Gifted and Talented Learners

Creating a Policy for Inclusion

Barry Hymer, Deborah Michel

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138175914
• eBook ISBN: 9781134154654
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book sets out the educational challenges, benefits and possibilities of embracing a truly inclusive approach to gifted and talented education and provides a framework for a school to create its own inclusive policy in this area of need.

Calling on international research, current educational initiatives, and work within the Barrow Education Action Zone (EAZ) and elsewhere, the authors set out to demonstrate that the inclusion and standards agendas can - and should - take with them the growing interest in the educational needs of gifted and talented pupils. The result is a short but comprehensive and fundamentally practical book, which will be of value to any school or LEA wishing to create and implement a dynamic, reflective and inclusive policy for gifted and talented pupils.

1 Overview

1.1 'Their own secret colours.' Gifts known and gifts latent: the challenge of the unexpected

I never thought I was clever, but now I think I might be.

(Student in gifted and talented strand of the DfES Excellence in Cities initiative)

Whatever one believes to be true either is true or becomes true in one's mind.

(John Lilly, The Centre of the Cyclone)

At the heart of this book lies my memory of Robert, a ten-year-old boy whom I taught in Hampshire over a decade ago. Robert was a large boy, considered something of a bully by other children, and he was challenging in the classroom. He had moderate generalised learning difficulties and he was functionally illiterate. And a few weeks before the end of the school year, I also discovered he was gifted. Not globally gifted, not outrageously or psychometrically gifted, but still gifted. I discovered his gift by accident. Our school had been participating in the W. H. Smith Poets in Schools scheme, which had brought the poet David Orme ('Mango Chutney') to work with students across the entire Year 5 year group. As one of their poetry-writing exercises, the children had gone out in small groups to explore — in great and close detail — the trees and shrubs adjoining the school's playing fields. They'd reflected, taken notes, drawn observational sketches, seen the trees and leaves and insects in new lights and from new angles, played with language, laughed and had fun. And then they'd returned to the classroom to knock their thoughts, notes, perceptions and reflections into poems. I'd been with Robert and his group throughout their time outside - mostly to manage his tendency to distract others — but back in the classroom my attention was shared with other members of the class. By the time I got around to Robert's desk, he'd managed an illegible sentence, in his typically tight, misspelled and dysfluent script. I asked him what he'd written and there was a long pause as he tried to make sense of his work. Then he replied, in a voice so slow and soft I hardly heard him, 'Even the winter leaves have their own secret colours.'

That was it. One line. But what a line! It was midsummer, and Robert had found and studied a solitary, decaying winter leaf. And in his observations and his slow reflections, Robert captured an image that contained a most deliberate metaphor. He was saying, I'm convinced, 'Mr Hymer, notice me. I know I've not got a great deal going for me in school, but just sometimes, in some situations, I can do things that will amaze you.' The children's best efforts were collated and published in-house in an anthology entitled, Their Own Secret Colours. With the support of David Orme, Robert introduced the anthology to the parents at the official launch. He later told me it was the first time he'd ever been asked to do something important. Robert's moment in the sun coincided with a staggering change in his attitude and performance in school. He saw himself as a poet, as someone who, under the right conditions, could amaze with the power of his words. He still struggled to read and write and acquire new concepts at the speed of his classmates, but the bullying pretty much stopped, the friendships and peer-respect grew and Robert walked around the school and playgrounds with a real, deep and growing sense of self-confidence. He seemed caught up in a virtuous circle. And if that was the effect of Robert's self-perception, who was I to disillusion him? A few weeks later the term and school year ended. I left the school and the area and I've no idea what became of him.

Was Robert really gifted? More specifically, was he a gifted poet? Could one say any more than that under the right conditions, he was capable of flashes of poetic inspiration? Does true giftedness rely on the demonstration of gifts over time, if not routinely then certainly on more than one occasion? For myself, I know only that the initial recognition of Robert's achievement had multiple consequences, however temporary The experience left with me two nagging questions: first, could I ever know a child's potential? And second, if the response to this question were negative (and there'd been nothing in Robert's scholastic, family or psychometric history to lead me to expect a gift for poetry), didn't I have a responsibility to assume that every child had the capacity for exceptional performance? Of course, I wouldn't necessarily know when, to what extent or in which domain of enquiry exceptional performances might arise, but, none the less, I had to allow myself to be surprised more often. And for this to happen, I knew I had in my teaching first to jettison all preconceptions about ability, however defined, and then to strive to create a learning environment rich in intellectual challenge and excitement, safe and emotionally nurturing, and dense in its possibilities for extension — for all my students. It's at this point that the cold sweat of reality intrudes: in what passes for the real world is this possible? I will argue in this short book not only that this is possible (I see gifted teachers doing this time and time again, sometimes against all odds), but that the fruits of recent research about the brain, learning and the needs of learners (including 'gifted and talented' learners) demand that we try.

Questions for discussion

• Can one ever know a child's potential?
• Could a child with generalised learning difficulties seriously be considered gifted?
• Is a truly inclusive approach to gifted and talented education possible — or desirable?

1.2 What are the core values and implications of a truly inclusive approach to gifted and talented education?

The challenge confronting the inclusive school is that of developing a child-centred pedagogy capable of successfully educating all children . . . The merit of such schools is not only that they are capable of providing quality education to all children; their establishment is a crucial step in helping to change discriminatory attitudes, in creating welcoming communities and in developing an inclusive society.

(UNESCO, Salamanca Statement, 1994)

I do not believe that the Good Lord plays dice.

(attributed to Albert Einstein)

My experience as Robert's classteacher largely pre-dated my more focused interest in the needs of more able learners, but its memory has resonated strongly whenever I've come across such educational buzzwords as 'inclusion', 'high expectations', 'achievement' or 'underachievement', 'gifted' and 'talented', etc. It seems to me that the challenge posed by Robert is simply a (relatively) extreme example of the dilemma faced by all teachers in the domain of gifted and talented education: how does one create a learning environment that stretches the ablest without excluding or alienating the least able — and vice versa? Any attempt to resolve this question must at some point address issues around core educational principles or values. I will state some of mine here:

• All children have a right to a high quality education.
• 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 and sustained.
• The primary role of the school is to maximise opportunities for all children to reach their educational goals.
• Children's educational goals will differ.

To these (relatively) uncontroversial principles, the following could be added:

• No-one — not even the person him or herself — is ever tally aware of an individual's potential for learning.
• A fixed concept of 'ability' is an unhelpful descriptor or predictor of performance.
• Children's educational goals are best reached by the setting and answering of questions. These questions are best set by the children themselves.
• Deep learning takes place collaboratively rather than competitively.

Implications of the above would include a recognition that:

• Giftedness and talent are best seen as relative rather than absolute terms, within the context both of an individual child's profile of strengths and weaknesses and his or her wider learning environment.
• The school has an important role in helping every child to identify his or her gift/s or talent/s.
• The most effective form of assessment is formative (assessment for learning) rather than summative or normative (assessment for showing or comparing). Relatedly, promoting learning orientation (concern for improving one's learning) is more likely to lead to effective learning than promoting performance orientation (concern for grade success).
• An inclusive policy for gifted and talented education is the only model consistent with these principles.
• The school should take steps actively to implement teaching and learning procedures and methods which will accommodate the principles set out above.

I'm aware that many if not all of the principles and implications set out above are open to challenge, but where values, principles and core beliefs can escape the constraints of subjectivity a battery of supportive evidence could be cited. This might include, by way of illustration:

• Joan Freeman's comprehensive survey of current international research into the education of able children and young people, in which she concludes that 'The dominant current concern of research into the education of the very able is the interaction between the child's potential and the provision to develop it. Without that dynamic element, we return to the old idea of fixed abilities, most notably intelligence' (Freeman 1998:56, italics added). In addition to differentiation, Freeman sees individualisation as the other route to the development of potential — 'Where the pupil has greater responsibility for the content and pace of his or her own educational progress. In this, children would be required to monitor their own learning' (ibid.:56).
• Stephen Ceci's (1990; 1996) and Michael Howe's (1990) robust refutation of the idea that people who excel in certain fields do so because of their special gifts or talents: commitment and practice have been shown to be stronger determinants of exceptional performances than underlying ability.
• Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam's (1998) highly influential report into the key role of formative assessment (or 'assessment for learning') in raising standards in schools.
• Chris Watkins' (2001) extensive review of research evidence suggesting that preoccupation with grade attainment can actually lower the quality of performance.
• The growing recognition that thinking and learning are socially regulated activities; social interactions are seen to be essential to such learning processes as voluntary attention, logical memory, concept formation and internalisation. Research in these domains owes a great deal to the writings of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, but recent applications in the UK educational arena include Paul Light and Karen Littleton's (1999) demonstration of the significant social and relational bases of learning — even in an age of 'standardised assessment tests' (which are designed to drive up educational standards through the illumination of individual successes and failures).
• The educational implications of the burgeoning body of evidence from cognitive neuroscience. In his review of this area, John Geake has noted that 'There are educational implications here for the measurement of school success as a function of students' perceived individual successes, regardless of their level of achievement. This is not a call for dumbing-down — in fact, quite the opposite. It is a call for school organisation to even further recognise neurobiologically-driven individual differences in responses to school learning, in order to break the cycle of low competence generating low confidence generating low competence, as well as to minimise underachievement by academically gifted children through boredom with an underchallenging age-normed curriculum' (Geake 2002:7).
• Diane Montgomery's conclusions to the book she edited on Able Under achievers (2000), in which she observes that 'All learners need to experience an education which is supportive and valuing, whatever their differences. To achieve this, general education needs to be made more flexible. Access to special provision where it is useful should be based on the principles of inclusion and self-referral and use authentic or performance-based assessment to provide feedback to both learners and teachers. Learners need opportunities to contribute their own views on the value and appropriateness of the education they are receiving' (ibid.:202).

Questions for discussion

• What are your core educational principles?
• What are the implications of these principles?
• What do you think is at the heart of achievement: gifts or effort?
• How do your students let you know about what (and how) they're learning?

1.3 Principles into practice: rising tidies, labels and all that

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

(Epictetus, Discourses)

Research investigations have failed to discover any inherited or genetic traits that correspond to the popular notion of a natural gift or talent.

(Michael Howe, Sense and Nonsense About Hothouse Children)

Within the Barrow Community Learning Partnership (Education Action Zone) the opportunity has arisen to explore and test the boundaries and possibilities of the principles outlined in this chapter, and in so doing to attempt to meet the challenge currently facing all schools and local education authorities: the prosecution of two high-profile agendas, namely raising achievement and promoting inclusion. While these agendas can easily chafe against each other, it's both our belief and our experience that these agendas need not through any natural law be contradictory Given an enabling policy framework they can be mutually supportive. This book sets out to chart one such framework, in the hope that schools will choose to accept the contemporary challenge of setting out to meet the needs of all their students through an emphasis on gifted and talented teaching and learning, rather than through the traditional, superficially attractive and ultimately inadequate approach of test-and-place. The framework is not intended to be prescriptive, and it is hoped that individual schools and teachers will use it creatively and flexibly, according to their own needs and circumstances. Certainly there is no one school within the Barrow Community Learning Partnership that would claim a monopoly on inclusion and attainment within the parameters of a policy for gifted and talented education, but there are many that hold these principles dear, and implement them inventively and authentically. They tend to be schools that recognise the reality of Professor Joe Renzulli's increasingly well-known maxim, that 'a rising tide lifts all ships'.

In advocating and setting out the challenges and possibilities of a truly inclusive school-based vision for gifted and talented education, I feel that it's necessary for me to identify and to nail a few positions that this book is not advancing:

1. 'All children have equivalent predispositions for exceptionality.'
2. 'Achievements in traditional curriculum areas aren't worth celebrating.'
3. 'Extension and. enrichment activities which engage only a minority of students to the highest levels are necessarily flawed or inadequate.'
4. 'There's merit or moral high-ground to be had in devaluing the concept of giftedness or talent, or relatedly that this approach owes more to social engineering ambitions than to social realities.'
5. 'Translating an inclusive policy into practice is easy.'

On the contrary, and sequentially:

1. Of course we're not all born equal. Michael Howe, long-time rebutter of arguments for genetic determinism in the field of giftedness, qualifies his assertion about the lack of research evidence for genetic explanations for natural talent by going on to make th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• NACE Mission Statement
• 1 Overview
• 2 Who is gifted? Issues around models and definitions of giftedness
• 3 Who says she's gifted? Issues around identification strategies
• 4 On becoming wise: The 'trans-intellective' domain
• 5 Teaching for giftedness and talent: Examples of inclusive provision
• 6 Getting it together: Policy formulation and delivery
• 7 Support and further reading
• References
• Index