acceleration and curricular enrichment aimed at gifted students. Information has been sought nationally and internationally and some strategies have been compiled that have demonstrated to be useful for time use and the enhancement of academic talent. The question at issue has been scarcely worked in the country, providing evidence lack of interest from academics, as well as the Peruvian education system. Emphasis is placed on the importance that parents and teachers being able to know and select effective alternatives to attend the needs of the most capable students. Finally, the subject is discussed from a psychoeducational and rights perspective, framed in the Peruvian context.

Mediating role of innovativeness between risk taking and performance in Indian universities

PurposeWith increased globalization, Indian universities are struggling to attract and retain talented academics and are exploring the ways to enhance their service performance and brand image (BI). However, there is a paucity of studies that view universities through the corporate lens. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of innovativeness in the relationships of creativity, risk taking (RT), and performance in service delivery (PSD). Another objective is to find out how this nexus affects universities’ BI.Design/methodology/approachResponses were collected from 280 academics working for different Indian universities. Structural analysis was performed to examine the relationships under investigation.FindingsThe results indicate that innovativeness fully mediates the positive RT – PSD relationship and that PSD positively influences BI.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of this study mainly augment the theory of BI by empirically linking BI and its antecedents in the context of Indian universities.Practical implicationsFor enhancing a university’s BI, management is encouraged to promote RT work culture along with innovative and creative teaching methods.Originality/valueThis study is one of the few studies in India that see academia through the corporate lens. Also, it provides evidence for the importance innovativeness in enhancing BI of a university.