How can schools make sure gifted students get the help they need?
What research from four continents tells us about how teachers and schools are trying to meet the needs of high-achieving students.
By Maria Nicholas, Andrew Skourdoumbis, and Ondine Bradbury
Earlier this month, the New South Wales government announced it would roll out programs for gifted students in every public school in the state.
This comes amid concerns gifted school students are not achieving their potential.
A previous review in 2019 estimated that 10 percent of the state’s students were gifted but that up to 40 percent of those students were not meeting their potential. Other studies have suggested about 50 percent of gifted students are underachieving.
Our new research found teachers tend to focus their tailored approaches toward helping students performing below standard, rather than their gifted peers. Our study also looks at how gifted students can be better supported at school.
What does “gifted” mean?
There are lots of different ways to be gifted and different definitions of a gifted child.
Gifted students are generally understood to have natural abilities well above their peers of the same age. This roughly puts them in the top 10 percent of their age group.
Many Australian school systems, such as NSW and Victoria, base their understanding of gifted students on the work of Canadian educational psychologist Françoys Gagné.
Gagné says giftedness occurs across various domains, from intellectual to physical, creative and social-emotional.
Signs a child may be gifted include reading or manipulating numbers before they start school, being very knowledgeable about topics of interest, and making connections easily. Gifted students can also have an acute interest in social justice, a mature sense of humour and enjoy hypothesising. Or they may show advanced skill in the arts or sporting activities.
A student is seen as underachieving when there’s a significant mismatch between their ability and their performance in assessments.
Our research
Our research was a scoping review looking at 38 studies from 2000 to 2022. It examined what teachers and schools have done to meet the needs of high-achieving students. A scoping review is a study that maps out all the available evidence on a topic.
The review included studies from around the world, including Australia, the United States, England, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and Singapore.
It found while teachers try to meet all students’ needs, their tailored efforts tend to be geared towards supporting students who are not meeting basic standards.
This means gifted student may not get sufficient help at school to support their own particular needs. Instead, they may be directed simply to work on their own or take on “class helper” roles if they finish their tasks early.
How can gifted students be supported?
Teachers of course need to have the time, resources and school support to get to know each individual student and to offer appropriate programs.
Provided teachers have these things, our study identified multiple teaching approaches that can have a positive impact on gifted students. They can be used in both primary and secondary schools.
The emphasis is on collaborating with students, tailoring content for individual students and being flexible. Some specific approaches include:
Exploring a topic in greater depth or breadth with a student.
Assigning tasks that specifically tap into a student’s interests.
Giving open-ended tasks that allow for problem-solving.
Giving students a choice in how a topic should be investigated.
Having students work through the curriculum at a faster pace.
Skipping content if a student has already mastered it.
Encouraging students to explore topics across different disciplines (for example, studying a novel as a piece of literature, from a historical perspective and as a basis on which to explore a health issue raised in the text).
Providing access to role models and experts to extend learning.
There are other reasons students can underachieve
It is also important to note there are other reasons why gifted students may not meet their potential.
There may be issues with a student’s confidence at school or motivation. Or they may have attitudes towards teachers or school that negatively impact their learning.
Or they may not be identified as gifted, if they come from a socioeconomically disadvantaged or culturally diverse background, or if they have a disability such as dyslexia or autism that makes schooling challenging.
Very narrow definitions of “gifted” may also mean students are not picked up as high-achieving if they don’t perform above expected in certain assessments.
If parents think their child is showing signs of being gifted they should contact their child’s teacher or school to talk about specific support.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Maria Nicholas is Senior Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education at Deakin University.
Andrew Skourdoumbis is Associate Professor in Education at Deakin University.
Ondine Bradbury is a Ph.D. Candidate at Monash University
I doubt any of these studies look at the "giftedness" of the teacher. It isn't a small point. In a word, gifted students - we're talking high IQ, primarily - literally out-think people of lower IQ. This IS the definition of high IQ: individuals who think at a levet of depth and complexity beyond most. As a result, there is a major communication gap that is difficult to cross. For example, how does a theoretical physicist explain the General Theory of Relativity to a layman except in the simplest terms? He/she will achieve some level of understanding, but will never function at a level to work that theory, or take it to another level. Likewise, it takes a gifted teacher to understand that the gifted student is expressing and manipulating deeper, more complex thoughts. They must be given "room" to express and develop their thoughts and projects. More conventional classroom work only bores them. The teacher (and school) must be lrepared to bring-in specialists, for ex to teach a 6 th grader integral calculus or differential equations, if he/she is developing a theory on gravitation waves that requires that depth of analysis, or a composer to a gifted young musician. But, the process shifts from TEACHING to COLLABORATION. Gifted students don't typically need to be taught; they're usually very good at teaching themselves. They need to be acknowledged and cultivated and the primary teacher functioning more as a coach.