An examination of the effectiveness of gifted education programs from the perspective of a comparison between two programs

Abstract

This research article compares between two of the longest programs intended to nurture gifted children: Terman's genetic studies of genius, which started in 1921, and included 1528 children, and took about 70 years, and the Erika Landau institute in Tel Aviv, which opened in 1969, and is still functioning, with about 800 new children aged 5-14 taking part in its course every year. The study deal with the question of research done in each of these projects, along with the main purpose which is the well-being of the participants and their fulfilling their potential. It looks for the reasons of a high productivity in terms of publications of the Terman study versus the comparatively much lesser written materials that the Erika Landau has produced over the years. As expected, multiple reasons have contributed to this difference, among them were the different personality of the founders, the focus of work at each project, and mainly the cooperative work of very many staff member and the appointing an heir, a successor in each new generation for continuing the research on the Terman children, while the centrality of the late Dr. Landau, that has prevented the possibility of a continuous research in the institute.