TEACHING GIFTED AND TALANTED CHILDREN

How does one create a learning environment that stretches the ablest without excluding or alienating the least able – and vice versa? What are the core educational principles or values for it? Hymer (2002, p. 3) list some of them:

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  All children have a right to a high quality education.
  

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  The primary aim of education is to excite in children and young people a passion for learning, and to facilitate the acquisition of skills and dispositions which will permit this passion for learning to be satisfied.
  

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  The primary role of the school is to maximize opportunities for all children to reach their educational goals.
  

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  Children educational goals will differ.
  

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  No-one-not even the person him or himself – is ever fully aware of an individual’s potential for learning.
  

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  A fixed concept of “ability” is an unhelpful descriptor or predictor of performance.
  
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  Children’s educational goals are best reached by the setting and answering of questions.
  

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  Deep learning takes place collaboratively rather than competitively.
  

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  The most affective form of assessment form of assessment is formative (assessment for learning) rather than summative or normative (assessment for showing or comparing). Relatedly, promoting learning orientations more likely to lead to effective learning than promoting performance orientation (concern for grade success).
  

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  An inclusive policy for gifted and talented education is the only model consistent with these principles (gifted and talented students have right to something qualitatively, and so do their peers, just in case they are gifted and talented too but don't yet know it).
  

As for research evidence regarding high quality teaching for gifted and talented Joan Freeman (1998, p.52 cited in Hymer, 2002, p. 60) summarizes this evidence as follows:

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  New knowledge is presented within the context of a conceptual framework, not as facts in isolation.
  

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  the teacher stimulates thinking by taking a problem-posing as well as a problem-solving approach to issues and material
  

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  the teacher teaches for clear 'scientific' thinking skills to greater depth than normal.
  
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  Abstract as well as basic concepts are emphsised.
  

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  materials are used which are high in quality, and reading levels demand complex, novel responses.
  

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  The intellectual demands of a lesson are recognized by the level, speed and quality of the verbal interactions that go on in it.
  

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  The appropriate language is used rather than simplified version.
  
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  Word-play is encouraged.
  

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  Questioning is considered part of everyday learning, to stimulate thinking and creative problem-solving.
  

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  students explain out loud, comparing old and new learning and ideas with their peers.
  

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  Research skills are taught, so that pupils can explain on ideas for them-selves.