Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion "teaching" children to be gifted

This article is a few months old, but I just came across it and found it very interesting. Any thoughts?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2014636532_webgifted01.html

The rest is at the link.

My initial thoughts are here. It does give me something to think about as the 15-20% # is about our local GT identification # and I've always maintained that it is way too high not due to an unusual distribution in our local community. However, I wonder if we should just be teaching differently for most kids and stratifying for GT differentiation at a different point than we do now or offering different levels of GT programming (which I really doubt will happen).

OT but fwiw Cricket, one of my friend's 4th grade teacher in the regular classroom does this project every year - and all the kids LOVE it!!! I think part of the equation in any classroom is that an interested passionate teacher who thinks creatively spurs kids on to show their own best abilities, regardless of their innate ability level.

polarbear (now going back to read the actual article!)

OK, I've actually read the article now

I agree with the premise that we should be able to raise the bar at which *all* of our children are educated and that, in turn, will raise achievement overall. I don't think that necessarily an increase in "10% id'd as gifted" to "15-20%" means much... at least not from a gifted point of view... I dunno... I get a little lost in the interpretation of statistics here based on what is considered "gifted"... but that's a whole other post lol! I'm guessing what's happened is more in line with they've increased the percentage of kids who are scoring in the top quartile of standardized testing in their state, and that's not a bad thing at all Just not the same thing as saying they are increasing the number of intellectually gifted students. I *do* think intellectually gifted kids are often not identified within at-risk populations (minority, low income, 2E etc) and spreading this "every child is smart" philosophy across schools might help id more of the previously unidentified gifted students.

On a slight tangent, we've had our kids in an optional school that is project-based learning - in theory they are aiming at somewhat the same goal, but in practice it all comes down to individual teachers and their will (and ability) to inspire. The school also had high aspirations that every child would have the opportunity to work to their ability level in this type of project-based learning setup, and instead it really never rose above teaching to the middle-ability group.

Our district pull-outs were a little bit better (at least in our experience). Not great and not ability-level for HG and PG kids, but our ds really loved the program, I think not so much because of the peers (which I think was good for him! - but from what I understand the kids were mostly MG and maybe they still didn't feel like intellectual peers?) but... I think what ds loved was that the teachers knew the abilities of each child (MG/HG/PG) and they respected that and I think it showed in their interactions with the students, in the types of questions they asked, the challenges they gave them, in how they listened etc. I'm not sure how to explain it! In any event, back in the regular classroom, project-based, creative projects that they were - the teachers had an attitude about "giftedness" as proponents of the "all children are smart" theory... which played out such that although they acknowledged the high ability kids' ideas etc, they didn't give them opportunity to grow them. I'm so not saying what's on my mind very clearly - sorry!

Thanks for posting the link

polarbear

See, but I do believe that there is a belief there amongst some at least that all kids who are ided as gifted are gifted not just performing highly. I don't know anyone with a child who is ided as gifted who doesn't think that his/her child is actually gifted and not just performing very highly due to good instruction or whatever (and we do have #s similar to this article).

This article brought up a few questions for me including whether we can assess "gifted" accurately b/c, I believe from googling the original study, they weren't just looking @ 15-20% of the kids now performing highly on achievement. I believe that they were looking @ 15-20% of kids scoring highly enough on both achievement and group ability tests to now be considered gifted. (Now I'm going to have to double check that to make sure that I'm not wrong!)

What does that say about the tests we are using to assess giftedness? What does that say about the nature of giftedness itself (at least at the levels that a child can be taught to perform at -- maybe not PG type of giftedness as I've never seen a child "trained" into that level of gifted personally)?

eta: I've seen plenty of questionable behavior in terms of teaching to the test for ability tests going on both by GT teachers at some of our elementaries and from parents themselves. Maybe it is excessive teaching to the test moreso than increasing the actual abilities the tests are testing.

I remember something I read a long, long time ago about how the first IQ tests tested for a type of reasoning that was what was taught in school, and as formal schooling became more common (we are talking XIXth-early XXth century here) and more and more kids were taught that reasoning the numbers on some parts of the tests started shifting. Which when they moved from absolute numbers to percentiles, I guess.

The example that stuck in my mind was that on a similarities test a farm boy would be more likely to associate horse and plow (functional similarity) while a school taught child would associate horse and dog (same category).

Also, my son's score on Vocabulary (which is the highest rated subtest of the WISC for g loading) jumped from 25th to 90th (OK, that was the DAS, but the tests seem similar enough to be comparable) after 6 months of hot-housing on English reading (this after a year in a 70/30 Spanish immersion program where he clearly didn't get enough English overall -- we speak a different language at home).

I must say that this has changed my view of the meaning of those results quite a bit. Plenty of reasons (2e, limited exposure to academics, limited exposure to formal schooling) to see depressed scores. Not sure if it works the other way round -- are overinflated test results that common?

i've been lurking for a while but had a thought i hadnt seen on this topic yet.
i think the article and probably the actual study is as much about the teachers as the kids.
When teachers dont expect kids to be able to function at a high level or even grade level, they communicate that in many ways to the kids, the parents, other teachers.
when the kids got high quality, engaging teaching from respectful adults - they responded to that. project based learning that is embedded throughout the curriculum ( ie math, language arts, science social studies) is a hall mark of center based gifted programs. this study suggests kids dont have to be highly gifted to benefit from this type of curriculum.
the fact that low performing schools that had never had a kid identified for the gifted program, then had kids identified as gifted after the curriculum change says more about the teachers at the poor schools than the kids.
high risk kids are just like other kids. When they have good teachers and an exciting curriculum they learn more. and become more focused on their education. gifted kids were always at those schools, they were just never motivated or allowed to shine. noone thought they existed there so they didnt bother looking for them.

many many years ago North Carolina did another study. it probably isnt even ethical now. they created classes of "gifted " students from regular average kids in a few districts. the teachers did not know the kids werent gifted. I dont recall exactly what they told the kids. but as a class, the pseudogifted kids had less discipline problems and higher test scores than they had had previously and also compared to control average kids not told they were gifted. the conclusion of the investigators at the time was raising the expectations of/for kids increased their performance.

I do agree with a lot of the points made here and the likely intent of the study -- gifted kids exist in disadvantaged schools and homes just as they exist elsewhere and low expectations depress performance. I absolutely see the value in teachers teaching all children as if they are capable and if this approach increases performance, great.

What I wonder on is the sheer number of kids who can be taught to perform highly enough to be considered gifted and what that means about the construct as a whole and/or the tests being used for assessment. The original study was unclear on what tests were required for identification in NC, but did state that a full 25% of the kids in the classrooms with the interventions met the criterion for referral for GT consideration and 15-20% of the total number of kids met the criterion for identification after referral (most of the kids who were referred).

I don't, personally, define gifted as that large of a chunk of the population so I am left wondering not just about underidentification of minorities and low income kids (which I do think is a real problem), but also about what gifted means and how we test for it.

NC gifted program identification criteria vary by district.

Wake County's criteria seem pretty generous. (Grade skips, dual enrollment, and other acceleration options are also available if students show a need, so it doesn't appear that this would necessarily be detrimental to also meeting the needs of HG/PG kids.)

If these criteria for identification are typical, I wouldn't be surprised to find that better teaching methods alone could increase the proportion of students performing at or above the 90th percentile nationally on the grade-level ITBS to 15-20% of the children in the school, particularly in elementary grades.

also it is not 15-20% of the kids in the whole schools that were id'd as gifted but "in the classes that got the intervention"
One could surmise that the classes are tracked somewhat though not officially and the intervention went to the track one and track two classrooms. Also the kids with disabilities that arent inclusion wouldnt be present nor would the first two years of english language learners. they would be in separate classrooms.
I am not surprised that taking the top kids in a poor school and teaching them well and enriching them for three years resulted in 15 % of them being in the top 10% on ITBS and COGAT scores. Aslo it doesnt say whether they qualified in language arts or math or both. In alot of elementary programs only one area is necessary for identification.
however the more telling parameter will be how they do in the next three years and what happens in middle school. but that arm of the study probably isnt funded. i wish there was access to the actual study and not just news reports about what other people thought about the study. anybody have a link or a citation?