Education

Improving Opportunities To Develop The Talents Of Gifted Students


Accumulated knowledge, wisdom, and on the ground practical experience in any given field can take many years if not decades to achieve. One individual who has been working to serve gifted students in research, policy, and practice for decades is Joyce VanTassel-Baska, emeritus professor at the College of William & Mary. Joyce teaches us in this interview about how she thinks talent development of gifted students can best be supported, how gifted education as a field can better integrate theory, research, and practice, and what would be an effective approach to gifted education policy.

How do you think talent development of gifted students can best be supported?

In order for talent development to be supported in the unintellectual climate of our society here in the United States, I think that a multi-pronged and multi-level approach has to be employed. At the local level, school districts and schools need policies that are facilitative of students moving at their own pace through the curriculum, allowing for flexibility in course requirements as well as the timeframes for completion of years of schooling, and flexibility in where learning takes place. In addition, local districts need to have requirements for teachers who will work with gifted learners, ensuring they are appropriately trained to effectively differentiate within curriculum and instructional patterns for these learners. Alternative grouping approaches should be employed, as appropriate, to accommodate efficient and effective learning environments. Inquiry-based instruction should be the rule, not the exception, that features problem-based learning episodes and project-based opportunities. Teaching gifted learners at higher levels of abstraction in order to accommodate big picture thinking, as well as detailed understanding, should be a goal. Woven into the framework of programs and services should be an emphasis on the development of social-emotional wellbeing, including the development of emotional intelligence, social competencies, and collaborative patterns of work that derive from an understanding of empathy and the value of social interaction.

At the state level, there is a need to have policies for identification, programming, services, teacher training and ongoing professional learning. Such policies should be mandated, not discretionary, and require a state plan for each local school district that includes evidence of best practice and evaluation design that is implemented annually. Monitoring of school districts for adherence to the plan and its implementation should occur on a regular schedule. States should also undertake responsibility for providing at least one residential school for the gifted and several day schools and summer programs, such as Governor’s schools, so that gifted learners have opportunities for specialized learning and extended learning during the summer, on Saturdays, and during the academic year, as well. State universities should be required to offer coursework in gifted education and also provide on-campus opportunities for pre-collegiate learners who show an interest and motivation to learn. Programs such as the Talent Searches and their affordances of programs and services should be disseminated widely to targeted populations of learners. Competitions in all academic areas and related fields such as STEM, STEAM, robotics, engineering, technology, and others should be offered through special contracts within each state. At least two universities in each state should develop a center for talent development that combines pre-collegiate learner activities with teacher development activities and adult seminars on topics related to talent development. Foundations and community agencies within each state should be encouraged to allocate a portion of their funding for talent development activities among students at pre-collegiate levels.

Nationally, gifted education and talent development should be seen as priorities for legislation and funding appropriate to the nature and needs of the population. National talent searches should be conducted in academic areas, the arts, and vocational areas in order to ensure that our best learners as a country are found early and educated appropriate to their aptitudes and interests. These talent searches should be contracted to university sites capable of administering them and establishing research arms to issue national reports on the progress made in both identification and programing in specific areas. A mandate for identification and service delivery in all states and all districts should be instituted with special grants for targeted needs such as under-represented groups, ie, low-income, children of color, EL, and twice-exceptional students. The National Association for Gifted Children should administer a professional learning program that provides for the ongoing upgrading of best practice workshops and conferences that reach teachers and other educators in every state.

How can gifted education as a field better integrate theory, research, and practice?

In order to build a field of practice, educators need to be well-versed in foundational concepts and research findings related to practice in gifted education. These conceptual foundations, often called theories, provide a pathway to thinking about who gifted learners are and the environments in which they thrive, the patterns of development that are successful for them, and the markers of success for them across the lifespan. These concepts then, or theories, include a focus on theories of giftedness itself, theories of talent development, and related theories of expertise, learning, and human development in cognitive and affective areas. 

Research priorities for understanding how these theories and concepts fit together that are most useful include the major longitudinal studies that have been conducted, beginning with the Terman Study from the 1920’s through the 1980’s, the Study for Mathematically Precocious Youth from the 1970’s through current day, as well as others that have impacted our understanding of lifespan development of the gifted. In addition to longitudinal studies, research on the nature of gifted individuals and their psychology is important so that we understand their characteristics, their needs, their predilections, and their interests. Linked closely to those studies are the psychometric studies that focus on processes for identification and selection of these students. Another realm of research has focused on interventions and the effectiveness of those interventions which range from specialized curriculum in PreK-12 settings to one-on-one opportunities, such as tutorials and mentorships, to more tailored opportunities in academic, artistic, and other specialized domains. Moreover, these learners have benefited from intensive interdisciplinary offerings that demonstrated their power of making connections through findings from International Baccalaureate programs and specialized schools. Moreover, we have much to learn from studies of eminence in each field of human endeavor where individuals have performed at precocious levels in childhood and/or extraordinary levels in adulthood. What made a Mozart, for example; how did Emily Dickinson become the master of a unique poetic form, what propelled and influenced Einstein’s innovative thinking about the world? Taken together these collections of research strands provide a rich history that could provide the basis for applications in school settings.

The world of practice must begin to establish clear connections to the origins of this field and to its understandings that have been forged across 100 years in this country. In order for that to occur, best practice paradigms must be the basis for gifted education programs in all locales. This further suggests that every school district should be finding and serving gifted learners in all areas of instruction at all levels of development, beginning at preschool levels and that at each of these locales the following types of opportunities should be routinely available: acceleration in all of its forms; differentiation in the classroom that elevates thinking and inquiry as the cornerstones for learning, regardless of subject matter; group and individual projects that evolve out of interest-based learning; a focus on concepts, issues, and themes that are based in real world applications; and a specialized counseling program to aid in academic planning and career development.

Finally, the threads of theory, research, and practice must be woven together to create a comprehensive, articulated mosaic so that gifted learners experience optimal opportunities for learning throughout the lifespan. While our university systems currently promote honors programs and selected institutions, they also could do more in addressing advanced learning opportunities in all areas of the curriculum. For example, as a field we have not promoted vocational education as a part of our mission, and yet, we should be concerned for the future of fields like mechanics, electricity, plumbing, etc., that need to develop masters in their craft. Thus, our conception of higher education must be much more expansive than it has been in the past, embracing vocational education at advanced levels as well.

The connections that bridge theory, research, and practice must be those educators who are willing to be ready translators of the language and the methodologies associated with each world. Just as every dissertation is based on a conceptual theory and includes a section on implications for practice, so too, every gifted education program should be developed in a similar way where the ideas provide the frame around which the action research has been conducted and resulting in emergent pockets of practice.

How do you think gifted education might most effectively approach education policy?

Policy development in gifted education must focus on the critical variables that can ensure that students of high potential and ability have corresponding outlets and opportunities in the society that prepare them to be the outstanding innovators and practitioners of our future. Therefore, policies that promote talent development should be of the highest priority at all levels of the social-political enterprise that we call education. Since states have the responsibility for setting educational policy, it is states that must set the policies for the field. The broad areas in which mandated state policy should be developed and enacted include the following:

Policies related to the identification and finding of talent (talent searches). These policies should focus on the need for the use of multiple measures that provide evidence of advanced performance in individual areas and domains. Measures should be both objective and subjective, including testing and clinical judgment, based on the use of psychometrically sound instruments and rating scales.

Policies for PreK-12 programs and services. These policies should focus on ensuring that curriculum opportunities and programs are available across all grade levels in each domain of study, based on domain-specific learning research available.

Policies related to acceleration that include early entrance, waivers, content-based, and grade level. These policies should focus on ensuring a set of options for acceleration that would be available to students who demonstrate readiness for more advanced levels of instruction within and across areas of the curriculum at different stages of development.

Policies related to the professional learning of educators to work with gifted learners. These policies must be coordinated with the nature of programs and services offered to ensure that all relevant educators—teachers, principals, and counselors—receive the professional learning necessary to work effectively with gifted learners.

Policies of monitoring and evaluation of effectiveness of programs. These policies should examine the effectiveness of the policies enacted in the areas of identification, programs and services, acceleration, and training of educators and make recommendations for policy improvement where appropriate.

Finally, we need to ensure that the policies developed at state level and enacted at the local level are consonant and comprehensive so that gifted learners have opportunities appropriate to their needs over a span of years necessary to develop competency, expertise, and hopefully eminence.

References

VanTassel-Baska, J. (Ed.) (2021). Talent development in gifted education: Theory, research, and practice. Routledge.

VanTassel-Baska, J. (2018). American policy in gifted education. Gifted Child Today, 41(2), 98-103.



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