Best Practices in Professional Learning and Teacher Preparation

Professional Development for Teachers of the Gifted in the Content Areas: Vol. 3

National Assoc For Gifted Children, Angela Novak

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000490718
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Several states offer additional teacher preparation programs by providing either an endorsement or certification in the field, but these are often pursued by teachers specifically enrolled in gifted coursework rather than in general education programs. Practitioners and researchers agree that time and energy should be spent on training teachers in how to address the needs of gifted and talented students, both within the regular classroom and in specialized programs. This three-book series acknowledges this need and provides specific strategies for professional development in a variety of settings using various methods. Drawing on both literature in the field and research-based best practices in professional learning, this series provides the reader with a foundation for designing and implementing effective professional development experiences for educators working with gifted learners. This volume:

• Provides strategies and curricular materials/resources for working with gifted learners in specific content areas (i.e., mathematics, science, social studies, literacy, languages, and the arts).
• Discusses the importance of training teachers to use high-quality curriculum.
• Builds off of research on talent development, cultural awareness, and social justice in education.
• Details instructional strategies that are appropriate for challenging gifted learners, including developing growth mindset.

A service publication of the National Association for Gifted Children (Washington, DC) This designation indicates that this book has been jointly developed with NAGC and that this book passes the highest standards of scholarship, research, and practice.

Section 1
Curriculum From the Bigger Picture

DOI: 10.4324/9781003233275-2

CHAPTER 1
Engaging Gifted Teachers in Professional Learning About Content Curriculum

DOI: 10.4324/9781003233275-3

Christine L. Weber and Emily Mofield

As educators and professional learning facilitators embrace the tenets of professional learning—which emphasize opportunities that are interactive, continual, and relevant to the content-based needs of teachers and their students—educators need to consider the impact of these tenets and how they support teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge, particularly as it relates to curricular and instructional materials for meeting the needs of gifted learners.

Hirsh (2019) outlined four cornerstones of professional learning for Learning Forward’s publication 4 Cornerstones of Professional Learning. These cornerstones may guide districts toward setting goals. They include:

1. Lead with equity. Equity and excellence in teaching and learning is included in Learning Forward’s vision statement and “represents the inspiration, challenge, and essential purpose for pursuing more effective ways to serve educators and students” (p. 2).
2. Invest in team learning. For every student to succeed, every educator engages in collaborative, job-embedded learning to strengthen capacity and collective responsibility.
3. Leverage high-quality instructional materials. Educators use their learning time to understand high-quality instructional materials and prepare for implementation, advancing their potential to improve student learning.
4. Advocate with evidence. To sustain support for professional learning at all levels, educators equip themselves with data from research and practice. They share that data with stakeholders and speak up for their learning and that of their peers.

Many of these suggestions, with a continued emphasis on endorsing research and best practices, are developed in various chapters of Volumes 1 and 2, and now Volume 3, in this series. This chapter focuses specifically on the third cornerstone, as outlined by Hirsh (2019), of leveraging high-quality curricular and instructional materials to provide rigor and challenge for gifted learners. Additionally, this chapter sets the stage for outlining what this cornerstone looks like for those involved in planning and implementing professional learning that strengthens teachers’ knowledge and teaching of domain-specific content, and that results in effective pedagogical content knowledge. In order to implement any plans for high-quality professional learning related to teaching gifted learners, educators must first consider: What are high-quality instructional materials and content? Authors in this volume who focus on professional development for teachers of the gifted in the content areas emphasize the need to improve teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, which are both essential for teachers of the gifted (Gubbins, 2008; Little & Ayers Paul, 2017).

In Volume 1 of this series, Novak and Lewis (2018) provided a multitude of professional learning options for educators to explore, such as professional learning communities (PLCs), mentoring, cohorts, and online communities. Gilson (2018) challenged readers to consider differentiated professional learning, drawing on specific principles related to adult learning theories. Other chapters support research and best practices with additional strategies for professional learning, such as using case studies, employing a reflective practice, using coteaching, and implementing new technologies. The latter is especially important when planning technology integration building on Shulman’s construct of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to include a technology knowledge (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). This model, TPACK, is designed around the idea that content (what is taught) and pedagogy (how it is taught) must be the basis for any technology used in the classroom to enhance learning (see https://www.rt3nc.org/edtech/the-tpack-model). This chapter emphasizes the importance of identifying criteria for selecting high-quality curriculum, which impacts the content identified during professional learning opportunities. This chapter focuses on three questions:

• ◆ What is high-quality gifted curriculum, and how does it support gifted students in learning content-specific strategies and methodologies?
• ◆ What are examples of high-quality curriculum?
• ◆ What role do content standards play in professional learning of gifted educators?

What Is High-Quality Gifted Curriculum? How Does It Support Gifted Learners?

Engaging teachers in professional learning about gifted curriculum must include a clear understanding of what high-quality gifted curriculum actually is and what makes it different from regular curriculum. Professional learning must address (1) the essential components of high-quality curriculum, (2) why these features benefit gifted student learning, and (3) how gifted students best learn the content. When teachers understand the structure, parts, and functions of high-quality curriculum, professional learning experiences can offer opportunities for teachers to interact with and evaluate exemplary gifted curriculum. Further, the understanding of these essential components will strengthen teachers’ skills in developing their own high-quality curriculum. In essence, high-quality gifted curriculum allows gifted students opportunities to develop their strengths and talents. Gifted students learn information quickly, process content at high levels, and make abstract connections across concepts. In response to these characteristics, impactful gifted curriculum embeds opportunities for students to engage in the thinking processes inherent in a discipline and practice applying these processes to real-world problems and issues (Renzulli et al., 2000; Tomlinson et al., 2009; VanTassel-Baska & Baska, 2019; VanTassel-Baska & Wood, 2010). Thus, in professional learning, teachers must consider the role of content-specific curriculum (the what) as an opportunity to develop gifted students’ strengths and talents.

Within a content area, gifted students need experiences that allow them to apply the core ideas, structures, and processes of the discipline (Tomlinson, 2004; VanTassel-Baska & Wood, 2010). The more complex these experiences are, the more likely students will have to integrate background knowledge, decision making, problem solving, creative thinking, and critical reasoning. When providing professional learning on designing gifted curriculum, teachers need to learn how various content areas require different ways of applying thinking processes, such as critical thinking and creativity. For example, creative thinking in science may involve developing multiple solutions to a real-world problem (e.g., “How can we prevent honeybees from dying?”), while creative thinking in the language arts may include using flexibility and elaboration in a creative narrative. Further, critical thinking in social studies involves examining bias, perspective, and context within a primary source document, while critical thinking in math includes verifying the reasonableness of a solution through applying a mathematical model.

In the context of talent development in particular, gifted curriculum is an opportunity for identified potential to be transformed into achievement within a domain (Subotnik et al., 2011). Ericsson’s (1996) work on expert performance explains that experts have developed a sophisticated understanding of domain-specific patterns and that they can apply these patterns to reach solutions. This notion is highlighted particularly in cognitive psychology as the building of “schema,” and, for novice learners, it is critically important to make such concepts and patterns explicit in order to facilitate understanding of the organization of knowledge. Defined, schema is the “interpretive frameworks, built out of past knowledge and experience, that allows us to make sense out of the bits and pieces of information presented to us in given situations” (Mitchell, 1989, p. 277). Relevant to gifted curriculum, the thinking processes within these domains can be explicitly taught (Stambaugh & Mofield, n.d.; VanTassel-Baska & Wood, 2010). Thus, as teachers engage in professional learning about content curriculum for gifted learners, whether through learning how to use a published curriculum or develop their own curricula, they should consider the question, “How do experts think about this content differently than novices?” The National Research Council (1998) noted that when novices solve problems, they spend considerably more time defining the problem than experts do and have stronger metacognitive skills. Additionally, experts differ in their skills to:

• ◆ develop a mental framework for organizing knowledge,
• ◆ retrieve integrated collective facts (rather than piecemeal facts),
• ◆ perceive structures of situations in order to know next steps and examine patterns, and
• ◆ understand when to revise ideas (Adams et al., 2008, para. 2).

Professional learning related to gifted curriculum should also address how gifted students best learn content and which academic language is most useful to emphasize for content-specific methodologies. All learners need the initial building blocks for developing schemas for organizing knowledge, and all learners need opportunities to engage in authentic learning and challenging curriculum for meaningful learning to occur. This is facilitated by a variety of instructional strategies that foster creativity and curiosity, allow students to apply learning to new contexts, and differentiate for student readiness and interest (Tomlinson, 2004; Tomlinson et al., 2009). Additionally, meaningful learning is achieved by intentionally planning instruction around academic language, academic discourse, and purposeful talk relevant to discipline-specific vocabulary and syntax so that students can comprehend complex texts as they progress through more challenging content (Frey et al., 2010). However, for gifted students, these instructional approaches need to be applied to more advanced content with opportunities for higher levels of complexity, abstraction, and degrees of generalizability (Beasley et al., 2017).

Professional learning for gifted educators should focus on developing and/or selecting curriculum that intentionally differentiates by readiness for gifted learners by considering how advanced content-specific academic language and discourse can be used within the curriculum to channel learning. For example, although typical middle school students might learn to analyze a speech for an author’s purpose, claim, and use of structure as part of learning a grade-level standard, high-quality gifted curriculum should intentionally include activities that allow students to evaluate more sophisticated rhetorical devices, such as syllogisms or use of synecdoche, and require students to apply these techniques in developing their own arguments in response to real-world issues. Indeed, this deliberate planning for use of academic language with gifted students can bridge the learning from novice- to expert-level thinking. As students grapple with more sophisticated concepts via academic discourse, they build more complex mental schemas for pattern recognition and deep conceptual understanding.

NAGC Curriculum Studies Rubric

Professional learning related to curriculum might involve exploring the question, “Can high-quality gifted curriculum be developed or only purchased?” Just because curriculum is published does not mean that it is high-quality. In the same vein, not all teacher-created resources align to best practices in gifted education. So, how might professional learning guide teachers to evaluate the curriculum they use, adopt, and/or create?

The National Association for Gifted Children’s (NAGC) Curriculum Studies Network developed a rubric to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• SECTION 1: CURRICULUM FROM THE BIGGER PICTURE
• SECTION 2: CURRICULUM THROUGH A CONTENT LENS
• ABOUT THE EDITORS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS