ED4128 Educational Psychology - Research Assignment

There are several challenging factors that a teacher must deal with having a gifted adolescent in the classroom. Some of these being that it creates a lot of extra work for the teacher as they have to make modifications to the curriculum and be able to teach both levels at the one time, attention is divided, class discussions are made difficult and appropriate resources are not always available.

Gifted students also present challenges to the rest of the class because they are seen as "too good" to learn with everyone else. There is resentment from other students, teasing becomes common as the gifted child is called a nerd or geek and most importantly, it lowers the self-concept of everyone in the class. The gifted student feels bad because they are being picked on while the rest of the students feel like they are not "good enough". However the major challenges are how to overcome underachievement and slow social development of the gifted child in the regular class environment.

Underachievement is when discrepancies occur in the correlation between a students IQ and their achievement results in school. If a child has a high IQ but low grades at school, then they are considered to be underachieving. Avner Ziv stated in Counselling the Intellectually Gifted Child, "functioning, as measured by grades, below ones potential, as measured by IQ" is called underachieving (1977, p44).

A gifted adolescent has the ability to get extraordinary results, putting in little or no effort. The student is ultimately affected by this because while the students surrounding him/her are working to develop skills and study habits, the gifted child, who does not need to try, is doing nothing. If the student continuously puts in little effort, then consequently when tougher situations arise in the future, they are unable to cope because they have failed to develop the skills needed to learn. All of a sudden, their grades begin to drop, for an unknown reason and they no longer control of their learning.

As a result, the student no longer feels intelligent, their self-esteem plummets amid mounting pressures from parents and teachers demanding that they stop being slack and work harder. They do not have the fundamental skills to pull themselves from this and under all of this sudden pressure they begin to lose their thirst for knowledge. This becomes a vicious circle - causing habitual underachievement. One of the worst results of this downward spiral that Ziv states, is when it comes to opportunity for higher education (i.e. Tafe or university), the doors close to the gifted underachiever because they have failed to get the results required for entrance. This creates a real sense of failure in the student.

The other type of underachiever is the "hidden underachiever". This is the child who is gifted, yet because the parents don't realize s/he is gifted, when they come home with B's on the report it is seen that they are doing well, when they are not reaching their potential at all. This is why it is so important that teachers identify this as early as possible.

Social relations suffer greatly in gifted students because they are rarely able to relate to others their own age, on an equal level. Because there is a significant intellectual gap, the gifted student sometimes finds it difficult not to look down on normal children. Underachieving helps gifted students to be accepted by peers, but it seems they have to abandon their intellectual pursuits in order to do this. The gifted child is most often left isolated and alone. The challenge lies in complete integration.

There are a plethora of strategies that teachers have at their disposal that can assist in meeting these challenges in different ways. Accelerated Instruction consists of the student moving up to a grade that is at their learning level, but this must be constantly monitored for social problems that may arise with the student being with much older students. Another example of accelerated learning is having advanced classes that they attend instead of the regular class, however this does not solve the problem of what they do for the rest of the day.

Curriculum Differentiation is another strategy but not hugely favourable. This requires that the student stays in the regular class but is assigned different work than the rest of the class. Other students may resent this and cause problems for the gifted student.

Multi-Age Grouping or Cross-Setting could work well, depending on the resources. This is where students are grouped according to their cognitive developmental level either in the class (cross-setting) or different ages (multi-age grouping). This is definitely an effective strategy, which also allows the student to mix and make friends with those of a similar capacity and interests.

Enrichment is the term used for a few strategies. Within this term, teachers can give gifted students the same topic of work that the rest of the class is studying, but give higher order questions or assignments, so that there is social and intellectual inclusion, but they are working to their own capability. Enrichment also refers to encouraging the gifted student to enter competitions, start or join a club in school, extra-curricular activities that supplement their academic learning and keep them motivated to learn. Enrichment is definitely a great and efficient way of using the regular classroom to meet the gifted student's needs without separation from the class.

Academic Extension, is a common strategy used in classrooms. It is similar to enrichment in that the student covers the same curriculum as the regular class, but expands on the work by researching different aspects, while the rest of the class is still working on the topic. The danger with this is that if the teacher is going to set expanded learning, s/he must be careful that the extra work is actually challenging the student and not simply extra work at the same academic level.

There are also smaller strategies that a teacher can use within the class such as learning contracts and mentoring other students, however there can be difficulties with motivation in these two options. Learning contracts can be good, but are often associated with extrinsic motivation, which we don't want. Mentoring can also be good, provided that both parties are happy to partake in it. Problems can arise, such as the gifted student being frustrated at the lower achiever, where the gifted student sometimes does not have the capacity to explain a concept they themselves just get. Low achievers can often be intimidated by their mentor, or the whole experience can lower their self-concept even lower than it was previous. So these strategies should be employed with complete supervision and the utmost care.

Finally, the question of Motivation. Recognizing that a student is gifted is the first step in motivation because you, as the educator can begin to make choices and modifications in order to cater to their individual needs. The gifted child needs to feel a sense of success, like any other child, but the success must come from achieving at their potential, not just at the level of the regular class curriculum. The student needs to be encouraged to learn, but learning must be fun also, or you run the risk of them becoming disinterested in furthering their potential.

Gifted students already have an inherent desire to learn. In order to keep them motivated, the teacher should try to relate curriculum work to their current interests.

Stimulating the student to partake in exciting learning activities will make the learning interesting. Using experiments, role playing, media, creative projects and interaction gets students actively using their brains. This begins the fundamental process of intrinsic motivation. Students are self-motivated to learn because the experience is fun and interesting.

Take into account the six principles of motivation ( positive thinking, enjoyment, feeling important, achieving success, personal benefit and clarity in teaching) when creating a modified curriculum- just because they are gifted, doesn't mean that extra work has to be stuck in books!

Make students aware of their meta-cognitive beliefs. If a student can understand the ways that they learn best, then they have power over their own learning. Giving the student as many choices as you can offer, creates motivation in itself. Remembering that fun, diverse teaching methods combining theory and practice, funny stories and a passionate, enthusiastic teacher will motivate students whether they are low achievers, average, bright or gifted.

Clearly, in the Identity vs. Role Confusion stage of development, the examples of strategy and motivation are going to be effective in the secondary educational environment. Understanding and appreciating the developmental characteristics of adolescents, teachers of gifted students should be able to make a difference and enhance their learning, to keep them striving to their potential and protect them from falling into the trap of underachievement.

References

CLARK, Barbara.1992, Growing Up Gifted 4th ed., Macmillan Publishing Company, New York.

SNOWMAN, J., BIEHLER, R. 2000, Psychology Applied To Teaching, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

RAND WHITMORE, J. 1980, Giftedness, Conflict and Underachievement, Allyn & Bacon Inc., Boston.

ZIV, A. 1977, Counselling The Intellectually Gifted Child, Guidance Centre, University of Toronto, Canada.