FAQs on Gifted and Talented Issues

Q: What is giftedness?

A: There is no one definition of "gifted," "talented," or "giftedness" that is universally accepted. Sometimes gifted refers to those students who have strong intellectual/academic abilities, and talented refers those students who excel in the arts (music, drama, art) or in sports. The DCSF prefers this definition.

In the US, Pennsylvania State defines giftedness as:

"children and youth who give evidence of high performance capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who require services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop such capabilities."

Q: How are gifted children identified?

A: It varies between Local Authorities (LAs) and from school to school depending on philosophy, definitions of giftedness adopted and the type of giftedness sought.

Quite often the intellectually gifted child is identified as "including a person who has an IQ of 130 or higher and when multiple criteria indicate gifted ability. But gifted ability cannot be based on IQ score alone."

A person with an IQ lower than 130 may be gifted when other educational criteria in the child's profile strongly indicate gifted ability. The process used to screen and/or identify children has several steps.

Q: Won't being identified make gifted students feel "different"?

A: Most gifted children don't need to be identified or labeled before they know that they're not quite like their age peers. They understand they are different and though they might have difficulty accepting this in a society where differences are not always easily tolerated. It is important for adults to recognise and appropriately respond to these differences.

A: No. Most parents are very reluctant to acknowledge their child is gifted. Some parents will say they think their child is 'bright', or 'smart', but not 'gifted'. Quite often parents have unrealistic ideas of what giftedness means. A child does not have to be a mini Einstein or be composing a piano concerto at he age of 9 to be considered gifted.

Given society's ambivalent relationship toward the gifted, parents often tell us that it sounds conceited to say that their child is gifted and they often feel obligated to assure others that they, themselves, aren't gifted.

Rather than trusting their own observations and experiences, some parents don't acknowledge that their child is gifted unless school or other outside "authorities" make a formal identification. Unfortunately, some parents believe their child will be a happier person if s/he is average, or slightly above average.

"Most parents are afraid of the gifted label because of the expectations. And frequently those children that are acknowledged as gifted would prefer others didn't know it." - Joyce Juntune, former Executive Director of NAGCUS

Q: Are all gifted children the same?

A: There is no "typical" gifted child. However, there are some common characteristics, many of which are seen in gifted children.

Q: What are the characteristics of giftedness?

A: The following is a partial list:

• Reads early with great comprehension
  
  
• Learns faster with less repetition and practice
  
  
• Has a long attention span; may be resistant to interruption
  
  
• Understands and makes abstractions earlier; may ignore details
  
  
• Is curious and tends to ask complex questions/Likes to know why and how things happen
  
  
• Is quick to recognize relationships, including cause-effect; may have difficulty accepting the illogical
  
  
• Is bored with routine tasks
  
  
• Has large vocabulary and expresses himself well
  
  
• Is emotionally sensitive/may overreact
  
  
• Is a keen and alert observer
  
  
• Evaluates facts, arguments, and persons critically/May be self-critical, impatient or critical of others
  
  
• High energy
  
  
• Learns by experimenting and manipulating objects; tries to find answers to questions in unusual ways
  
  
• Is creative, inventive and original Displays highly developed sense of humour; understands jokes that age peer wouldn't

Q: What causes giftedness?

A: It is widely agreed that both genetics (nature) and environment (nurture) play a role in determining giftedness, but their relative importance is debated. Current thinking suggests that the importance of the gene is greater, though without appropriate nourishment, the gifted child?s potential can often remain unfulfilled.

Q: How many gifted children are there?

A: In the UK children generally considered as gifted range from five to ten percent of the general population. In the total school-age population in England, that would be about 800,000 children. In an all-ability secondary school of 1500 pupils there could be between 75 and 150 gifted pupils in total and about 18 in any year group.

Q: Are gifted children gifted in everything they do?

A: Not necessarily. Like all children, gifted children have interests and/or abilities in one or more subject areas. Some gifted children may have a learning disability in one area and be gifted in another- a trait known as twice exceptionality.

Whilst gifted children are usually very mature intellectually, they can have the social and emotional needs of children their age, sometimes even younger. Although some gifted children seem to be strong across the board, it is not fair to expect a child to be gifted in all areas of performance at all times.

Q: Aren't there already plenty of appropriate opportunities for gifted students?

A: It depends on what is meant by 'appropriate' and opportunities vary between LAs and between schools. It is estimated by the DCSF (2007) that one third of all schools in England have no policies and make no provision for gifted children. Of the remainder, the quality of provision varies widely.

The general approach to the provision for gifted and talented pupils in England at the present time is that it should be integrated into main school opportunities, known (erroneously) as the English model. In outline the key features are:

• Provision for gifted children should be made in ordinary schools as part of the day-to-day educational offer
  
  
• Core provision should be supplemented by access to enhanced opportunities offered both within and beyond the school
  
  
• Enhanced opportunities should become increasingly sophisticated with age
  
  
• Schools should themselves be diverse and distinctive in nature and so offer specific opportunities to develop certain aptitudes
  
  
• Parents should be seen as co-educators with a key role in supporting learning
  
  
• The learning progress and needs of individuals should be carefully tracked so that appropriate personalised pathways can be created - hence the role of the National Register.

By contrast, many states in the United States adopt a different approach known as the 'pull out' model at the primary (elementary) and secondary (high school) levels. This involves taking students out of the regular classroom to work with their intellectual peers and a separate teacher. The drawback of this model is that it limits specialized instruction to a small amount of time, often less than 2 hours per week. Gifted children need appropriate instruction and challenge one hundred percent of the time.

A pull-out model is often accompanied by "differentiated instruction" in the classroom. This is a very egalitarian concept, but the reality is that truly differentiated instruction for all students in the classroom is very difficult to achieve. A 1995 study revealed that 80-85% of the time gifted students are not involved in activities that are different than their non-identified classmates.

Q: What is the difference between 'enrichment' and 'acceleration'?

A: Enrichment usually entails adding breadth and depth. Acceleration usually involves increasing the pace and skipping content and skills that are already mastered.

Q: Why should gifted children experience trouble with ordinary school curricula?

A: "Precisely because the curricula are ordinary. Education is a mass enterprise, geared by economic necessity as well as politics to the abilities of the majority. Just as a child of less-than-average mental ability frequently has trouble keeping up with his classmates, so a child of above-average ability has trouble staying behind with them. Prevented from moving ahead by the rigidity of normal school procedures, assigned to a class with others of the same age, expected to devote the same attention to the same textbooks, required to be present for the same number of hours in the same seat, the gifted youngster typically takes one of three tacks: (1) he drifts into a state of lethargy and complete apathy; (2) he conceals his ability, anxious not to embarrass others or draw their ridicule by superior performance; or (3) not understanding his frustration, he becomes a discipline problem."
- Dr. Harold C. Lyon, Jr., former Director of Education for the Gifted/Talented, U. S. Office of Education

The normal school curriculum mostly calls for a 70/30 split between time spent on teaching basic skills and time devoted to higher cognitive learning, such as reasoning, drawing inferences and reaching conclusions. The gifted child seems to need the reverse emphasis.

Q: Won't gifted children be successful on their own?

A: Some will, but many won't. "A common, if erroneous, point of view is that these students will do well no matter what kind of education they receive. This is the 'cream will rise to the top' argument, which, unfortunately, for all of us, turns out to be incorrect...Too often for our most gifted youngsters our schools are a crucible for boredom and lack of challenge....American students are at or near the back of the pack in international comparisons. If we don't make radical changes, that is where we are going to stay." - America 2000

Q: What happens if gifted children don't get appropriate education?

A: Gifted children are at-risk, for boredom, frustration, underachievement, dropping out, using drugs and, in the more extreme cases, turning to delinquency and even committing suicide.

Boredom and frustration in regular classrooms drive gifted children out of school at a rate three to five times higher than the dropout rate among the rest of the school population. In fact, studies in Iowa and Pennsylvania indicate that gifted and talented children may account for 20 percent of all high school dropouts. Those who stay in classes that do not challenge them may develop emotional problems, become juvenile delinquents or simply sink to the level of average classmates and never reach their full potential. Indeed, the characteristics displayed by many gifted children - high activity level, divergent thinking, daydreaming and continuous questioning - are sometimes misinterpreted as indicators of emotional disturbance or learning disability. At the very least, teachers who are not used to dealing with students that learn quickly, have long attention spans, are creative and want to explore subjects in great depth, consider these children's behaviours and attitudes as abnormal and an irritation.

The small amount of work - often mundane, repetitious work - that gifted students are asked to do in school, they can achieve quickly and with little effort. They rarely have to face difficult problems and often do not know how to cope when, at some later educational level, they meet a challenging and intractable problem that does not easily yield to a facile but undisciplined mind.

Q: Should gifted children be removed from the regular classroom for instruction?

A: Educationalists will differ in their responses here but there is an increasing body of evidence to show that gifted children perform best when they are educated with children of similar ability.

Gifted children have a right to a free and appropriate education every hour of the school day, just as all children do. If this cannot be successfully achieved in the regular classroom, then other options must be embraced. Unfortunately, for gifted children the regular classroom is the most, rather than the least restrictive environment.

According to current thinking, gifted students want to:

• be able to learn at their own speed, not someone else's,
  
• skip over work they already know and understand,
  
  
• study things of interest beyond basic school work, and
  
  
• work with abstract concepts that require more than simple thinking

Linda Silverman believes that "the advantages of segregation include providing students with the opportunity to interact with others of similar ability and to receive faster-paced instruction. A fully segregated program attends to the unique needs of the gifted children in a comprehensive manner". (Dr. Linda K. Silverman, "Providing Appropriate Education for the Gifted", 1990 )

Q: Is it important to keep gifted children in the regular classroom to provide positive role models for other children?

A: The research evidence doesn't support the idea that other children see gifted students as role models.

Individuals are most likely to choose a 'role model' among those whom they perceive to be at about their own level but experiencing some sort of success (attention, financial rewards, praise, friendship, and so on.

Karen Rogers demonstrates that "a low-level student will not choose a gifted student as a role model because (a) he or she doesn't want to be like the gifted students or (b) he or she doesn't think it's possible to be like that - too much change would be involved."
( Karen B. Rogers, Grouping the Gifted: Myths and Realities, 2001)

Moreover, there is evidence that achievement of other students does not decline when the gifted leave the classroom (John F. Feldhusen, Synthesis of Research on Gifted Youth, 1989)

Gifted children can actually grow to resent being the role model for those who are less able in the classroom, so this begs the question 'Should they be responsible for teaching those who are struggling with the regular curriculum and its mastery, even at the expense of their own education?'

Perhaps we should look no further than the view of a gifted child. Here is the view of Corinne, a 12 year old gifted girl: "In cooperative learning groups the person with the strongest personality and highest academic ability usually takes control of the group immediately. Teachers tend to put the faster learners with the slower ones to help them along. That is the exact purpose and problem with cooperative learning. The faster kids are suddenly responsible for everyone else...Sure, on paper cooperative learning looks wonderful because not as many people fail. I believe that the advanced students are being slowed down drastically by this learning method. Not all kids want to learn, and I feel that cooperative learning puts the responsibility of making those people learn on advanced students." (quoted in Understanding Our Gifted, 1990)

Q: Separate grouping is not a reflection of the real world. Won't this be detrimental to gifted students who need to learn to interact effectively with all types of people as adults?

A: It should be the case that gifted children have many other opportunities to interact with all types of children.

It is generally well established that we tend to make friends with others who think and act like ourselves, with similar interests and abilities and, later in life, with similar occupations. Gifted children have the capacity to make friends and they often claim that they would like to be in control of this process themselves.

"As a shy eleven-year-old, I was just beginning to cave in to social pressure that implied that it wasn't 'cool' to appear too smart, let alone passionate and enthusiastic about learning. I stopped raising my hand in class, not from fear of being wrong, but from fear of being right." Anon.

Q: Isn't special provision for gifted students elitist?

A: "There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people." Thomas Jefferson.

So, no, it is not elitist. Special provision for children with mental or physical disabilities is not considered elitist. Special provision for students with outstanding athletic abilities (i.e., the football team) is not considered elitist? Why should special provisions for children with outstanding mental abilities be elitist?

It is really a question of equal opportunity, which means it must mean an opportunity for each person to rise to those heights to which his own motivation, energy and ability take him. To recognize the exceptionally fine mind and/or discover a brilliant talent and not provide for their development is wasteful as well as a deprivation of equal opportunity.

Q: If gifted children are placed together for lessons, will they still have other friends?

A: Yes. They will still have many opportunities to have other friends in sports activities, church activities, social organizations, such as Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and in their communities.

However, research has shown that it is equally important for gifted children to be with their intellectual peers, and that by doing so, they may improve their relationships with others as well.

Q: Won't grouping gifted students together cause them to become arrogant and conceited?

A: Generally, gifted students tend to be more arrogant in the regular classroom. If they look around the class and see that they are at the top, they tend to get an inflated view of their own abilities. Once they have an opportunity to match their abilities with those of their intellectual peers, they develop a much more realistic picture of their talents.

Observers have recorded that a pupil coming into special classes often meets a successful rival for the first time. Work with competitors of one's own calibre tends to starve conceit, rather than feed it.

Evidence from the US finds there is no evidence whatsoever to support the notion that classes for the gifted breed elitism. Contrary to popular belief, when the gifted are placed in classes together, they do not come to the conclusion they are better than everyone else. Rather they are humbled by finding peers who know more than they do.