Michael Pyryt wrote:

Jane,

Here goes!!! Let me know if there's too much or too little.

Michael

Michael, where did you grow up? Where did you go to school?
Please tell me what your early years were like.

I grew up in Garfield, New Jersey--a working class town about 15 miles
from New York City. Most people tended to be Polish or Italian. I'm Polish (on
my father's side) and Irish and French/German (on my mother's side).

I went to St. Stanislaus Kostka Elementary School (K-8). Most
kids were Polish and Polish was taught as a graded subject. The school occupied the
2nd and 3rd floors of a building. (The church was on the first floor and the
Parish Hall was in the basement). There was one class per grade about 30-40 students
taught by nuns. School was pretty easy; I was pretty conforming so wasn't bothered by
the lack of challenge. I was fortunate to be an altar boy in Grades 5-8. Besides
getting to carry the incense, I missed a lot of class going to meetings,
rehearsals, services, and house blessings. I also loved watching Sports and played midget
league football.

I went to Don Bosco Preparatory High School, an all-boys Catholic
School. Although only a 20-minute automobile ride from where I lived, It was a
75-minute bus ride each morning and afternoon trucking through Northern New jersey
picking up/dropping off students. For the most part, academics came easy. The school took
a semi-homogeneous grouping approach. I was somewhat bothered by the
rigidity and lack of challenge. Still, I played the school game and graduated 3rd
out-of-a class of 170. I was on the football team on year and have the splinters
to prove it.

Then I went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, majoring in psychology. I
quickly experienced the difference between being a big fish in a little pond
and a little fish in a big pond. I loved Hopkins. It was very challenging and
stimulating. I worked my butt off as did everyone else. I got my BA in psych; stayed
for an M.Ed. in gifted education, and went off to Kansas for my doctorate in
educational psychology and research with a focus on gifted.

Jane,

Talk a little more about your college years. What was it like for a
working class Polish American boy to be at a school like Johns Hopkins? Did you
experience any feeling of "difference," of discrimination?

Demographics were a non-issue. When I went there in 1971, the Freshman
class size was about 500 from all over the US and several countries.
The majority of students were from the Middle Atlantic and Northeast
states. It was clear from the beginning that past laurels meant
nothing. The challenge for everyone was to perform up to expectations.
Everyone was capable of success and had high aspirations. (Those that
I knew from New York City went to places like Bronx HS of Science,
Stuyvesant, Horace Mann, and Hunter).

What did you like to do in your spare/leisure time.

I was an active member of Sigma Nu Fraternity. It was a great living
experience for three years. Hopkins became truly co-educational in
1971, my Freshman year. The Sigma Nu chapter at Hopkins accepted female
members--which was quite radical in 1971. Our 4-story row house had 11
inhabitants, 9 males, 2 females.

I was also active in the Catholic Community on campus. It provided an
opportunity to share faith and fellowship with other students and some
faculty.

Springtime in Baltimore means HOPKINS LACROSSE. Part of the Hopkins'
experience is becoming passionate about lacrosse. I attended every home
lacrosse game and several on the road each year.

What were some of your favorite classes/professors?

I learned something in every class. Sometimes I learned about areas
that I wasn't cut-out for. In the few literature courses I took, I
generally got trashed for psychoanalyzing authors rather than using
text-based literary criticism.

I liked psychology courses the best. I could go on forever about this
but will try to keep it manageable by trying to focus on things that
affect my research approach today.

My first semester I tool a seminar (psych majors only) called the
"Social Psychology of Science with William Garvey, the Chair of the
Psychology Department at the time. Garvey published several important
papers on the communication process in science. He wrote about the
importance of scientific conferences for networking and learning about
the latest research.
Garvey's class was important for several reasons. First, he talked
about the career, lifestyle, expectations, security of tenure of
academic psychologists. (I went to Hopkins thinking I would go into
clinical and was exposed to the idea of being a"Psychology Professor").
Second, the class ended up doing a group research project on attitudes
towards "science and
technological." The class developed a survey and disseminated in
convenience samples of high schools and colleges that class members had
access to. Then different class members analyzed different parts of the
study. I examined the relationship between religious orientation and
attitudes towards science and technology. I was given a print-out of
chi-squares which
revealed nothing. On further examination, I found some interesting
differences in response style. Jews and Protestants tended to be more
skeptical (which is needed in Science) while Catholics tended to agree
with most statements. The paper that i wrote was well-received and
increased my confidence to pursue psychology and research.

My advisor my first two years was Mary Ainsworth, world-renowned for her
work in infant attachment. I took two courses with her. She was a
strong believer in longitudinal research. Although I certainly conduct
one-shot studies, all my grants ask for funding to do longitudinal work.
I also learned the importance of early attachments for subsequent
development, a concept I keep in mind when trying to understand
individuals.

I enjoyed my courses in social psychology with Clinton DeSoto. I did a
few independent projects focusing on eye contact. I published a paper
on gender differences in the perception of the meaning of eye contact in
Letters and Papers in the Social Sciences, an undergraduate
peer-reviewed journal at Hopkins.

Finally, my senior year, I took Julian Stanley's Educational and
Psychological Measurement in the Fall. I was exposed to tests such as
the Raven's Progressive Matrices, Terman Concept Mastery Test,
Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values, and Holland's Self-Directed
Search. In the Spring, I took Julian's, "The Gifted Child." This was
the start of my studies in gifted
education.



What made you decide to specialize in gifted education? Who were the
professors in that
program? I'm trying to probe here, for incidents or occasions when
you might have had a
"crystallizing experience," as Feldman says.

Julian's course got me started. I did well-enough in the course to get
recommended for a research assistantship with Lynn Fox, one of Julian's
former doctoral students and a co-founder of the Study of Mathematically
Precocious Youth. (Julian recommended the 3 seniors from the course. I
applied and got the assistantship which also involved enrollment in the
Master's program).

Clearly, the crystallizing experience was the Terman Symposium,
organized by Julian Stanley to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of
the publication of the first volume of the Genetic Studies of Genius.
The symposium papers were published in the book The Gifted and the
Creative: A 50-Year Perspective edited by Stanley, George, and Solano.
I came away from the
symposium with a clear feeling that the field of gifted education was
important. I also felt that I could make a contribution to the field
given my background in psychology.

Lynn Fox was a wonderful mentor. I had a productive year as her
research assistant. It was also great to be part of a team of graduate
students that included Sandy Cohn, Linda Brody, and Dianne Tobin. My
work at Hopkins resulted in presentations at APA in 1975, and NAGC in
1976 and 1977 and publications in Talents and Gifts and JEG.

I left Hopkins to pursue studies in creativity with Don Treffinger. I
learned a lot about creativity, instructional planning, self-directed
learning, and the academic lifestyle from Don. He left after my first
two years and was replaced by Reva Friedman. Reva did her doctorate
with Joe Renzulli when Joe was developing the original "Enrichment Triad
Model." I stayed at Kansas for 4 years, then left ABD to take a job
training teachers of the gifted at The West Virginia College of Graduate
Studies in Institute, West Virginia. Reva facilitated the completion
of my dissertation, superving as my supervisor. Don was also on my
dissertation committee serving at a distance from Buffalo (This was pre
e-mail days).

During my time at Kansas, I was fortunate to become a recipient of a
Graduate Leadership Education Fellowship (GLEP) for 3 years. This USOE
fellowship was administered by Abe Tannenbaum and Harry Passow of
Teachers College. Each summer, I got to participate in the Teachers
College Summer Institute on the Gifted and meet the gifted education
faculty and GLEP fellows from the 7 GLEP universities
(TC,UCONN,Virginia, Georgia, South Florida, Purdue and Kansas). My time
in Kansas was certainly enriched by my interactions with the other GLEP
fellows (Jacquie Huber, Woody Houseman, & Madon Hawk).

In addition to my courses in gifted, I took every course in statistics
and research that I could. The most influential was Doug Glasnapp's
multivariate statistics. I instantly knew that quantitative studies in
gifted education cried out for multivariate analysis since they involved
multiple independent and dependent variables. Every analysis that I
ever performed since then has involved some form of multivariate
analysis.

I was also influenced by John Poggio's course in Program Evaluation,
which helped me to clearly differentiate research and program
evaluation. I was introduced to Provus' Discrepancy Evaluation Model,
which I use as a key ingredient in designing program evaluations.

Jane: Also, why did you not become a priest? That would seem to be
how you were being groomed as an altar boy.

I seriously thought about it between 12 and 16. Basically, I became
disillusioned in high school. The priests that I was exposed to were
very dogmatic and focused on guilt rather than growth. They all went to
the same schools. The Diocesan priests went to the same seminary.

I've always liked psychology.


Cordially,

Michael




Jane,
Sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. Last Monday was Canadian
Thanksgiving and the short week was an endless series of meetings and
administrivia.


Talk about your dissertation for awhile.

At Kansas, an individual needed both a major and a minor area of study.
My major was Educational Psychology and Research with a focus on gifted,
talented and creative learners. My minor was Speech Communications and
Human Relations. My minor advisor was Paul Friedman in SCHR. He had an
interest in the question of social giftedness and whether it was
distinct from intellectual giftedness. There was a group of us--Paul,
Don Treffinger, Bill Bowerman (Psychology), Woodie Houseman, Jaquie
Huber, and myself who met periodically to discuss the construct. When
Don left, Reva Jenkins joined the group. We did presentations at NAGC
in Houston and Baltimore. (In 1985? Reva became Reva Jenkins Friedman).



My dissertation was entitled, "Assessing Adolescent Interpersonal
Communication Skills: Structural and Practical Dimensions." It started
off as an examination of the construct of social intelligence. I was
looking for the essence of social intelligence as defined by Thorndike
(1920), "the ability to understand others and to act wisely in human
relations." It turned out to be two studies in one--a measurement study
and a replication and application. I found that a list of interpersonal
communication skills identified by Paul Friedman in 1978 at NAGC in
Houston seemed to describe the domain of social intelligence. I
basically developed a self-report measure of interpersonal communication
skills, determined its factor structure, collected reliability and
validity information,replicated the results and examined differences by
ability and gender with parental education as a covariate. SES was
related to interpersonal communication skills. With SES controlled,
there were gender differences but no ability differences or
interactions.

Talk about some of your other early research and how it directed your
lines of research.

My first publication in the field was "Value Congruity between Gifted
Students and their Parents." It involved a comparison of
Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Value Profiles Between Mathematically
Gifted Students and Their Parents. (The data was originally collected
by Lynn Fox as part of her dissertation). It was the first of several
studies dealing with affective
characteristics such as learning styles, self-concept.



What was teaching teachers of the gifted like?


In West Virginia, gifted education is part of special education.
Programs for the gifted and teacher certification in gifted are required
by state mandate. I taught some of the courses that helped teachers get
certified.

The best part of the teaching for me was the development and refinement
of the courses. Some teachers liked what I had to offer. Others were
less enthusiastic about the research and theory than I was.


If people were to begin to study the oeuvre of Pyryt and only had a few
studies to focus on, which would they be?

Hopefully, the next one.

Basically, my studies tend to have several features. First, I tend to
have an instrument development component, a historical component, and
apply multivariate techniques.

My reanalysis of the Terman's data of A's and C's has both the
historical and multivariate component (It was in Roeper in 1993).

I also like my article in JEG with Sal Mendaglio in 1994 on our approach
to self-concept.

Those interested in Learning Style might examine "Is the Preferred
Learning Style of the Gifted: A State or a Trait? in the International
Journal for Special Education.


You collaborate with Sal Mendaglio a lot. Would you discuss the roles
you take in the collaboration and why you work together?

It's been a delight to collaborate with Sal Mendaglio. I think we make
a productive team. Sal strengths are his understanding of psychological
theory, particularly social development, and the insights gained from
years of practice as a chartered psychologist. My strengths are in my
knowledge of the gifted education literature, psychometrics, and
multivariate analysis.
Our skills complement each other and we have developed a strategy for
working together. Our collaboration tends to focus on self-concept,
Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration or the interaction of
Dabrowski and self-concept theory. We discuss a potential
collaboration and decide who should take the lead on a particular
project.



You say that most of your studies have an instrument development
component. First, what instruments are you working on?

Sal and I have developed our own approach to self-concept assessment.
It's humbly called the Pyryt Mendaglio Self-Perception Survey. It takes
both a multidimensional and a multi-theoretical approach to
self-concept.

Second, what are the features of an instrument that you would use in
your research?


The instruments that I want to use have two features: 1. they are
psychometrically-sound (acceptable reliability and validity) and 2. they
adequately reflect the complexity of the construct. From my
perspective, one can generally find technically-adequate measures. It's
more difficult to find instruments that take into account the complexity
of the construct.
For example, there are plenty of learning style measures. For the most
part, they assume that learning style is a trait, i.e. one has the same
learning style across subject areas. In one piece of research, I used a
state approach to learning style, trying to assess consistency across
subject areas. (The learning styles were consistent, contrary to my
expectation. My explanation is
that learning styles only need to operate when the subject matter gets
difficult so perhaps the sample perceived each of the subjects as
equally difficult. That's a hypothesis for future research).

Anyway, time and finances permitting, I'm likely to include a popular
well-known instrument and an experimental one in my research.

Has your definition of social intelligence evolved from the Thorndike
one that you first used?


I like Thorndike's definition. In analyzing the evolution of the
concept, it seems that many researchers have focused on the first
component, understanding others, rather than the second component,
acting wisely in social situations. I believe that the essence of
social intelligence lies in interaction. I'll attach a Powerpoint of
last year's NAGC presentation to highlight key
points and illustrate the types of skills, I'm talking about. An
article co-authored with another collegue will appear in Gifted
Education International in 2002. (I'll also attach it).

Discuss the difference between social intelligence and academic
intelligence.


Basically, social intelligence is what Gardner would call interpersonal
intelligence, skill in relating to others. I don't know how that it is
possible without self-understanding or what Gardner calls intrapersonal.
It's also similar to what Sternberg calls practical intelligence and
what Goleman calls "emotional intelligence." (Only Sternberg gives
credit to Thorndike).

When I think of academic intelligence, I think of scores on individual
IQ tests or group IQ/aptitude tests that assess verbal ability.




What do you think are the most important research findings you've made
(or tendencies toward findings)?



Whenever I read blanket statements about the characteristics of the
gifted, particularly affective characteristics, I get queasy. My
analysis of the literature, meta-analytic studies, and data-based
studies suggest that things are far more complicated then they first
appear. In many cases, what appears to be differences between gifted
and average-ability students may simply be SES differences.


Someday, I hope that my adaptation of Sternberg's theory to describe key
ingredients for creative development will be a major contribution.
Right now, it is just another conception of giftedness. (I'll have to
send you the original paper).