Young, gifted and educated

Students with learning disabilities in Thailand are now beginning to receive much-needed support. But what about those students at the other end of the spectrum – the gifted and talented of this world?

Below, we hear from two educators who have a range of experience in dealing with gifted children of all ages.

Happily gifted?

PATRICIA METHAM

Ask most parents what they want for their children and they reply, with great sincerity: “Happiness!” Some add “Success!” without necessarily having a clear sense of what ‘success’ will amount to, how it is to be achieved and how soon in life. Discovering that one has a gifted child will make ‘success’ in some field or another a reasonable expectation, but ‘happiness’ is less certain.

For the first few years of a child’s development, it can be difficult to distinguish between natural giftedness and the effects of nurture. By ‘gifted’ we generally mean having unusual intellectual and creative abilities rather than other useful life skills, such as an unusual ability to inspire affection. The performance of a three year-old being assessed by a highly competitive preparatory school will say as much about the parents as about the child. It is commendable that parents encourage their children to be curious, creative, communicative and, in more than one sense, calculating. It is natural that parents want to know what kind of children they have been blessed with, and how to do the best for them. There are, however, dangers.

In The Weekly Telegraph recently, Nicole Martin reported the commercial development of an IQ test for six-month-old babies: ‘The 10-question quiz, devised by a child psychologist, promises to tell parents whether their baby is an average or advanced developer.’ Its validity has been challenged by other psychologists but the company marketing the test can be assured of healthy sales. In the same article, journalist Becky Barrow describes a test run with her six-month-old daughter. “I sit down with a copy of the test and vow not to take it too seriously, not to feel dejected if May is ‘developing slowly’, and not to cheat…. By the final question about whether she responds to my calling out her name, I am beginning to feel that a light touch of cheating may be required. Eventually she turns round and smiles at her screaming mother and I add two points.”

Children officially labeled ‘gifted’ speak of the burdens they pick up with the label – principally, parental expectations and the mockery or mistrust of their peers. It brings relief to be amongst others like themselves, for a short time at least. That is the great value of the ‘gifted’ summer schools run by some UK education authorities. The Thai Government is also exploring ways to harness and direct the potential of very able children to create future world-class ‘shakers and movers’. There are scores of schools for selected students, focusing on mathematics, science, information technology and language. In those I visited, students were earnest, focused and often so anxious not to make mistakes that they were tongue-tied. Certainly they were being brought on in many ways by their ‘fast track’ schooling but they seemed to be missing out on the pleasures and rewards of taking intellectual and academic risks. The freedom to be wrong and to push boundaries is an essential element in a gifted child’s development. Fear of failure is a great inhibitor. Gifted children need to understand the truth of scientist Sir Humphry Davy’s observation: “The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures.”

Fear of failure is also a great inhibitor for teachers. Discovering a gifted child in one’s class can be scary for those with the wit to recognise that this child has real needs but who themselves lack the depth and breadth of knowledge and the confidence to respond joyfully and effectively. It can, equally, be frustrating for those who have the knowledge, wit and confidence but lack resources and time. It becomes tempting to argue that the truly gifted child will be a self-propelled achiever, needing only encouragement and tasks designed for older children to be kept happily and productively occupied. That child is rare indeed! Or it becomes tempting to accelerate able children up through year groups, taking public examinations early to have time to fit in more public examinations before finding themselves accelerated right out of school – probably not mature enough to cope well with the social challenges of university life.

An option is to take these gifted students out of their normal working environment, bring them together with others of equal ability for a concentrated period to experience challenges in which intellectual and imaginative risk-taking is demanded – in team-building and collaboration, negotiation and the need to be inventive. Make it clear that their academic grades and reports will not be affected by their ups and downs. In the UK, I worked with local schools to set up an extra-curricular programme for bright twelve year-olds. We ran creative writing workshops, with the willing participation of successful novelists, and maths master classes where zany solutions were found to mind-blowing problems. It was a joy to see and hear children from diverse social backgrounds rising exuberantly to new challenges with much chatter and laughter and few hang-ups!

Ideally, every school will have a force of gifted teachers to meet the needs of gifted students, and a wealth of differentiated resources designed to excite and stretch all pupils. If that seems a Utopian aspiration, keep in mind that what happens in schools can be excitingly complemented by opportunities beyond school. These schemes also allow children’s special talents and interests to blossom: music workshops, Maths Olympiads, science activities run by universities and museums or enlightened businesses, environmental projects, drama weekends… They are happening here, if you know where to look. How vigorously are they promoted in our schools? What assistance is available to families who would like to give their bright children such opportunities but simply haven’t the means?

Gifted children, like other children, need to have fun. The idea is not new. Cicero – a gifted child in his day – commented: “Only the man who can relax is able to create, and ideas reach his mind like lightning.”

Identifying and working
with gifted children

STUART McLAY

There are a growing number of checklists that have been developed to help identify gifted children. At the most basic level, one of the indications for a teacher or a parent may be that a child accomplishes tasks with ease and seeks further challenges. Some gifted children are characterised by general all round high ability, exemplified by a capacity to focus intensely on challenges, to work independently at a fast pace, to operate on a higher level of thinking than their peers, to thrive when faced with complex issues or problems, to see beyond the obvious and to be able to reflect on how they learn best.

Some children may exhibit high ability in a particular area or subject. For example, a gifted mathematician will be able to grasp new concepts and mathematical ideas very quickly; think logically, readily identify patterns, apply previously gained knowledge to new or unfamiliar contexts and exhibit creative approaches to solving mathematical questions.

It is easy to assume that a child is gifted if they are achieving very highly in appropriately challenging situations. However, with very young children in particular, the issue can sometimes be clouded by a child’s immaturity. High ability in early childhood can often be the result of greater access to educational opportunities rather than an indication of giftedness. For example, being able to read at an early age is not conclusive evidence of high ability in literacy, any more than slow progress is an indication of lack of ability.

Nonetheless, parents and teachers of pre-school children may be aware of other indicators that suggest rapid skills development: Children who begin to speak earlier than their peers, use a wide vocabulary, have more advanced social skills and are able to achieve far more than usual for their age may be exhibiting early signs of giftedness. However, it is not uncommon for many young children who are literally years ahead of their peers in some areas of cognitive development to remain on a parallel in terms of social development.

It is difficult to identify a ‘gifted’ child who is underachieving because of the lack of obvious evidence. Fortunately, there are a number of different methods by which gifted children can be identified as they grow, develop and progress through the education system. Subject based tests, ‘baseline’ assessments, ability profile tests, classroom observations, parent observations and even education psychologists all have a stake in the identification process. All have their strengths and limitations. Some tests, for example, can be too broad in their scope, leading teachers and parents to be overly subjective if not guided by rigorously agreed criteria. The best schools and educators use an appropriate combination of some or all of these methods to ensure early identification and make available adequate provision.

Of course identification is only useful if it guides future actions. Class teachers clearly have a vital role here. A good classroom practitioner will be aware of the needs of gifted students and plan lessons with clearly differentiated activities accordingly. Such activities provide opportunities for gifted children to work in more depth, with a broader scope and at a greater pace than their peers. Provision should be consistently monitored and evaluated to ensure continuity and progression across classes and year groups.

Rather than concentrating solely on the acquisition of knowledge and skills, teachers working with gifted students should strive to create opportunities to foster higher levels of thinking incorporating analysis, synthesis and evaluation. A respected member of the UK schools inspection service, Mr David Bell, recently commented: “What separates the very good from the merely good, for gifted pupils, is the willingness of teachers to ‘let go’ of prescribing outcomes. Promoting independent learning skills and creativity are defining features of very effective teaching for able pupils.”

In recent years, educationalists have debated the benefits of ‘accelerated learning’ i.e. placing a child within a higher-grade class, as opposed to clearly ‘differentiated learning’ within their peer group. The balance of opinion would seem to suggest that in many parts of the world researchers have concluded that gifted children are best served by staying with their own peer group, not least because of the fact that cognitive and social skills do not always develop at the same rate.

Nonetheless, exceptions are sometimes made for students who have a complete mastery of a specific subject area, are working within a carefully planned progression that ensures work is not repeated and are able to cope emotionally and socially.

Whilst most modern writers on the subject place the classroom teacher at the centre of appropriate provision for gifted children, they are also united in their conclusion that provision is a shared responsibility that extends to the students themselves as a well as the school in general and of course parents. For example, individual education plans for gifted children are a vital tool for bringing together teachers, students and parents to regularly discuss contents, aims and targets.

Gifted students have historically been poorly catered for in school but, just as awareness of learning disabilities had improved dramatically in recent years, then so has the understanding of children who are exceptionally able. Providing the right education for such children requires imagination as well as a structure, but can be liberating for both the child and the school alike. The presence of gifted children raises many questions – fortunately more and more schools are seeking the answers.