Acceleration is a well-researched educational intervention supporting positive outcomes for high-ability students. However, access to acceleration may be restricted due to educators’ misapprehensions about this practice. To better understand whether students share educators’ concerns, our study explored 26 high-ability students’ beliefs about important considerations in grade-based acceleration. Seventeen high-ability students who had accelerated (age 9-14 years) participated in group concept mapping activities, which involved sorting and rating a list of student-generated considerations. We applied multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis to the sorted data to create a structured conceptualization of students’ advice on deciding to accelerate. Our analyses revealed the following six key concepts, from most to least important: (a) Best Learning Environment, (b) Child’s Preferences, (c) Abilities Across Different Subjects, (d) Peer Group, (e) Context and School Support, and (f) Social Considerations. Our interpretations include comparison of high-ability students’ advice to existing acceleration guidelines. Practical implications are discussed.

中文翻译：

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关于决定加速：高能力学生确定关键考虑因素

加速是一项经过充分研究的教育干预措施，支持高能力学生取得积极成果。但是，由于教育者对这种做法的误解，可能会限制获得加速。为了更好地了解学生是否与教育者一样关注，我们的研究探讨了 26 名高能力学生对基于年级加速的重要考虑因素的看法。17 名加速的高能力学生（9-14 岁）参加了小组概念图活动，其中包括对学生产生的考虑因素列表进行排序和评分。我们将多维缩放和层次聚类分析应用于排序的数据，以创建学生关于决定加速的建议的结构化概念化。我们的分析揭示了以下六个关键概念，从最重要到最不重要：(a) 最佳学习环境，(b) 儿童的偏好，(c) 跨学科的能力，(d) 同龄人群体，(e) 环境和学校支持，以及 (f) 社会考虑。我们的解释包括将高能力学生的建议与现有的加速指南进行比较。讨论了实际意义。