Gifted and Talented Children 4-11

Understanding and Supporting their Development

Christine MacIntyre

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134039302
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Can you recognize and tell the difference between gifted and talented children? Do you know how to provide the support they need?

Responding directly to current thinking in education, this book raises practitioners' expectations, and shows you how to identify children in your class as gifted and talented.

Christine Macintyre addresses the nature/nurture debate in relation to gifted and talented children, and discusses related topics such as the norms of development and domains of learning.

Essential reading for all primary teachers and teaching assistants, this fascinating book is full of practical suggestions enabling you to:

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• recognise the innate nature of giftedness

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• provide the teaching required for talent to emerge

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• understand the experiences of gifted and talented children

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• develop activities to challenge and encourage your gifted and talented children to widen their repertoire of skills and abilities

A chapter on neurological development is included to confront questions such as "what is it that enables children to do well", and even "Is there a gene for genius?" Contrasting and conflicting answers are shared and debated.

Finally, the issue of gifted and talented children with a learning difference/disability is raised and examples are given of how this ASD (asynchronous development) can hinder the recognition of gifts and talents in these children.

Chapter 1
Gifted and talented children

Explaining the difference—parents’ views

When practitioners are told they are to have gifted and talented children in their setting, they often ask ‘What’s the difference between the two … and how will that affect my planning?’ Or if practitioners themselves suspect that some children have outstanding abilities, they want to know whether the children really meet the criteria to assign them to these groups or whether they are just very good in their particular setting. This chapter examines these important questions.

Let’s begin by considering two definitions of giftedness. The first is offered by a group of parents. They explain that gifted children have:

A precious endowment of outstanding abilities, which allows them to interact with the environment with remarkably high levels of achievement and creativity.

The word ‘endowment’ suggests that these parents believe that their children are born with, rather than acquire the potential to do very well. They have a quality of innateness which is demonstrated when they perform at a level well above their peer group. Sometimes parents who have high abilities themselves expect their children to be of this calibre and they may well be pleased or disappointed when development shows their anticipations have or have not been met. Other parents can be surprised, even overwhelmed by their child’s ability and wonder ‘where did that come from?’ (see Chapter 2). They soon learn that genetics can throw up lots of surprises!

Interestingly, parents often recognise how their children’s abilities interact with what they experience in their lives. They know that their children are ‘empowered by acquired characteristics’ i.e. that the children who already have the potential also learn readily and positively from their environmental experiences. These might be early and sustained bonding with their parents that leads to stability and security and/or having positive role models at home, in a care setting, in nurseries and schools. This definition would also suggest that such children had access to a range of stimulating learning experiences at the most beneficial or critical learning time. These might involve them in play, in communicating with adults and other children to make decisions or in being encouraged to think of alternative solutions to problems. Or the children might challenge their motor skills playing out of doors, so learning to balance, co-ordinate and control their bodies and any equipment necessary to develop games skills. From these experiences they develop independence and learn to take confidence-building risks. These are much more demanding experiences than just being told what to do.

The ‘acquired characteristics’ could also mean being motivated enough to continue probing when solutions are difficult to find or being prepared to take part in group competitions. These might just give children who find most things easy, experiences in losing and learning to do so with grace! A variety of opportunities provide opportunities to shine but also times to recognise that other children have gifts that shine in different arenas. So they find that that they are not alone in being a high achiever. Through such activities the children develop a positive but realistic sense of self, which is the basis of self-esteem.

So, is giftedness something parents always welcome? What do parents say?

Listen to Anya talking about her son Calum, Jake speaking of his daughter Marie and grandparents Leah and Brad speaking of their grandchild, Amy. First Anya.

Calum is four now and even at this early age, it’s very difficult to give him the stimulation and the education I feel he needs. While I have to be pleased he is so bright, sometimes I wish he was just ordinary. All the time, and no matter what the rest of the family is doing, he asks questions and he’s never content with the answers. I know children ask ‘why’ all the time but Calum’s questions are different; they are much more intense. When we are having a meal or trying to watch television his attention is obviously elsewhere. He is so restless. ‘Why isn’t God married?’ he’ll ask. ‘Does he not have children then? I thought he liked children, doesn’t He say so? Is He white or black or brown and why is that? What language does he speak?’ and when I say, ‘I just don’t know’ he gets so angry. How do you satisfy such a curious child?

When he was a toddler, I always told him stories, but he was more interested in what each word said rather than the story itself. He’d want to know why some words had more letters than others and he’d challenge words like through and enough wondering how they didn’t sound the same. He quickly built up a vocabulary and taught himself to read before he was three. Then he chose what he wanted to read. This was always factual stuff because ‘stories are rubbish, just for babies’. So when the other children hear stories at school or even talk about Harry Potter he immediately interrupts with something else. He is very single-minded and determined, even domineering. It’s not easy to cross him.

Anya also explained her exhaustion, ‘He is always on the go, there’s never a minute when we can relax. Thankfully he spends time on the computer looking up sites on the Internet, but that’s a worry too because he’s learning more and more and how will the teacher cope? How will he make friends if he always knows best? How will I manage when he comes home?’

Anya concerns show that having a gifted child can be a hard act to manage!

Jake’s daughter Marie had a different way of coping with her gifts. Jake recalls:

Marie finds learning things very easy, but she has a social maturity that helps her to interact with all the children round about. She goes out to play quite happily; to outsiders she usually appears happy and content. She seems to be popular because the other children come to play and ask her what games they should play, things like that. She always smiles and includes everyone, that’s why they keep coming, I think.

The only downside I see to her being so bright is that she gets so worried about children in the Third World. How many other four-year-olds would know about their hardships I wonder? I’ve explained that when she’s older she can visit these countries and help the children. I thought that would allow her to put sad thoughts aside for now but she seems to be investigating even more. It’s as if she has two personalities. When she’s with children she’s carefree and at home she gets worried and morose. She understands these mood swings and says they happen because she thinks too much. What should I do? When she heard a programme on climate change, she asked if we would get poorer as we got hotter. Then she seemed glad because, ‘That’ll let people feel what it’s like in Somalia’.

A thoughtful sense of humour was part of Marie’s personality too!

Now Amy. Amy lives with her grandparents. They were enchanted by Amy’s gift for music. Her grandmother explained, ‘What a wonderful sound her piano makes—she makes the notes sing and she wants to practise all the time. It gives her and us so much pleasure.’ Asked if and how they had encouraged Amy’s talent, her grandmother explained,

Well we are a musical family. We have always enjoyed concerts and my husband was a very good singer. Although he didn’t have the opportunity to make a career out of music, that would have been his first choice. But we play music all day in this house, it’s really important to us, so we were especially pleased when Amy showed a real aptitude for playing an instrument. She is fully committed to becoming a concert pianist. We never have to ask her to practise. She would stay at the piano all day if she could. She’s looking forward to the proms on television and for a special treat we’ll take her to the Albert Hall to hear the orchestra there.

Asked whether they were concerned that Amy’s focus on music made her education rather narrow, her Grandfather replied,

Well, a gift is one thing, but even with a gift, she needs to practise. Even Mozart needed to practise. She has a wonderful teacher who gives her so much encouragement but even when she is not available Amy keeps working. You can’t water down a gift for music by insisting she does something she wouldn’t enjoy so much—where’s the sense in that?

From these case studies it can be seen that any definition of giftedness must be multi-faceted.

Gagnés definition of giftedness is endorsed by the City of Edinburgh Council (2001) in its document A Framework for Gifted and Talented Pupils. It claims that giftedness is,

The possession of untrained and spontaneously expressed natural ability in at least one ability domain—that would place the child in the top 15 per cent of the age group.

Again it involves the notion of giftedness being ‘spontaneously expressed’ as if no training or education was needed to make the child shine. And it emphasises that children can be gifted ‘in just one ability domain, or aspect of their development’(rather than having to be high achievers all across the board, i.e. intellectually, socially, emotionally and in the motor domain). Colloquially this is known as ‘garden-variety gifted’. This highlights the importance of practitioners observing and assessing i.e. giving equal attention to all aspects of the children’s development (see Appendix 3) but while all aspects interact, separating them out makes observation and assessment easier.

While the English model offers the description that ‘gifted and talented children are those who have one or more abilities developed to a level significantly ahead of their year group—or the potential to develop these abilities’ (DCSF 2005), and aims to give all children ‘work that challenges stretches and excites them’, they allow the schools to ‘define their own population’. In so doing the model asserts that a ‘school’s gifted and talented cohort should be broadly representative of the school’s population’.

Table 1.1 Characteristics of gifted children identified by families compared to expert lists. Note that all gifted children would not be expected to register on all of the items, rather on a high proportion of them.

A difference is that in the English model the term ‘gifted’ refers to pupils who are capable of excelling in academic subjects such as English or history. ‘Talented’ refers to pupils who ‘may excel in areas requiring visual-spatial skills or practical abilities such as those required in PE, drama or art’.

Current priorities state that there should be a trained ‘leading teacher for gifted and talented pupils’ for each cluster of primary schools and that tracking the progress of such pupils will be an important development.

So does a gifted child need anything beyond ability? And are there downsides to being gifted? Gagné points out that ‘Motivation and a healthy self-esteem are essential if giftedness is to become talent’ (City of Edinburgh Council 2001).

This proviso alerts parents and practitioners to the effect of the children’s motivation on their capacity to fulfil their potential. While the children described above were certainly motivated, even to the point of obsession, some gifted children seem to be content not to use their gifts, especially if they prefer to do other things or perhaps nothing at all!

It can be very hard to stimulate intrinsic motivation if the children do not value the set tasks and if they have worked out that what they are being asked to do is of little relevance to their own goals.

Silverman (1993) describes other personality characteristics that might work against the demonstration of intrinsic gifts. These are ‘intensity, questioning rules/non-conformity, a preference for isolation and perfectionism’ and they highlight the fact that gifted children may have problems accepting usual ways because they can think at a level beyond the commonplace. So they may work out the lack of logic behind some rules and resent having to conform. They may also be so intrigued by their own project that they find it unreasonable to share their ideas and inventions or finish what they are doing before they are ready just because the routine of the day requires that they do so. This attitude, frustration, even aggression, does not help them make friends. So practitioners have to recognise that these children may become socially isolated and there may be conflict with the school staff as well as with the pupils themselves.

These difficulties can also impact negatively on children’s self-esteem which fluctuates, particularly when the children are very young. It is continuously being formed by the impressions the children have of how they are regarded by the important people, the ‘significant others’ around them. So if they realise that teachers and pupils find them ‘different’ in any way, the children may take steps to fit in with the crowd and resent overtures that single them out such as giving them differentiated work, asking them for too many answers or asking them to oversee the work of less able pupils (Naisbitt 2001).

Does developing a high self-esteem depend on what the gift is?

Ongoing investigations into how parents talk about their children’s gifts and talents are discovering that parents of gifted children were more likely to share that news with others if their children’s gifts were of the musical or sporting variety (Macintyre 2008). They were less likely to comment to other parents that their children were very good at maths or literacy, as a result children who were gifted and talented in these areas didn’t hear the comments being shared and so didn’t realise that their parents were proud of their intellectual gifts. And so they were less convinced that their abilities were good to have! Interestingly in popularity studies, children who were good at sports were the ones nominated at the top! Is there a cultural modesty that is causing parents and children to have priorities?

This second part Gagné’s quotation (City of Edinburgh Council 2001) also raises the issue of defining talent. So what is ‘being talented’ and how does this differ from being gifted?

Talent is achievement in any field of performance that puts the pupil in the top 15 per cent—one who performs at a significantly higher level than might be expected…

Again the top 15 per cent of children are identified. But while giftedness is seen as potential, which may or may not be realised, talent is achievement. It depends on children working hard. There must be a certain level of ability but the level of success depends on the level of commitment. However, there are some eminent educationalists (such as Donald McIntyre, until recently Professor of Education at Cambridge University) who advise that any child can do anything provided they are committed enough! While this gives pause for thought, Winner (2007) disagrees. She explains that the level of commitment required ‘is just not possible if the child does not have a high level of ability’. She speaks of a four-year-old who loves to practise the piano for six hours every day and she is sure that ‘you just can’t make an “ordinary” child fulfil this demand’.

Another difference between giftedness and talent is in the ‘untaught’ element. Talent comes in response to dedicated practice and because there is a technique involved—i.e. learning how to do something complex—it depends on skilled training. Usually an experienced tutor or coach is required before the talent emerges to the level that gives outstanding success.

So children can be gifted and talented, gifted without being talented and/or talented without being gifted!

Gagné’s model of giftedness and talent

Gagné differentiates between giftedness and talent in diagrammatic form (see Figure 1.1). He sees giftedness as ‘aptitude’ and identifies four key domains

The intellectual domain

The first domain is ‘intellectual’ and Gagné suggests that giftedness in this domain is seen in the children’s powers of logical reasoning. Children gifted in this domain readily understand that there may be more than one point of view and can visualise alternatives. They understand that different people may have different perspectives. So the children are able to sift from a mass of incoming information and quickly weigh up appropriate and alternative ways of responding. This capacity would lead to an efficient and effective means of solving problems.

These children must also be able to transfer what they have learned to other situations so that knowledge is not only something to be gained for its own sake, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: discussing the issues
• 1 Gifted and talented children: explaining the difference – parents’ views
• 2 Understanding the nature of gifted and talented children: a biological perspective
• 3 Understanding the nurture of gifted and talented children: an environmental perspective
• 4 Practical activities to intrigue gifted and talented children at school
• 5 The gifted child with learning diffculties: asynchonous development (ASD)
• Appendix 1: Aspects of development
• Appendix 2: Cognitive development
• Appendix 3: Goals from Scotland’s A Curriculum for Excellence (2007)
• Appendix 3: Glossary
• Bibliography