The Effects of An Enrichment Program on the Families of Participants: A Multiple-Case Study

The effects of an enrichment program on the families of participating students were explored in this discovery-oriented, retrospective, multiple-case study. The enrichment program investigated was a pull out program based on the Purdue Three-Stage Model that helped identified gifted and talented elementary children develop creative and critical thinking, problem solving, and independent learning skills (Feldhusen and Kolloff, 1978, 1986). Criterion-based selection procedures were used to select the participants (ten families of high school seniors who had participated in the program for at least three years in elementary school). Data were collected through family interviews, questionnaires, and archival records, and were analyzed by inductive, constanl-comparative procedures (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Goetz and LeCompte, 1984; Strauss and Corbin, 1990) and by data displays (Miles and Huberman, 1994). The findings suggest that, in most cases, the program had a positive influence on both family relationships and home-school relationships.