“Gifted and talented education has too many bandwagons, too many good intentions, and too many students whose early promise fails to develop into adult eminence.” Hook 2015
It has been a while since I have met with educators charged with meeting the special learning needs of students labelled as “gifted and talented”. I turned my back on the field about ten years ago – after becoming frustrated with the entrenched interest groups, the reliance on anecdote over evidence, and the inability of the many well-meaning practitioners to evaluate the effect of their programmes and interventions on the students they claimed to be advocating for.
So it was with some trepidation I accepted an invitation to speak frankly with educators at the Christchurch Gifted and Talented Association Symposium in Christchurch on Friday.
I opened with reference to my own professional experiences in the field in the past – and then shared the enormous disquiet I experience today when thinking about our New Zealand practice and the damage “well-meaning” initiatives are causing – backing my claims with the research findings of Hattie, Dweck, Subotnik and others. A discussion on what the classroom based use of SOLO Taxonomy can contribute to the conversation followed.
However, my trepidation was unnecessary, the follow up conversations have been fabulous – and the requests for professional reading likewise. It seems Christchurch teachers are very ready to re-think their professional practice and the purpose and the effect of what we do to students in the guise of meeting their needs in gifted and talented education.
Or perhaps ten years later gifted and talented education is more open to asking the hard questions and exploring the hidden assumptions.
Either way I was glad to be part of the conversation.
If you are working with students who are labelled as having a “gift” or a talent” then perhaps a good place to start thinking is to ask yourself –
What does it mean about what we do if …
Although substantial numbers of children with outstanding academic or intellectual ability are identified and some resources are expended on services for them, few of these children become eminent in adulthood (Cross & Coleman, 2005; Dai, 2010; Davidson, 2009; Hollinger & Fleming, 1992; Simonton, 1998; Subotnik & Rickoff, 2010; VanTassel-Baska, 1989).
What makes us think we can know in advance who has the gift?
What is the process that got them there?
How can we best sustain and develop the abilities we identify?
Any teacher who reads Dweck’s One Line of Praise study or her research on “Is Math a Gift? Beliefs That Put Females at Risk” – will be going back to their school with a renewed energy for ensuring that learning outcomes are framed as the result of effort and strategies rather than an expected outcome from a “labelled individual” – an individual persuaded by the very initiative claimed to help them that they have “fixed ability”.
Refer:
Ceci S.J. & W. Williams (Eds.) (2006); Why aren’t more women in science? Top researchers debate the evidence. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Dweck, Carol, S – Research articles
Subotnik, R. F., Olszewski-Kubilius, P., and Worrell, F. C. (2011) Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education: A Proposed Direction Forward Based on Psychological Science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 12(1) 3–54.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Hey Pam,
as much as I love reading your thinking, I love your images more just because they are like the cream on the strawberries. Great to curate some new references in the field of G & T. For example Subotnik. What a fabulous name. You could just about name your superhero with that name.