INTERACTIVE PROGRAMS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF RESEARCH ACTIVITY OF GIFTED PUPILS

We've made a research of intellectual giftness of Ukrainian school pupils and the results coincide with international comparisons of pupils` academic progress indexes and confirm that a high percentage of the most gifted children (40-60%) are underachieving. Most of them get lower marks than their talent allows them to get. One of the reasons is that strictly regulated learning process developed for an average pupil doesn't correspond to the tempo of intellectual abilities development of a gifted one. That leads to dissatisfaction and estrangement of pupils who don't get tasks according to their intellectual level and they work without revealing their whole potential. From the point of view of the Institute of the Gifted Child (IGC) of the Academy of Pedagogical Science of Ukraine one of the ways to solve this problem is to create a stimulating intellectual medium, enriched with interactive programs of giftness development, which give an opportunity to communicate through virtual path. These programs are developed by specialists who have a huge experience in organizing of research activity in the learning process. We have also engaged outstanding scientists, inventors, honored teachers, winners of professional contests from all over Ukraine.
It was established that in the secondary school age the giftness gets subject direction. One of its main characteristics is the domination of motives connected with the contents of studying (orientation to new knowledge and ways of its acquirement) and organization of the learning process itself. In order to enrich the content of gifted pupils education in Ukraine there were implemented interactive intersubject researching programs-contests, supported by IGC : science program "Kolosok", all-Ukrainian contest in physics - "Levenia", in history - "Leleka", for young technicians - "Technic-Junior" and research program "My Planet Earth". The peculiarities of these programs are the following: any secondary school pupil of 3-8 grade has an opportunity to participate, children do information searching and research work by their own, pupils do information searching on tasks received from organizing committee 2.5-3 months before the contests, there is also parents` involvement etc. The participants of these programs can do their researching in summer schools where they continue to form their research skills.
For the further support of pupils` research works there is a governmental out-of-school institution called the Academy of Young Scientists of Ukraine (AYS). Its goal is to develop pupils` scientific creativity. As a rule, pupils of high school who are motivated to scientific search are involved in AYS work. IGC develops its own programs of high school pupils’ research activity support which are being implemented using IT on learning cooperation support server called "AYS Virtual School". We've successfully launched and tested the "Virtual school of inventions", the "Virtual School of Young Researcher" and have developed some other interdisciplinary projects. The main goal of these programs is the formation of basic creative skills, psychological support of gifted individuals and satisfaction of their intellectual needs.
The approaches given above have proved their efficiency as to providing the motivation and operational support of the research activity of intellectually gifted pupils and giving an opportunity to realize their academic potential.