Including the Gifted and Talented

Making Inclusion Work for More Gifted and Able Learners

Chris Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134235025
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This single volume presents the views of experts from the field which challenge the assumption that educational inclusion relates only to those pupils with learning difficulties. In this book, the authors examine the extent to which a truly inclusive context can provide a challenging environment for gifted and talented pupils.

Key issues explored include:

• the social and emotional aspects of being a gifted and talented pupil
• the pros and cons of being labelled gifted and talented in very young children
• why 'regular' classrooms are the best place to educate gifted and talented pupils
• modifying the basic school curriculum to meet the needs of gifted and talented pupils
• What is submerged talent and how can it be found?

As the Government has recently initiated the Excellence in Cities scheme, this thought-provoking volume is an invaluable read to student teachers, practitioners, academics and researchers who wish to further their study in this hot topic.

Part I

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What does inclusion mean for the gifted and talented?

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Chapter 1

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Principles of inclusion

Implications for able learners

Chris M. M. Smith

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Inclusion has dominated the educational agenda of the United Nations since 1989 (UNESCO 1989; 1990; 1994; 1996; 2001). It has been the focus of increasing attention in educational literature and has influenced heavily policy and legislative developments in many countries. However, there has been a major difficulty from the point of view of able learners. The inclusive movement emerged primarily from a concern that the rights of disabled and maginalised individuals were being denied and as such have been part of an evolving terminology associated with special education and social exclusion. It has been used to support moral, economic and political arguments for educational and social reform directly aimed at the integration and reintegration of these disabled and marginalised individuals. Hegarty (1993), for example, sees inclusion as a means to reforming the special school system while Percy-Smith (2000) sees it as a way of achieving social equity. In this sense the inclusive movement has been interpreted as a reaction against existing exclusionary circumstances and related only to specific marginalised groups such as those who attend special schools. With the focus on special education and disability it has been assumed, logically in my opinion, that able pupils have no place in the inclusion agenda. But is this the only interpretation of inclusion?

In this chapter I will explore the concept of inclusion and argue that, despite its origins in special education, a parallel history of evolution from segregation to inclusion is evident in the education of able pupils. In addition I shall suggest that, because of its special educational roots, a narrow interpretation of inclusion restricted to location has been adopted but a much wider interpretation is possible. It is this wider interpretation which is highly relevant and applicable to the education of able pupils. Finally, using Scotland as an example, I will argue that moving towards inclusion involves a paradigmatic shift in principles, attitudes and practices and that this shift, despite changes in terminology, has not yet taken place.

THE ORIGINS OF INCLUSION

Dyson (2001) suggests that the history of special education has been a history of ‘contradictory tendencies within the education system’s responses to diversity and of resolutions of the “dilemmas of difference” to which these tendencies give rise’ (2001: 25). Certainly, in Scotland, the dominant response to diversity has been based on a model of diagnosis and treatment which seeks to identify difference and to eliminate or, at the very least, reduce it. Special education, in particular, has been heavily criticised for being dominated by a medical model which has the aim of identifying who is normal and who is abnormal in order to treat identified groups differently. The 1945 Education (Scotland) Act, for example, stated nine official categories to aid the identification of disabled children.¹ In addition to the early segregation of children on the basis of disability the qualifying examination sifted and sorted the remainder on entry to secondary school. On the basis of so-called scientific measures of intelligence the most able children were selected for education in senior secondary high schools while the remainder were educated in junior high schools. The qualifying examination (the selection instrument) was essentially an IQ test that young people sat at the end of primary school (usually around the age of eleven) and was popularly known as the ‘eleven plus’. These processes of segregation took place on the basis of two related assumptions: that some children were inherently and manifestly different from the ‘norm’ and that, as a result, they required different educational ‘treatments’.

There was, however, growing disquiet about how well the selective system was working. First, research evidence cast ‘doubt on the fairness and reliability of the qualifying examination’ (Bryce and Humes 1999: 39) and second, there was found to be a strong social class bias in terms of who was allocated to the different educational provisions. The concerns about inequity, therefore, extended beyond the school gates and into fundamental questions about the nature of Scottish society. Senior secondary schools were accused of perpetuating the class system because the selection procedures and tests favoured white, middle-class children at the expense of other groups. It was felt that many who would have benefited from a senior secondary education were being denied the opportunity. The growing criticism eventually resulted in the introduction of the comprehensive system as a means of achieving social equity.

Instead of early labelling, it was argued, a system which offered opportunity to as many young people as possible would reap benefits not only in terms of individual achievement but also in terms of wider social unity.

(Bryce and Humes 1999: 39)

The abolition, however, of the junior and senior secondary education system did not affect the selection procedures for placement in special educational establishments. Children and young people continued to be diagnosed and labelled using IQ tests, the results of which were used to segregate them from the mainstream of education. As a result, special education, based on an identified and individual deficit, flourished. Indeed it was not until 1974 and the introduction of the Education (Mentally Handicapped Children) Act that all children were deemed educable in law. Yet as Dumbleton (1990) points out: ‘education is a specifically human activity which is usually seen as a means of promoting those aspects of humanity that are most highly valued. To question a person’s educability is to question an aspect of their humanity’ (1990: 16).

The watershed in terms of special education came in 1978 with the publication of the Warnock Report (DES 1978). This report recommended, among other things: the increased integration of children from special educational settings into mainstream; that the categorisation of disability be abolished and replaced with the concept of a special educational needs continuum; and that a system of recording children’s needs be introduced.² At the time, the report was seen as a major step forward in reforming the special school system.

While Warnock abolished the categories established by the 1945 Act, new categories soon emerged. Social and emotional behavioural difficulties (SEBD), moderate learning difficulties (MLD), hearing and visual impairment (HI and VI respectively), autism, Asperger’s syndrome, all the ‘dys’ (e.g. dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysphasia), language and communication difficulties, Down’s syndrome, physical disability and many more came into common usage in Scottish schools, along with English as an additional language (EAL). Gifted and/or talented were not among the new labels although there was some use of the term ‘able’ in national documentation (SOED 1993).

In addition, the Warnock Report encouraged the movement of children from special educational settings into mainstream. The procedures for transfer drew heavily on the medical model of disability and involved only those children deemed ‘capable of transfer’ by the gatekeepers in the system (Tomlinson 1982). The child being moved was expected to fit in with the mainstream class and little, if any, adjustment was made to ‘normal’ classroom teaching methods to account for the ‘incomer’. Some children experienced a miserable time in mainstream schools as a result. Of course, if it all became too much for the school to cope with then, more often than not, the child was removed once again to specialist support settings. Like oil and water it was generally accepted that the ‘integrated child’ and the mainstream class could not mix successfully and as a result the separation remained visible.

The response to the needs of able pupils, in the meantime, was primarily through ability grouping within and across classes. Scottish secondary schools have, over the years, variously experimented with streaming, setting and mixed ability teaching. However, in recent years there has been increasing national pressure placed on schools to expand their use of setting (SOEID 1996) as a means of raising attainment and meeting the needs of able pupils. Even the First Minister of the Scottish Parliament³ has urged that Scottish schools should ‘make more use of setting’ (McConnell 2002). Given that research has indicated a link between setting and social disadvantage (Hallam and Toutounji 1996; Suknandan and Lee 1999) it seems incongruous that a First Minister so concerned with social exclusion should encourage such a move.

Much evidence exists of the disadvantages to those assigned to lower sets. A study by Suknandan and Lee (1999) concluded that grouping pupils by ability has no influence on their performance but can have a negative effect on the attitudes, motivation and self-esteem of pupils in lower sets. In addition, the work of Boaler (1997a, b, c) highlights that ability grouping serves to disadvantage those in top sets as much as those in low sets. The conclusion from a three-year study of the teaching of mathematics in schools was that a ‘range of evidence … linked setting to under-achievement, both for students in low and high sets, despite the widely held public, media and government perception that setting increases attainment’ (Boaler et al. 1998: 3). All pupils – both girls and boys – characterised their experiences as

fast, pressured and procedural … Top-set children, it seems, do not need detailed help, time to think, or the space to make mistakes. Rather they can be taught quickly and procedurally because they are clever enough to draw their own meaning from the procedures they are given.

(Boaler et al. 1998: 5)

When students were asked whether they enjoyed mathematics it was invariably the top set students who were most negative. In Scotland, a small-scale study into pupils’ views of setting and mixed ability teaching (Smith and Sutherland 2003) confirmed some of the findings from previous research with pupils identifying difficulties with set arrangements that existed in their schools.

Thus, the education system in Scotland, like others in the UK and the rest of the world, has struggled over how difference should be taken into account:

whether to recognize differences as relevant to individual needs by offering different provision, but that doing so could reinforce unjustified inequalities and is associated with devaluation; or, whether to offer a common and valued provision for all but with the risk of not providing what is relevant to individual needs.

(Norwich 1994: 293)

while Scotland has wrestled with this dilemma, the response that has dominated has been the identification and treatment of difference at the expense of more inclusive practices. Shortcomings of the comprehensive system have been an over-reliance on responses that attempt ever more effectively and accurately to sift and sort individuals for different educational treatments. Poplin (1988a) identified commonalities among the various theories and models that seemed most influential in shaping practice in special education. An examination of the medical model, the psychological process model, behaviourist theories and the cognitive or learning strategies view elicited a list of common characteristics which, she concluded, represented a reductionist paradigm.⁴ It is this paradigm, she suggests, that dominates in education, thus undermining any moves to change or reform systems. Thus, while more recent talk, both national and international, has been of inclusion the concept has been introduced, in Scotland at least, in the face of a very dominant and powerful reductionist paradigm.

HOW DOES INCLUSION DIFFER FROM WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE?

Since 1989 and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNESCO 1989) the discourse has been increasingly about inclusion rather than integration. Yet until recently there has been a lack of clarity about what inclusion actually is and it is often mistakenly assumed to be little more than the integration of children from special schools into mainstream settings. UNESCO (2004) has reinforced this view by stating that regular schools with an inclusive orientation are the most effective means of achieving education for all (para. 2). This link between inclusion and mainstream location is also made throughout the literature. For example, Takala and Aunio (2005) suggest that inclusion is ‘a flexible educational approach in which all kinds of children have the opportunity to participate in general education programmes’ (2005: 39). In Scotland, the evolution of the education system has revolved around where rather than how children should be educated, so the movement of children from special educational...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I What does inclusion mean for the gifted and talented?
• PART II Can selective interventions be inclusive?
• PART III What can ordinary schools do to promote inclusion for gifted and talented learners?
• Index