*Where are you going or whither thou goest?
I believe there are five dimensions of our work that must be addressed more fully than they have been in the past in order for positive change to occur. Dimension #1 Elitism may also be seen as academic rationalism, the Adlerian version
of curriculum. More recently, standardized testing has been attacked as promoting “elitism” in education. Thus we have moved away from norm-referenced ability and achievement tests in many school districts to more criterion-based measures. In a desire to “level the playing field,” we often do not want to know how able our children are. We prefer to see them “like everyone else.” If tests are a part of elitism, then what underlies the test as messenger must also be considered elitist, namely individual differences especially if the individual difference is high intellectual ability. Yet is not education pursuing an agenda that purports to care about diversity – about racial/socio-economic, and gender-based differences? I sense there is a fundamental dishonesty about how we espouse to value diversity. Some types of diversity are positive; others are not. Intellectual diversity is given short shift in the rush to create “normalcy” within the society. If we are serious about promoting diversity, then support for individual differences of all types should be the norm in schools and classrooms, not the exception. Inclusion classrooms would be well-staffed with specialists to support the range of student needs, or alternative settings would be used to guarantee optimal service delivery. Clearly, this is not the current state of affairs. What can schools do to fight the charge of gifted education as elitist
activity concomitant with promoting diversity?
A second dimension to be addressed is the curriculum, instruction and assessment of classroom delivery. Schools need to recognize that adapting and tailoring curriculum, instruction, and assessment for their best students is a reflection of their own competency in honoring individual differences of any kind. Curriculum has always been the heart of gifted education. What works for gifted students at what stage of development continues to be the central problem in constructing effective programs for these students. As a field, we have been far too focused on the context for programs and not enough on the interventions, namely the curriculum, instruction, and assessment at the classroom level or the programmatic structures that will sustain real learning at that level. Lack of sufficient planning has characterized the curriculum enterprise, with limited or no evidence in clarity of purpose, coherence in execution, or enough contact time necessary to accomplish the challenge. The task would appear to be straightforward. We want to find students who show evidence of advanced development through multiple measures in one or more areas of domain-specific learning and provide them with the elements of sound programming through acceleration, enrichment, grouping, and personalized services delivered with deliberate attention to a strong curriculum base. As a result of such interventions over time, we hope to imbue students with creative and productive habits of mind that allow them to develop relevant products to demonstrate their advanced levels of learning in key domains, the path to professional productivity in worthwhile areas of human endeavor. Part of effective planning requires that schools adopt a sense of clarity around what is to be taught and how it is to be delivered in order to achieve desired outcomes of such efforts. Using research-based models for constructing curriculum units has been found to be crucial for the gifted and an important part of an effective response. The Integrated Curriculum Model has been used here at William & Mary as an effective organizer for curriculum in all of the content areas, with deep implementation of the model in over 100 school districts in all 50 states and data suggesting that student learning is both significant and important in content-relevant higher level thinking processes as a result of unit intervention. The model posits, based on research in the field, that curriculum must be responsive to students’ precocity, creativity, intensity, and hunger for meaningful learning. Thus it is organized around a central concept to deliver advanced content within a structure of higher order thinking and problem solving which are then applied to the development of student-generated projects. Also central to the enterprise of effective curriculum development for the gifted is the incorporation of features found in the national standards projects work and emerging from cognitive research— an emphasis on metacognition, connected learning, scaffolding through concept mapping, and stressing the development of habits of mind. Curriculum for the gifted must also pass through these state and national content standards, not go around them. Alignment and articulation must occur at all levels to demonstrate the interaction of what all students need to know and where programs for the gifted should begin. What can schools do? Dimension #3—Program Development An annual plan for program services must be developed; implemented in all relevant schools within a district; studied at the end of the year for strengths, weaknesses, and unanticipated results, and then a new plan of action developed based on study findings. At the same time, classroom curriculum also needs to be considered annually, using a similar process for planned improvement. This is a simple process, but in my experience one that is not routinely occurring in gifted programs. Planning does not translate into execution routines, nor is program implementation set up to be studied as a regular course of learning how programs actually work so that real program improvement can occur. Having evaluated three state gifted programs, six local district programs,
and two specialized schools for the gifted over the past seven years,
there have been consistent serious gaps observed in this basic program
development cycle. The most serious ones appear to be: Dimension #4 – Professional Development New developments in gifted education also have presaged the need for strong attention to this component of program development. Many current models of delivery in gifted education involve regular classroom teachers to a great extent, either as sole providers or as partners or collaborators with specially trained teachers of the gifted. Moreover, cluster programs in the regular classroom have become an equally viable option to pullout programs in many locales. And inclusion has led to the return of gifted students to the regular classroom or to merely remaining in them. Yet current research and evaluation data have continued to suggest that regular classroom teachers are ill-prepared to differentiate for gifted students in the regular classroom to any extent. Since teachers are the gatekeepers of student learning, their knowledge, skills, and attitudes matter. Recent studies have demonstrated all too well the consequences of ineffective teaching over three year periods in elementary schools, and the consequences of underprepared teachers being assigned more readily to poor schools. Studies have also shown the effectiveness of high-level content-based practices in teaching all subjects as well as the importance of teaching thinking and problem solving skills. Yet teacher preparation programs for our best students are left to the haphazardness of conference attendance and spotty staff development, based on teacher interests rather than programmatic needs. We need to be clearer about the needs for teacher preparation in this field, working with teachers from basic functioning in management skills, content-based pedagogy, and classroom organization to advanced functioning where they become master teachers and coaches/mentors for other teachers; for teachers of the gifted, complex skills like higher level thinking, problem-solving, and metacognition are essential and take time to develop effectively. Staff development activities should lead to evidence of positive student learning changes over time rather than short term evidence of success as judged by perceptions of participants who focus on the speaker and not the implications of the message for improved practice. We need to ask the following questions about our staff development
efforts: These questions matter in judging the adequacy of professional development efforts and the depth of penetration achieved to affect student learning. What can schools do? Dimension #5—Leadership What makes leadership in gifted education so challenging today is that leaders must embrace the paradox of working in schools where core educational values are competing as never before, with values such as equity and excellence, standardization and personalization, tradition and innovation, and modern and postmodern paradigms fighting for supremacy. Thus there is a need to maintain a stance of supporting flexibility for individual needs in the delivery of standards for all, working on appropriate assessment models for gifted and talented while acknowledging the role of state assessments in documenting proficiencies. There is also a need to be advocating for greater access to gifted programs for underrepresented and underserved populations while staying focused on program excellence. We need to be providing program services that have proven successful in the past while experimenting with promising new approaches. Finally, we must be willing to acknowledge the reality of moving programs a step forward only to lurch back two as incremental changes still trump systemic reform in most locales. Thus leaders in gifted education must reflect on and display multiple
leadership styles: What can schools do?: These five dimensions then – 1) support for individual differences as a facet of diversity, 2) curriculum, instruction and assessment that is research-based, 3) systemic program development, 4) professional development that leads to student growth, and 5) leadership that understands the necessity for embracing contradiction – all are needed together for sufficient traction in moving gifted programs forward. Cicero once said that “A people is not just any collection of
human beings brought together in any sort of way but an assemblage of
people…associated in an agreement with respect to justice and
a partnership for the common good.” The field of gifted education
constitutes such an assemblage, brought together in a covenant of service
to and for high ability learners. It is we together who will change
the future of gifted education. I know we are up to the task.
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