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Gifted programs and services: what are the nonnegotiables?

Theory Into Practice, Spring, 2005 by Joyce Van Tassel-Baska

This article focuses on the "nonnegotiables" of gifted programs and services, emphasizing the importance of appropriately differentiated curriculum, instruction, materials, and assessment procedures. Differentiation is discussed in the context of providing acceleration and grouping as basic policy provisions in gifted programs--within which a curriculum base that is advanced, in-depth, complex, creative, and challenging may be offered. Alignment with content standards is also suggested as a way to promote connection to general curriculum reform. Ideas about creating an optimal match between the learner and the curriculum-delivery system are explored. The use of advanced resources, including technology, is described. Two inquiry-based instructional techniques are delineated, specifically problem-based learning and question-asking techniques. The article ends with an emphasis on the need for quality teaching for the gifted population and for collaborative support between home and school in promoting talent development.

More Articles of Interest: INTEGRATING Gifted Education into the Total School Curriculum; Applying gifted education pedagogy to total talent development for all students; Assessment of gifted student learning in the language arts.; Identifying gifted students from underrepresented populations; Parent advocacy for culturally diverse gifted students

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IN AN ERA OF NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND (NCLB), one population has been neglected. It is the gifted and talented learner whose needs call for educational attention. Yet every school needs to have basic provisions in place to assure the educational development of these students in the domains of learning for which the school has responsibility. Most schools mission statements proclaim the intention of educating every child to the level of his or her potential, yet many times these words have no translation value for gifted students as they sit bored in classrooms where their instructional level exceeds by years their age-peers. Thus, there is a real need to consider nonnegotiable options for this population, regardless of age or grade considerations, as well as general program organizational approaches employed to effect sound service delivery. There is a wide variety of ways that educators can assist in the talent development process of advanced learners.

Overview of School-Based Talent Development

For schools to respond effectively to gifted learners' needs, certain nonnegotiable talent development emphases must be in place, such as accelerative practices coupled with the use of technology options and opportunities. Schools also need to ensure that differentiated practices are in place in all subject areas, at both the elementary and secondary levels. Such practices require the design of differentiated units of study, differentiated curriculum resources, instructional differentiation, and the use of appropriate assessment tools to judge authentic learning for gifted students. A key support for these emphases is quality teaching, where the instructor skill and ability is optimally matched to the learner. Schools must also accept that these students require services beyond what they can provide. Thus, access to advanced opportunities outside of school is a facilitative role for schools to perform on behalf of their most gifted learners.

Accelerated Study

One of the nonnegotiable curriculum policy initiatives that school districts might enact on behalf of all gifted students would be one that addresses acceleration. Acceleration assumes that different students of the same age are at different levels of learning within and across learning areas, thus necessitating diagnosis of learning level and prescription of curriculum at a level slightly above it. The government publication Prisoners of Time (National Education Commission on Time and Learning, 1994) documented the importance of recognizing time as the crucial variable in learning, citing an understanding that many researchers have had for several decades: "If experience, research, and common sense teach nothing else, they confirm the truism that people learn at different rates in different ways with different subjects" (p. 1). Understanding that students have differences in learning rates for different subject areas in different kinds of material at different stages of development is crucial to patterns of effective curriculum and instruction.

Flexibility in schooling, however, has been one of the most difficult tasks for public schools to enact in responding to students with special needs. Various components need to be considered in developing such a policy at the school district level. One such component should allow for early entrance and early exit procedures for students at various stages of development. Many gifted children are academically ready for school before they are at the "magic age," and others develop more rapidly than age peers, once they are in a schooling environment. Early access to high school eliminates the holding pattern of the middle-school years so common in many contexts around the country. Specifically, early college entrance can be accomplished by those already academically proficient in high school subject matter. One of the advantages of the new standards movement (including NCLB) is a clear way to document mastery levels in each area of schooling, thus allowing students who are ready to move forward to do so.

Gifted programs and services: what are the nonnegotiables?

Theory Into Practice, Spring, 2005 by Joyce Van Tassel-Baska

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