Exploring Gifted Education

Australian and New Zealand Perspectives

Jennifer L. Jolly, Jane M. Jarvis, Jennifer L. Jolly, Jane M. Jarvis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351227681
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Exploring Gifted Education focusses on the most fundamental and pressing topics in gifted education from across Australian and New Zealand contexts and gives particular attention to evidence-based practices and research findings. The wide variety of topics presented include: identification of gifted learners, creativity, twice-exceptional learners, affective considerations, teaching the gifted, curriculum considerations, programs and services, STEM, early childhood learners, rural and remote contexts, and parents of gifted learners. Each chapter provides guiding questions and key ideas to help orient the reader, and discussion questions synthesise the chapter's concepts at the conclusion.

The first book of its kind to synthesise research-based findings in gifted education from across New Zealand and Australia, it is an essential reference tool for researchers and a key text for courses in gifted education. Practitioners and parents will also find the assembled research illuminating and informative in understanding and addressing the needs of gifted learners.

1

Framing gifted education in Australia and New Zealand

Roger Moltzen, Jennifer L. Jolly, and Jane M. Jarvis

Current approaches to the education of academically gifted children and young people in Australia and New Zealand must be understood in an historical context. The field of gifted education in both countries has been appreciably influenced by research and practice in the U.S., the UK, and parts of continental Europe and Asia. Yet, the identity of gifted education in this part of the world is unique, with a developmental trajectory shaped by local socio-cultural and political forces. An understanding of this development provides an essential lens through which to critically examine current practices and the state of the research base, and also to consider culturally compatible future directions for the field. In this chapter, we discuss the nature of gifted education in Australia and New Zealand, with a focus on the historical context of scholarship, practices, and understandings of giftedness.

Understanding the past

Gifted education in Australia and New Zealand is relatively young when compared to its American and British cousins. The earliest recorded provisions for gifted students were Opportunity “C” classes in New South Wales, which were established in 1932. Initially offered in just four schools, these classes were available to students in Years 5 and 6 (Robinson, 1992). The 1930s also witnessed New Zealand’s father of gifted education, George Parkyn, begin to make observations in regards to gifted children and offer a collection of his thoughts in the seminal text Children of High Intelligence: A New Zealand Study, where he noted: “in the ordinary mixed-ability classes of the primary school the bright child often spends a large part of his school time waiting for the next question, the next turn, the next subject, the next task and so on” (1948, p. 145).

Fast forward several decades, and the 1970s witnessed the establishment of regional and state advocacy organizations for gifted children, which would be precursors to the New Zealand Association for Gifted Children and Australian Association for the Education of the Gifted and Talented (AAEGT). Furthermore, it is recognized by Australian scholars that a formal field of study in gifted education was established in 1983 after the World Conference for Gifted and Talented Children was held in Manila that same year. The conference exposed the need for greater national organisation due to the misinformation being provided at the conference about research and practice in regards to gifted education in the Australian context. Prior to this, the field could be characterised as unintentional in purpose and lacking in organisation (Kronborg, 2002).

It may be argued that the relative youth of the field is reflected in common methodological approaches to research, the breadth and depth of the research that has been generated, and the quality and capacity of the research cadre to date. Over the nearly 35 years since the establishment of gifted education as a field, the research trajectory has been uneven. For example, the work completed by Miraca Gross on radical acceleration has had implications not only in Australia but also internationally; however, few other researchers have replicated this level of impact. The 1992 founding of the Australasian Journal for Gifted Education (AJGE) by the AAEGT was intended as a mechanism to further advance research in the field and has achieved mixed results (Bailey, 1992). Initially, the journal’s audience was to include both researchers and practitioners, but the last two decades have seen a shift towards predominantly theoretical and empirical research articles (Luburic, 2016). The majority of Australian research is published in this outlet, and the journal’s impact on the research base and practice throughout Australia could be substantial. As might be expected from a fledgling field of study, the initial five years of the journal included varying levels of methodological rigour and a large diversity of topics; the next five years (1999–2006) saw the journal begin to reflect the research being undertaken in the field, which included research on teacher attitudes towards gifted students and gifted education, research on academic acceleration, and discussion of curricular matters. The level of rigour also began to improve over this period. From 2007 to 2013, a decline was observed, with the bulk of articles described as having lower methodological rigour ( Jolly & Chessman, 2016).

The uneven quantity and quality of contributions to the field are symptomatic of broader issues, framed by a lack of federal policy (particularly in Australia) to drive gifted education provisions and funding across all levels and sectors of schooling, including targeted funding for research. Individual Australian states and territories have produced and revised their own policies, with varied fidelity of implementation. Political and financial support for gifted education has fluctuated with successive federal and state governments. In the current climate, the immediate and long-term implications of the national literacy and numeracy assessment regime (NAPLAN) and the national Australian Curriculum established in 2008 and 2014, respectively, have yet to be investigated or fully understood for gifted and talented students.

Gifted education in Australia and New Zealand also can only really be understood within each country’s broader educational history. Education in both countries was initially modelled on the English school system and reflected the deeply enshrined notion that children and young people of a particular age form a relatively homogenous group, particularly in terms of their development and learning. This view has informed nearly all major decisions about the structure of educational provisions, from sector divisions to the physical design of schools to the advancement of a national curriculum. The widespread acceptance of the ideas of the age-stage developmental theorists, including Piaget (1929), Erikson (1963), and Kohlberg (1981), reinforced this thinking. These theorists viewed behaviour as discontinuous, such that children and young people move through a series of discrete age-related stages, each marked by relatively predictable and distinct behaviours. This view of development has been subject to increasing challenge, and today’s teachers are generally much more conscious of and responsive to the unique nature of each student’s cognitive, social, and moral development. However, while acknowledging this philosophical shift, the system still largely reflects and reinforces an age-stage view of development, even if more by default than design.

Much has been written about the influence in both contexts of egalitarianism and its impact on educational provisions (or lack thereof ) for gifted students (Gross, 1999; Plunkett & Kronborg, 2007). As Larsson observed:

In Australia and New Zealand the strong notion of egalitarianism pervades the education system and society and so generally inhibits the variety of educational methods tailored to suit the needs of the talents of the individual. To suggest differentiation of programming to some teachers conjures up the spectre of elitism.

(Larsson, 1986, p. 215)

Age-based theories and arguments of egalitarianism have been factors limiting real progress in providing consistently appropriate educational opportunities for gifted or advanced learners.

Conceptualising and defining giftedness

In a society that places a high value on equality, it is not difficult to understand why the very term “gifted” can invite an antagonistic response. Indeed, it was noted in the 2001 Australian senate inquiry into the education of gifted and talented children that the term “gifted” is problematic in this cultural context, based on its unintentional value-ladenness, whereby gifted individuals are implicitly contrasted with the alternative ‘non-gifted’, and parents may feel embarrassed to refer to their child using that label in order to discuss appropriate educational intervention (Senate Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business and Education Reference Committee, 2001). It is acknowledged that counterproductive myths, misconceptions, and negative attitudes about giftedness cannot simply be explained in terms of problems with terminology, but it is nevertheless an issue to be considered. New Zealand has preferred the term Children or Students with Special Abilities (C/SWSA).

While New Zealand and Australia overlap in their early histories and societal attitudes in relation to gifted education, they have diverged when conceptualising and defining giftedness. Giftedness as high measured intelligence, or IQ, had a relatively short tenure in New Zealand, at least amongst teachers and educators. Instead, the country’s egalitarian roots and its suspicion of intelligence testing made it a fertile ground for more liberal, inclusive, and multi-categorical approaches to giftedness – including the definition in the U.S.’s Marland Report (1972). The underpinnings of this definition can be recognised throughout those used in New Zealand. At the turn of the 21st century, New Zealand introduced educational reforms centred on the principles of devolution and decentralisation, which charged schools with developing their own definitions of giftedness. These definitions must be based on the following criteria:

• Reflect a multi-categorical approach that includes an array of special abilities
• Reflect a bicultural approach that incorporates Māori concepts
• Recognise multi-cultural values, beliefs, attitudes, and customs
• Recognise both performance and potential
• Acknowledge that gifted and talented students demonstrate exceptionality in relation to their peers of the same age, culture, or circumstances
• Provide for differentiated educational opportunities for gifted and talented students, including social and emotional support
• Reflect the context and values of the school community
• Acknowledge that giftedness is evidenced in all societal groups, regardless of culture, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, or disability
• Recognise that a student may be gifted in one or more areas
• Recognise that a student’s gifts and talents will emerge at times and in circumstances that are unique to that student
• Be grounded in sound research and theories (Ministry of Education, 2012, p. 22)

Primacy has also been given to Māori conceptions of giftedness, with the work of Jill Bevan-Brown informing this impetus (2011). However, the wisdom of leaving the task of defining giftedness to each individual school, rather than establishing a consistent national definition, remains in question. A 2008 survey from the New Zealand Education Review Office (ERO) revealed mixed implementation and operationalisation of the definition of giftedness at the school level. Less than half of schools surveyed had developed a definition that reflected the values of the school community and incorporated Māori or multi-cultural conceptions of giftedness, and that was grounded in research and current theory, while some had no definition at all. Current research is underway to revisit these practices in New Zealand schools.

Overwhelmingly, Australia has adopted a single conceptual model of giftedness, Gagné’s Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT), at least in policy documents (the DMGT is discussed in Chapter 2). Gagné (2007) defined giftedness as “the possession and use of outstanding natural abilities, called aptitudes, in at least one ability domain, to a degree that places an individual at least among the top 10% of age peers” (p. 94) and talent as

the outstanding mastery of systematically developed abilities, called competencies (knowledge and skills), in at least one field of human activity to a degree that places an individual at least among the top 10% of age peers who are or have been active in that field.

(p. 94)

Consistent with these definitions, many schools rely on IQ and achievement scores to provide guidance for entry into gifted education programs, often using the top 10% as a guideline for selection (Gagné, 2007). However, beyond the designation of 10% as a cut-off mark, there is little evidence that the consensus around one model of giftedness has driven a cohesive and coordinated approach to gifted education throughout Australia ( Jarvis & Henderson, 2014). Given that neither country has reached an optimal situation with gifted children and their education, this signals that whatever model or conception of giftedness is adopted must also be supported by strong policy development, funding, and implementation.

Concluding thoughts

The decade from 2000–2010 reflected very different trajectories for gifted education in each country. A sustained national interest in the educational needs of gifted students spurred the New Zealand Ministry of Education to consider policy reforms, resulting in a raft of advice aimed at strengthening gifted education. This culminated in the Report of the Working Party of Gifted Education (Office of the Minister of Education, 2001). There is also evidence of a shift in societal attitudes, with greater acceptance that dedicated provisions for gifted students constitute a right rather than a privilege. The progress in Australia has not been as robust. The two Australian Senate Inquiries regarding the education of gifted children (1998, 2001) set forth recommendations for policy and practice which have not resulted in substantive, sustained changes throughout the nation. Meanwhile, societal attitudes towards gifted children have vacillated between ambivalent at best and antagonistic at worst. Gifted students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds continue to seriously lag behind in school achievement compared with their non-Indigenous peers, and they are significantly underrepresented in gifted programs (Chaffey, 2009).

The waxing and waning of support for gifted education in Australia and New Zealand is a pattern characteristic of gifted education elsewhere. American researcher Abe Tannenbaum once observed: “The cyclical nature of interest in the gifted is probably unique in American education. No other special group of children has been so alternately embraced and repelled with so much rigor by educators and laypersons alike” (1983, p. 16). Unfortunately, this sentiment transcends contexts and remains as relevant today as it did over 35 years ago.

The subsequent chapters in this book delineate the advances that researchers and practitioners have made in understanding and providing for gifted children, with a focus on Australia and New Zealand. In the context of fluctuating interest and inconsistent policy and funding frameworks, there remain considerable gaps in the research literature and in practice, in some areas more than others. These gaps are also acknowledged in each chapter, with a view towards orienting future efforts in the field. It is hoped that this collected review of research by Australian and New Zealand scholars will help guide a future research agenda and catalyse a renewed, collaborative drive for excellence in educational research and practice for diverse, highly able learners.

References

Bailey, S. B. (1992). From the editor. Australasian Journal of Gifted Education, 1, 4.

Bevan-Brown, J. (2011). Indigenous conceptions of giftedness. In W. Vialle (Ed.), Giftedness from an indigenous perspective (pp. 10–23). Wollongong, NSW: Australian Association for the Education of the Gifted and Talented.

Chaffey, G. (2009). Gifted but underachieving: Australian indigenous children. In T. Balchin, B. Hymer, & D. J. Matthews (Eds.), The Routledge international companion to gifted education (pp. 106–114). London: Routledge.

Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co.

Gagné, F. (2007). Ten commandments for academic talent development. Gifted Child Quarterly, 51, 93–118.

Gross, M. U. M. (1999). Inequity in equity: The paradox of gifted education in Australia. Australian Journal of Education, 43, 87–103.

Jarvis, J. M., &am...