Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Thoughts on work of Drs E Frattura & C Capper?

How familiar are you with the work of Dr Elise Frattura & Dr Collen Capper?

Quick summary: Books/Publications/Services -
1-Leading for Social Justice: Transforming Schools for All Learners (2007)
2-Meeting the Needs of Students of All Abilities: Leading Beyond Inclusion (2nd edition) (2009)
3-Educational Administration in a Pluralistic Society
4-Capper is editor of Routledge series: Leadership for Equity and Diversity
5-Integrated Comprehensive Systems for Equity (ICSE)

Your Thoughts? Observations? Experiences?
Among all the full range of diversity listed ("including race, culture, social class, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, language, religion and their intersections"), I do not see academic/intellectual diversity. For example, I do not find acknowledgement of differences in innate ability, native intelligence, IQ, learning capacity, intellectual curiosity, motivation, or interest. Lack of inclusion of these elements appears to deny science and data regarding brain research, neuroscience, psychology.

Although much of the material repeats a theme of avoiding LABELS, it seems that more labels are being applied to students (and teachers) under this plan. For example, cluster grouping of students is not according to ability and readiness to learn, but rather classrooms are to be demographically heterogeneous and are to contain balanced diversity representative of the population... suggesting that children (and teachers) must disclose and the school must maintain a record of each individual's: race, culture, social class, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, language, religion.

If I understanding correctly, the Frattura/Capper approach places the onus on the teacher(s), not the student, if the student may be failing, falling behind, and/or showing a performance gap in learning as compared with other students assigned to that teacher or teaching team.

I have seen the work of Frattura & Capper paired with edited, abbreviated lists of John Hattie's infuencers: highly valuing effects of peer tutoring, development in lock-step with peers (Piagetian programming)... disregarding factors such as prior ability, acceleration, effort.

The heterogeneous grouping strategy also appears to counter the work of Miraca Gross, who found that gifted students need appropriate academic challenge and true intellectual peers. Lack of meeting these needs may lead to underachievement and a host of other developmental problems, as noted in this article:
Stretching the Gifted
by Emily Parkinson
Financial Review
August 16, 2015

Do you have thoughts, observations, experiences, questions, impressions to share?
Does the Frattura/Capper plan appear to be a one-size-fits-all approach, for gifted-deniers?
Am I missing something?

I’m not familiar with the two authors, but note that you have included an excerpt about the declining PISA performance of Australian students, which some experts believe may be due, at least in part, to the under recognition and poor support for gifted students in comprehensive schools. In some states, the number of public selective schools has increased as the main means to cater for gifted kids, but there are a number of problems with this approach as there are few such schools in rural areas, there are no catchment boundaries (many students travel hours each day to attend the school where they were offered a place on the basis of a competitive exam) and a large proportion of successful candidates have been heavily coached for the entrance exam.

A new ‘High potential and gifted education’ policy (https://education.nsw.gov.au/teachi...gh-potential-and-gifted-education-policy) was announced in 2019, which will ‘promote engagement and challenge for every student, regardless of background, in every school across intellectual, creative, social-emotional and physical domains.’ ‘It supports every student to achieve their educational potential, through talent development opportunities and differentiated teaching and learning practices to ensure that their specific learning and wellbeing needs are met.’ The intents sound very well meaning - will be interesting to see how they enact their policy.

Maybe covid will push the development of customized education so that kids can work along their own educational speed and capacity. There are so many more options out there, coursera, Khan plus the expensive CTY and Stanford options. My kid has used CTY, did a self study AP in Chinese and now does some coursera in her marine science/oceanography area. And because of her school's covid trimester system, has precalc in May and June, so is doing Khan precalc during the year instead. So are a number of her classmates. Customization is a good thing for gifted students.

"Critical" social justice "theory" has no room for individual difference when it comes to intelligence, nor does it place any stock in science. The only legitimate differences among people are the "approved" identities that are listed in the quote you provided.

More than 60 years ago, Manning Johnson witnessed the inception of this trend, and wrote this book.

Interesting juxtapositions:
- the work of Frattura & Capper, with that of Miraca Gross.
- the work of Frattura & Capper, with that of Manning Johnson.

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UPDATE: As of March 2022, Manning Johnson's website is no longer active, however it has been archived many times over the years.
1) Read his book online, FREE:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220205041255/http://manningjohnson.org/book/CCCS_Contents.html
Reprints of his book are also widely available.

2) Listen to his farewell address posted online:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220206095915/http://manningjohnson.org/speech/Manning_Johnson--Farewell_Address-32k.mp3 (36:18)

3) Follow along with transcript of Manning Johnson's "Farewell Address"
https://web.archive.org/web/20210731144351/http://www.manningjohnson.org/speech/transcript.html
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From my own experience, it would be folly to expect any standard school to properly address the gifted student. Schools are production factories. They are focused on what they produce most - people of average abilities. They are stocked by people of average abilities.

If a high school has a thousand students, then it should have 20 that would qualify for Mensa. That's five students per grade, each of which probably has different interests.

As for the teachers, statistically there would not even be one Mensa qualifier in the average school. Even if they had an interest in the gifted, they probably wouldn't know what to do with it, and/or couldn't keep up.

If their work laid out a perfect plan for gifted education, how many schools could really make it work? My guess is less than the fingers on your hand, nationwide.

From my own family's experience, I gave up any hope that any general school system would adequately address the gifted. If you do the math, it just doesn't make much sense for the system to spend time on it. (And that's true despite the fact that your child is wonderful.)

This recent thread brought to mind the work of Frattura & Capper.

The first book in the OP list, Leading for Social Justice: Transforming Schools for All Learners (2007), is described this way: . . . (emphasis added)

What appears to be missing is the knowledge that gifted pupils are often at-risk.
Due to years of being under-served.
For continuing growth and development, kids need:
1) appropriate academic challenge
2) true peers
For typical kids, these needs may be met in a general ed classroom, however for children with higher IQ/giftedness, these needs may not be met without intentional effort in providing advanced curriculum, and grouping for instruction with academic/intellectual peers. Some negatives which may occur when a child is not learning something new every day include these observations or signs that a child is not appropriately challenged.

I agree - gifted pupils are often assumed to be fine whatever class or school they end up in. How many times have we heard that? It assumes all gifted kids can teach themselves (and/or others) and that boredom is actually good for the soul. And if they don’t do well then maybe they weren’t gifted.

In my own family, the two most gifted of my siblings simply dropped out of high school. One without any qualifications at all. He was unrecognised 2E so doubly failed.