Science Education for Gifted Learners

Keith S. Taber

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134157815
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Science is central to our modern technological society, yet many of the most able pupils who could become the scientists of tomorrow turn away from science as soon as they have a choice in their studies. Science is often seen to be difficult or boring, and fails to engage or challenge those who are most suited to excel in scientific studies.

This book asks what classroom teachers can do to make sure that their science teaching is stimulating and challenging for their students. Topics covered include:

• what do we mean by gifted and able children?
• gifted children that slip through the net
• challenging science through modelling
• asking questions in science
• exploring topical issues
• challenging science through talk
• after-school enrichment.

Set in the wider context of debates about the provision for those labelled 'gifted' and 'exceptionally able', this book explores the meaning of these categories, and considers what they may imply in such approaches as setting, streaming, acceleration and enrichment.

Chapter 1
Science education for gifted learners?

Keith S. Taber

This book is about science education for gifted learners. Such a title implies that:

• We can identify groups of students that we might consider ‘gifted’.
• Some particular brand or type of science education is best suited for these specific learners.

Neither of these assumptions would be universally shared. Therefore it is important to establish, at the outset, the understanding of some key issues that has informed the book. In this introductory chapter, therefore, I explore the intellectual landscape into which the later chapters will be located, each contributing something to the scenery. To do this, I address a number of core questions relating to the notion of ‘science education for gifted and able learners’:

• How valid is the notion of ‘gifted learners’?
• How is the term ‘gifted’ used in this book?
• Why should we expect gifted learners to have ‘special needs’ in science?
• How can teachers identify gifted learners in science?
• What kind of science education meets the need of gifted learners of science?

These are ‘big’ questions, and this chapter will introduce the main issues and arguments, and establish a framework for reading the other, more detailed, contributions in this book. The last question, in particular, is explored in various forms throughout the book.

How valid is the notion of gifted learners?

The term ‘gifted’ (along with similar descriptors, such as ‘exceptionally able’) is commonly used in educational discourse, and along with related labels such as ‘intelligent’ and ‘creative’, tends to be well understood in general terms without there being a clear consensus of what exactly is being defined. Most teachers, and others working in education, would have a vague idea of what to expect of a gifted learner, without their necessarily being any detailed agreement between different users of the term (Maltby 1984).

It seems that there are at least three problematic aspects to the notion of a gifted learner in science:

• How gifted is gifted?
• How broad is the ‘gift’?
• How fixed is the ‘gift’?

There are no definitive answers to these questions: rather our answers depend on our choice of definition for the term.

How gifted is gifted?

Commonly, students are assigned to groupings such as gifted and able in terms of their ranking within a cohort. So, UK government policy (as of 2006) on ‘gifted and talented’ students refers to the top 5–10% of students:

All schools are required to identify a gifted and talented pupil cohort comprising 5–10% of pupils in each relevant year group. These are pupils who achieve, or who have the ability to achieve, at a level significantly in advance of the average for their year group in their school.

DfES 2004a: 25

Under this policy the 5–10% includes three groups of students: those with ability in one of the ‘academic’ subjects (the ‘gifted’); those with talent in art, music, PE, sport or creative arts (the ‘talented’); and those with ‘all-round’ ability (the gifted and talented!).

Collectively, the gifted and the talented (and the gifted and talented) are also referred to as ‘the able’ in some UK government documentation (DfES 2002a), where the label ‘exceptionally able’ is used for the most able 1% of the cohort nationally:

This group includes a very few outstandingly able pupils, such as the boy aged seven who could write the caesium/water reaction balanced symbol equation and another of a similar age who described fusion in terms of the mass and atomic numbers of hydrogen and helium.

DfES 2003: 4

Although this example is taken from a 2003 government initiative, it is reminiscent of work on gifted learners undertaken in the 1960s (before a focus on gifted learners became unfashionable). Fisher described how a group of gifted primary pupils (c. 10 year-olds) with an interest in science were able to discuss the gas laws:

This desire to take an active part in discussion has led more recently to a consideration of the factors which affect the pressure of a gas, being treated in a semi-formal manner, and here was a powerful demonstration of the advanced ability to separate variables and exclude variables in the investigation of relationships. Preconceptions were dealt with in a more immediate manner and progress was very rapid; this topic involves mathematical concepts.

Fisher 1969: 131

Definitions of ‘gifted’ etc. are clearly arbitrary to some extent, so – for example – one research study into giftedness used the term ‘gifted’ for the top 10% of the sample, ‘highly gifted’ for the top 5%, and finally, ‘extremely gifted’ for the top 2% (Heller 1996). Clearly, any definition that implies an objective scientific measure of giftedness, in terms of percentiles, is based on the assumption that students can be ranked along a single dimension. An obvious dimension to use here is ‘intelligence’, although that is itself a highly contested concept. Nonetheless, it is not unusual for giftedness to be defined in terms of attaining a certain cut-off on an IQ (intelligence quotient) test: e.g. the 3–4% of students having a measured IQ score of 130 (Montgomery 2003a).

There are well-established, and reliable, ways of measuring IQ that may make such an approach seem relatively attractive (see Chapter 3). However, reliability does not imply validity – just because IQ scores can be approximately reproduced on re-testing, that does not mean that IQ is a good indicator of what we might find it helpful to mean by giftedness. Indeed there are significant doubts about the IQ construct (e.g. Gould 1992).

How broad is the ‘gift’?

It is generally recognised that IQ scores tend to correlate well with academic attainment, but there are major problems with using IQ as a means for identifying the gifted. It is likely that this correlation is largely an artefact of traditional notions of what academic study is about: that the types of items on IQ tests tend to test verbal and logical abilities that have traditionally been central to academic study and assessment (Gardner 1993), but may relate to a narrow definition of intelligence (cf. Sternberg et al. 2000). Although such a correlation offers some ability to predict academic success for students across much of the range of scores, it may have little to say about the exceptional abilities that gifted students can show (see for example Chapter 4 and Chapter 6).

One problem is that, if we are interested in exceptional individuals, their exceptionality may go beyond the abilities needed to do well on IQ tests. Stepanek argues that: ‘as the concept of intelligence becomes more fluid and multidimensional, the concept of giftedness also evolves’ (1999: 6). For example, being gifted in science could be considered to be as much about being ‘creative’ as intelligent. Heller (1996) uses a multidimensional concept of giftedness (the ‘Munich model’, p. 44), where giftedness comprises:

• intelligence (intellect)
• creativity
• social competence
• musical ability
• psychomotor ability/practical intelligence.

According to Heller’s research these five areas make up independent domains of giftedness, and few students are gifted in several of these distinct domains.

Sternberg (1993: 6–9) has proposed a ‘pentagonal implicit theory’ of giftedness, suggesting that a person has to meet five criteria to be judged as gifted:

• the excellence criterion (extremely good at something relative to peer group);
• the rarity criterion (showing a high level of an attribute that is rare among peers);
• the productivity criterion (the dimension of excellence must potentially lead to productivity);
• the demonstrability criterion (demonstrable through one or more valid tests); and
• the value criterion (the dimension of excellence must be a valued one in the society judging the person as gifted).

In Sternberg’s model, giftedness is defined in terms of exceptional ability (relative to the rest of the population) that can be clearly demonstrated, and is able to lead to some tangible outcome. However, Sternberg sees ‘giftedness’ as relative in another sense as well: that we should only recognise giftedness in areas that are culturally valued (be that sprinting, taking free kicks in soccer, rapping, or building up profitable businesses). Sternberg’s model resembles Gardner’s (1997) analysis of what allows an individual such as Mozart or Virginia Wolf to be extraordinary enough to be judged a genius – that the individual may have exceptional talents, which relate to an existing domain of human activity (composing music, writing novels, etc.), and are recognised by those other individuals who at that time make up the ‘field’. (For example, in Chapter 2, Gilbert and Newberry discuss Nobel Laureates – scientists receiving the ultimate recognition from their peers.)

One advantage of Sternberg’s model is that he does not define giftedness in vague terms such as ‘academic ability’. So using Sternberg’s approach, we may choose to consider a student as gifted in terms of their ability to build circuits, visualise molecular structures, undertake accurate and precise titrations, develop scientific analogies, interpret complex graphical information, draw accurate scientific diagrams, mentally obtain order-of-magnitude mathematical solutions, or indeed any of the myriad skills that are valued in learning science.

This is important, as most science teachers are aware that the most able learners are not always exceptionally strong ‘across the board’ even within science, or within an individual science discipline such as chemistry. Ignoring this point can lead to both putting too much pressure on the nominated gifted students (see, for example, Chapter 4) in areas where they are not especially strong, and also ignoring the potential of other learners to work at very high levels on certain types of tasks.

How fixed is the gift?

One of the associations of the term ‘gifted’ is that it may seem to imply something innate: there at birth and giving the potential for achieving at exceptional levels. It is undoubtedly the case that an individual’s genetic makeup has a significant influence on their manifested strengths, and on the ease with which they are likely to develop different skills and abilities. It is also true that any potential has to be relative to particular environmental conditions. So, for Sternberg giftedness implies a potential that should lead to exceptional achievement without exceptional support: i.e. to meet his five criteria of giftedness ‘with a minimal amount of practice or without good environmental support’ (Sternberg 1993: 18). Other commentators take a different view, and consider ‘giftedness’ may derive from experience as much as genetics.

Stepanek argues that ‘if intelligence is not static and can be learned, then giftedness can also be developed’ (Stepanek 1999: 6). Allowing for underachievers and the masking effects of learning difficulties (see Chapter 3), would mean setting the cut-off for identifying gifted learners at a much lower percentile. Montgomery (2003a) suggests that some potentially gifted pupils are found among those with IQ scores of 110–115, so that all students in the top 20% should be considered as possible candidates.

The danger of labelling learners

These considerations suggest that in looking to meet the needs of ‘gifted’ and ‘able’ students we should be wary of the potential effect of labelling students in schools. If we decide that, say, 5% of the students in a school are gifted in science, then we are signifying that the vast majority have not been endowed with such gifts. This majority will not therefore be expected to demonstrate exceptional ability, and are not considered suitable to be considered for ‘gifted provision’. This is important, as teacher and learner expectations are known to be very significant factors in subsequent attainment (e.g. Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1970), so it is important that such expectations are carefully informed. Yet, the discussion of giftedness above suggests that identifying a group of students as ‘the gifted science learners’ in a school is not straightforward. Particular identification criteria may well disadvantage groups such as girls (see Chapter 4) or students from cultural minorities (see Chapter 5).

So identifying gifted learners through standard test scores is clearly an oversimplistic approach. Even assuming that such tests are reliable, they only show attainment of students under the current regime. If some learners are better suited to different, more challenging, curriculum demands then we cannot assume they are always those who score highest on the current standard assessments. Also, science is not a unitary activity: the most creative may not recall the most facts; those who can plan experiments or write accurate observational descriptions are not always the same individuals who excel in calculations.

Many students in schools are already recognised as having special needs which impede their progress: they may have specific learning difficulties (dyslexia), attention deficit problems, partial deafness, or any of a host of conditions and problems that could readily mask their exceptional potential in science (see Chapter 3). Some of the most talented scientists even suffer from behavioural traits found on the autism spectrum (e.g. Sacks 1995; see also Chapter 4).

A related concern is the implication that it is students who are able or gifted, whilst others are not. This reinforces an implicit view that gifts or abilities are fixed at birth, or at least by school age, and need to be recognised, but could not otherwise be nurtured. Clearly, children do show different levels of attainment from their earliest schooldays, and it is generally the case that current academic attainment is a good indicator of future progress – at least in the ‘academic’ context: ‘high test-scores or marks in school are not a reliable indicator of adult careers, except for those who continue in a similar path, such as teachers and academics’ (Freeman 1998: 7). We would certainly not see this as justifying any model where people are labelled as being of some fixed ability without the potential to develop (Hart et al. 2004). Even if Einstein’s lack of achievements at school is often exaggerated, there is little doubt that one of the greatest scientific mi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Science Education for Gifted Learners
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Science education for gifted learners?
• Chapter 2: The characteristics of the gifted and exceptionally able in science
• Chapter 3: Gifted science learners with special educational needs
• Chapter 4: The emotional lives of fledgling geniuses
• Chapter 5: Opportunities for gifted science provision in the context of a learner-centred national curriculum
• Chapter 6: Developing the thinking of gifted students through science
• Chapter 7: Challenging able science learners through models and modelling
• Chapter 8: Challenging gifted learners through classroom dialogue
• Chapter 9: Asking questions in classroom science
• Chapter 10: Teaching controversial socio-scientific issues to gifted and talented students
• Chapter 11: Context-based science: a ‘gift horse’ for the talented?
• Chapter 12: Choice for the gifted: Lessons from teaching about scientific explanations
• Chapter 13: Practical work for the gifted in science
• Chapter 14: Working together to provide enrichment for able science learners
• Chapter 15: Bringing learners and scientific expertise together
• Chapter 16: An agenda for science education for gifted learners
• References