Remembering the Forgotten Student: A Renewed Focus on the Gifted and Talented
Heather Schilling
EDEL 600
Dr. Schoenfeldt
8 April 2003
Classroom teachers will quickly admit that children learn at a different rates and have different abilities to grasp concepts. Unfortunately, these teachers will also sheepishly admit that they often sacrifice the education of their gifted and talented students in order to reach the middle and lower groups of learners. Like many other educators, I have often been frustrated by my own inability to meet the needs of my more advanced learners. Lacking training and significant planning time, as well as feeling pressured to get all of my students to perform well on ISTEP+, I don’t always challenge my gifted and talented students with the enrichments or extensions they need. Additionally, while we have a gifted and talented coordinator in our school system, our corporation has no specific program for meeting the needs of our advanced students nor does the school evaluate what little it does to meet those needs. Furthermore, as a parent of a child labeled as gifted and talented, it has become even more painfully obvious to me that we, educators as well as the general public, ignore this group of exceptional children, believing that they will be able to succeed on their own. That, however, is not the case.
The term “exceptional children,” which encompasses a plethora of learning abilities, commonly refers to people who deviate from what a society or community deems normal including those individuals with visual impairments, mental retardation, and emotional or behavioral disorders; it also includes those with superior intellectual ability (Gargiulo, 2003). Public Law 94-142, now referred to as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), recognizes thirteen categories of exceptionality and federally mandates guidelines for educating these children. Ironically, while the government acknowledges through definition the exceptionality of gifted children, it fails to provide legal guidelines for educating this particular group of learners and as a result only “about a fifth of our states include the gifted as special education students covered by the law for handicapped” (Winner, 1996, p. 256). Instead, their education is left to the discretion of local school systems, and, sadly, these gifted children are “restrained by the lack of depth in the regular school program and by the limitations of many special programs designed for them. Their regular classroom teachers make few accommodations for them…and the special opportunities that do exist for them seldom sufficiently supplement the regular school program” (National Excellence, 1993). David George (1995) points out that as we “learn more about the characteristics of gifted and talented children, we find that many of them have been overlooked” and this often leads to their underachievement (p. 5). Ultimately, this underachievement will directly and indirectly have an impact on our society. The critical time has come, therefore, for educators to take a close look at the way we educate our gifted and talented students. The research clearly indicates successful techniques for educating our gifted and talented students. To ignore research is to neglect, and perhaps even waste, a vitally important group our society.
Defining Giftedness
Drawing on psychologist Lewis Terman’s work with high-IQ children, Ellen Winner (1996) concludes that “the term ‘giftedness’ continues to refer to a unitary, global ability that is best assessed by an IQ test” (p. 32). Usually, the IQ score used to identify gifted children is at “least two standard deviations above average” (George, 1995, p. 17). A score of 130 or higher on an IQ test, then, is used to identify giftedness, representing 2 to 5 percent of students (Winner, 1996, p. 32). She goes on, however, to point out that “researchers are beginning to see that giftedness and IQ are not the same thing, and that a person can be very gifted in one area yet not have a high IQ overall” (p. 32). Besides using an IQ score, less limiting terms can be used. For example, “gifted students are those with a potential to exhibit superior performance across a range of areas of endeavour [sic]. Talented students are those with a potential to exhibit superior performance in one area of endeavour [sic]” (George ,1995, p. 3). Many researchers conclude “there is no universally accepted definition of gifted and talented” (Davis & Rimm, 1998, p. 28). What parents and educators must remember, though, is that it isn’t the definition that matters so much but that they must define gifted and talented, for “one’s definition influences the selection of students for G/T programs and may prevent poor, minority, disabled, underachieving, and female gifted students from participating” (Davis & Rimm, 1998, pp. 24-25).
The actual definition of giftedness and the way a school corporation identifies students for their program pales in importance to the way a corporation educates its top students. Nor is it as important as the fact that they do provide special education for their gifted and talented. Many options for educating this segment of our population exist, but schools and parents must start by asking some important questions. First of all, what are the benefits of a self-contained classroom? Second, is a homogeneous setting better than a heterogeneous setting for a gifted child? Finally, can a teacher successfully educate a gifted child in a heterogeneous classroom if a self-contained classroom is not available?
Benefits of a Self-contained Classroom
While some people, especially those not included in this particular program, believe that putting gifted students in a self-contained classroom creates an elitist group of children, research shows that gifted children benefit academically and emotionally from being in a self-contained classroom with other gifted children. In response to such research, many school corporations turn to a school-within-a-school or some other grouping format for educating their advanced learners. With reference to the Kulik studies which performed meta-analyses on 57 controlled studies of between-class grouping, Davis and Rimm (1998) fear that without grouping practices, the education of gifted students is threatened. An effect size larger than 0.30 indicates a practically significant difference, and the Kuliks’ conclusions “favor grouping gifted kids, if not all kids” (cited in Davis & Rimm, p. 12). They draw attention to Rogers’ study that provided an effect size of .65 for pullout programs including enrichment and curriculum extension, an effect size of .45 for cross-grade grouping (reading, math), and an effect size of .33 for special classes for gifted children (Davis & Rimm, p. 13). Because of these studies, they believe “students who are academically or intellectually gifted should spend the majority of their school day with others of similar ability or interest. Such grouping (e.g., in special classes, special schools) has produced marked academic achievement gains as well as improved attitudes” (p. 14). School corporations then should strive to develop some form of a self-contained program in order to best meet the needs of their gifted population.
James and Chen-Lin Kulik’s work, the ability comparison studies, show that “gifted children in a full-time gifted placement (special school, full-time program, or a school-within-a- school) showed an academic effect that was both substantial and positive. Almost a half-year’s additional academic progress was found for each year the gifted children were in the full-time program at the elementary level (K-6)” (cited in Rogers, 2002, p. 213). Educators and parents of gifted and talented children should find this information important in arguing for a self-contained classroom.
To those who argue that full-time grouping creates an elitist mentality or that it gives the gifted child a social disadvantage when it comes to interacting with non-gifted children, “in truth, ability grouping is more likely to make the gifted child more aware that there are other children as bright or brighter than he is. Furthermore, because his cognitive needs are being met consistently, the gifted child may then be more willing to interact socially with children of all ability levels in extracurricular activities outside of the school” (Rogers, 2003, p. 214). Interestingly, “many teachers are aware of the blossoming effect that occurs for some average- and low-ability children when the gifted leave for pullout enrichment activities or are removed altogether for special classes” (Feldhusen, 1989, cited in Davis and Rimm, 1996, p. 12). So one can conclude that all levels of learners benefit from some form of grouping.
Effectiveness of Teaching the Gifted and Talented in a Heterogeneous Classroom
While disappointing for opponents of self-contained programs, the research does not support heterogeneous classroom education of the gifted and talented. For quite some time, people have claimed that gifted and talented students can be easily taught in a heterogeneous group, but “the research studies show almost no instances in which whole-group instruction of students of heterogeneous ability is more beneficial for gifted children than some form of differentiated small group instruction. If educators should want to level the playing field of achievement so that all become mediocre in their output, then whole-group instruction is the answer! However, it should be noted that no society has been valued for its level of mediocrity” (Rogers, 2002, p. 217). This latter statement by Rogers is pretty damaging to the argument of those who believe the gifted and talented can be successfully educated in a regular classroom. He insinuates that teaching a group of children without acknowledging their differences creates an inferior educational setting for all children. Furthermore, Davis and Rimm (1998) make reference to Renzuilli’s claim that “abolishing grouping --eliminating opportunities for bright students by moving to heterogeneous classes-- remains the single biggest, detrimental issue in gifted education” (p. 63). Obviously, those involved in researching the education of the gifted and talented feel quite strongly about grouping and ultimately their research casts a shadow on the claim that a heterogeneous setting is sufficient for gifted students.
If a school corporation cannot afford a self-contained program such as a school-within-a-school and must educate its gifted children in a heterogeneous setting, then it needs to consider using techniques such as cluster grouping or pull-out programs. The method of cluster grouping “refers to the practice of identifying the top five to eight academically talented students at a grade level and placing them in the same classroom… with a teacher best suited and qualified to work with gifted students” (Rogers, 2002, p. 224). For the gifted child in a heterogeneous setting, cluster grouping “promotes challenging cognitive and positive social-emotional development. For teachers, the cluster provides a group for which to plan rather than single students sprinkled around among all of the teachers” (Gargiulo, 2003, p. 338). In this aspect, a teacher can more successfully educate the advanced learner in a heterogeneous setting. Cluster grouping is only one way to provide adequate instruction for gifted children in a heterogeneous classroom. Teachers in a classroom with such diverse learners must also use differentiation, because “differentiation is about all children, because all children are different, and one of the fascinating aspects of being a teacher is this very fact of human variation and all its attributes. Differentiation then is the process by which curriculum objectives, teaching methods, assessment methods, resources and learning activities are planned to cater for the needs of all individuals in ways which meet their learning needs” (George, 1995, p. 67). Furthermore, these teachers must accept the challenge set before them and seek help from outside sources. Obviously, teachers of a heterogeneous classroom which contain students from both spectrums of exceptionality must prepare themselves to educate each learner. When these teachers take these steps, they can successfully meet the needs of their gifted learners in a heterogeneous setting, but this only occurs when they realize they can not teach the same curriculum in the same manner to all students.
Implications and Recommendations
We cannot ignore the gifted and talented portion of our society any longer. No matter what the setting, either a self-contained classroom or a heterogeneous grouping, teachers must teach each child. When the President of the United States declares that no child will be left behind, many parents of gifted children ask themselves what our schools are doing to make sure that those children are not left behind as well. For educators, the implications of the research are that gifted children benefit the most from being with like-minded peers and that we should work towards programs that group them together, whether for part of the school day or for its entirety. If we choose to believe that these children will do alright without our challenging them and meeting their needs, then we are in the same situation we were with the other 13 categorized exceptional learners before they were protected by PL 94-142. We must acknowledge the inherent needs of gifted children in the same way that we acknowledge the needs of other exceptional learners; therefore, we must convince our schools to create programs that group gifted students together, ideally in self-contained programs.
If our arguments for self-contained classrooms are ignored, then we must work diligently to find creative ways to educate the gifted population of our class as we do our other students. As teachers, we must learn to differentiate our lessons. Ideally, we will create programs that group gifted children together, but if we cannot, then we must create classrooms that respect each child as an individual and that meet the educational needs of each child.