Social-Emotional Curriculum With Gifted and Talented Students

Joyce Van Tassel-Baska, Tracy L. Cross, F. Richard Olenchak

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000503326
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación inclusiva

A gifted education Legacy Award winner, Social-Emotional Curriculum With Gifted and Talented Students provides a thorough introduction to methods for developing social-emotional curricula for use with gifted and talented learners in the school setting. Including overviews of strategies that work for implementing social-emotional strategies in the everyday curricula, this book, part of the Critical Issues in Equity and Excellence series, a joint publication project of the National Association for Gifted Children and Prufrock Press, combines research and experience from leading scholars in the field of the affective needs of gifted students in a convenient guide for teachers, administrators, and gifted education program directors. The book covers theories to guide affective curricula, the needs of minority students, models to develop social-emotional curricula, tips for counseling gifted students, and strategies to promote the social-emotional needs of gifted students, along with discussions of suicide prevention among this population, the use of bibliotherapy and discussion groups, and the teacher-counselor connection in affective curricula. This handy guide to developing social-emotional curricula for gifted students is a necessity for anyone serving and working with this population.Educational Resource

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

Joyce VanTassel-Baska

DOI: 10.4324/9781003238065-1

This book has been a long time in coming together. In 2003, a group of several of the contributors gathered in Houston for a weekend of discussion and planning under the leadership of Rick Olenchak, then president of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC). We worked diligently to produce outlines and then first drafts for several chapters. We also identified others whom we felt could make a strong contribution to the book. We continued to stay in touch by e-mail and critique each other’s work over the next year. We have now chosen to reenergize the project with a broadened group of contributors and an expanded editorship model as well. The book now represents a more timely focus on different curriculum directions that offer affective support. It also provides a strong contribution to our field on a topic often not discussed—how can teachers help gifted students develop their social and emotional selves in the context of standards and assessment-driven school environments?

The book comprises 12 chapters, each of which offers a unique perspective on social-emotional curriculum. What binds the book together is the powerful theme of meaning-making, in other words, helping gifted students make sense of the big ideas in life including their own identity and the processes by which personal growth and development occur. It is a book that has content that is valid for both educators and counselors; even though the processes may vary based on their areas of skilled training. Why do we feel the book is important enough to have in a series on equity and excellence? Because this book offers guidance and counsel to all who work with the gifted and gets to the heart of their concerns.

By working through the layers of self that we all bring to this thing called life, gifted students can come to know they are not alone, whether through reading about a protagonist in a novel suffering similar angst or a biography of an eminent individual who demonstrated similar struggles and came out on the other side. They can begin to express their emotions rather than repress them through the process of discussion or the engagement in the arts. They can come to understand their different selves as individuals and as individuals in various groups, realizing that they present distinctive selves based on context and relationships. They can face the problems that most gifted students encounter at some stage of their growing into early adulthood—confronting perfectionism, developing important relationships, dealing with sensitivity and their own intensity, and channeling their concerns about the world into worthwhile service projects and careers. Yet, gifted students often cannot do these things unaided. They need a wise teacher or counselor who will guide them in the right direction, listen to their fears, and reassure and nurture them when they need support.

This book is intended to provide those wise friends and mentors with the support they need to do that work. The editors hope the chapters herein can sustain an ongoing program of socioemotional guidance throughout the school years, from kindergarten through high school. We hope that schools will realize the importance of providing a social-emotional curriculum and provide professional development for their teachers in this area, based on the Gifted Education Teacher Standards, passed by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) in 2006, to ensure that all educators who work with gifted youth have core competencies in social and emotional areas of their makeup. The standards that follow in Table 1.1 offer a blueprint for such professional development that can be used along with this book.

Table 1.1 Standards for Preparation of Gifted Education Teachers Focusing on Social-Emotional Needs of Students

Standard	Social-Emotional Knowledge and Skills
Standard 2: Development and Characteristics of Learners	Kl: Cognitive and affective characteristics of individuals with gifts and talents, including those from diverse backgrounds, in intellectual, academic, creative, leadership, and arts domains.
Standard 3: Individual Learning Differences	K2: Academic and affective characteristics and learning needs of individuals with gifts and talents and disabilities.
Standard 5: Learning Environments and Social Interaction	K2: Influence of social and emotional development on interpersonal relationships and learning of individuals with gifts and talents.
	S1: Design learning opportunities for individuals with gifts and talents that promote self-awareness, positive peer relationships, intercultural experiences, and leadership.
	S2: Create learning environments for individuals with gifts and talents that promote self-awareness, self-efficacy, leadership, and lifelong learning.
	S3: Create safe learning environments for individuals with gifts and talents that encourage active participation in individual and group activities to enhance independence, interdependence, and positive peer relationships.
	S4: Create learning environments and intercultural experiences that allow individuals with gifts and talents to appreciate their own and others' language and cultural heritage.
	S5: Develop social interaction and coping skills in individuals with gifts and talents to address personal and social issues, including stereotyping and discrimination.
Standard 10: Collaboration	S1: Respond to concerns of families of individuals with gifts and talents.

Note. From National Association for Gifted Children and Council for Exceptional Children (2006, pp. 1–3, 5).

The Organization of the Book

This book is organized to provide insights into the theory, research, and practice of provisions for gifted students in the socioaffective domain. It is meant to be a companion piece to the earlier NAGC text, The Social and Emotional Development of Gifted Children: What Do We Know?, published in 2002 that focused on what we know from research about the social and emotional needs of the gifted. This volume attempts to provide intervention approaches in response to those needs and suggest healthy responses to the problems and issues gifted students face in school and home settings.

The 12 chapters that comprise this book all provide insights about the social and emotional development of gifted learners and the interventions that can help promote mental health and stability across the lifespan. A brief summary of each follows.

The Moon chapter introduces all of the major theories currently available to guide the development of affective curriculum. She focuses on cognitive, affective, and conative theories that affect the development of gifted individuals in different ways at different stages of development. She chronicles the major ideas of these theories that affect both normal and gifted development and provides examples of how they could be or are used to teach affective skills both directly and indirectly in classroom settings. The theory of personal talent, developed by Moon, is explicated and applied as an exemplary framework for developing affective curriculum opportunities at elementary, middle, and high school levels.

The Olenchak chapter introduces a new model for thinking about the development of social and emotional competency called the Bull’s Eye. Olenchak integrates the literature on brain research with more contemporary theories of psychology to demonstrate a research-based approach that may be taken in providing needed support to the gifted learner in optimizing self. His review of the newer literature in neuroscience links the role of affect with the act of cognition, suggesting that emotion undergirds the capacity of cognitive functions to perform at optimal levels in complex tasks like decision making. The positive psychology movement has furthered studies of learned optimism, flow, and hope, all of which emphasize the positive affective traits of individuals in life situations that lead to perseverance and resilience in adversity. Using this literature base, Olenchak creates the Bull’s Eye Model in four fluid stages, each influencing the other: natural affect, world contexts, meta-affect, and personal niche. The model loosely parallels the Gagné and Sternberg views of intelligence as mapped on personal and environmental collisions that affect how one thinks (as opposed to feels) about one’s talent and its development. The final part of the chapter applies the model to what might be done in classrooms to stress affective development.

The Renzulli chapter introduces the Houndstooth Theory as a way of acknowledging the importance of the comingling of affective development with cognitive development. He focuses on six conative or co-cognitive factors—optimism, courage, sensitivity to human concerns, romance with a discipline, physical/mental energy, and vision or a sense of destiny—to make the case that gifted learners must be able to internalize these qualities in the development and expression of their talent areas. He also provides research-based approaches to such development through different typologies of program interventions that provide opportunities to learners to understand and apply skills and strategies in leadership and service venues. He concludes the chapter by stressing the importance of the background of affective development in areas of learning for the gifted to ultimately push forward the creative and productive expression in their lives.

In her chapter on affective curriculum, VanTassel-Baska emphasizes the range of interventions that teachers and other educators can provide gifted learners inside and outside of the classroom. She focuses specifically on the use of an emotional intelligence framework to create lesson plans that address the need to express emotions, channel them, and ultimately regu-late them through the use of literature, movies, history, and the arts. She also suggests that affective curriculum should be integrated into cognitive areas in order to ensure that it is effective and used in classrooms. A list of topics for use in bibliotherapy also is provided that may guide practitioners in the choice of reading materials for students in need of connecting to protagonists who share their concerns and problems.

The Kwan and Hilson chapter focuses on racial minority groups and providing social and emotional guidance to these groups. The authors wisely focus on the similarities in counseling needs to majority groups in order to suggest a value-added model and approach. The authors introduce conceptual models useful for counseling non-White clients and apply them to two case studies of students from different minority groups as a way to help readers understand that social and emotional costs are borne by both underrepresented and overrepresented minority populations. Their chapter concludes with practical ideas to be considered in counseling racially diverse gifted students.

The Day-Vines, Patton, Quek, and Woods chapter targets African American adolescents as the population of interest for interventions that are culture-specific, yet also provides more generic ideas for social-emotional curriculum. Issues of teachers and counselors being attuned to cultural differences is one theme found throughout the chapter with practical suggestions for how to implement a counseling program that provides such support. The themes of resilience, self-efficacy, and developing leadership competencies also are played out in the chapter as psychological tools to use in the development of these students across the critical adolescent years.

The Peterson chapter is grounded in the author’s experiences as a clinical counselor who has worked extensively with gifted secondary students. She advocates for a broad definition of who should be included in a counseling program for the gifted, going beyond high achievers and those from the majority culture. She suggests three approaches to an affective curriculum: a proactive one that deliberately advances the agenda of personal growth, a reactive one that responds to individual problems that interfere with learning, and an integrated one that is embedded in content-based activities. Peterson also discusses the importance of the collaboration between teachers and counselors in ensuring that the social and emotional needs of gifted learners are met. The professional bridges that are built between these two roles can spell the difference in the lives of many gifted students. She defines the role and responsibility of each professional and delineates ways they can work together to map out a strong program of intervention for gifted learners.

The VanTassel-Baska, Buckingham, and Baska chapter focuses on the role of the arts in developing social and emotional health. A review of the literature is included that stresses the therapeutic value of the arts in unleashing creative potential and calming the pain of social and emotional scars. Several examples of arts curricula are included for teachers to use in classrooms along with ideas for more in-depth work that could be done by arts professionals in the schools. Special emphasis is placed on the use of literature and the visual arts as mechanisms for involving students in affective activities. The chapter also addresses the role of educators in ensuring that the arts are effectively integrated into the core subject areas as the most effective strategy to ensure their inclusion in school curriculum.

The Hébert chapter targets the use of biography and autobiography as powerful tools to guide the social and emotional development of gifted children in school. He notes the value of these tools in establishing role models, helping with identity development, and reducing alienation in gifted students, especially during the adolescent years. He provides examples of books to be employed and the processes of discussion and questioning that should accompany the readings. Hébert’s ideas are very compatible with the discussion model found in Chapter 11. The two chapters could be used together to build appropriate units of study.

The Peterson, Betts, and Bradley chapter discusses the importance of discussion groups as a mode of working on social and emotional issues with gifted children. The authors provide a variety of resources to help practitioners use discussion, a long list of content topics to discuss based on the needs and interests of these learners, and tips on the procedures for conduct-ing effective discussion groups, especially with adolescents. The chapter details the importance of employing active listening with students, deliberate use of core questions, and employment of existing resources to conduct successful counseling groups.

The Cross, Frazier, and McKay chapter delineates ideas for the prevention of suicide and suicidal behavior in gifted youth. They focus on the warning signs and the preventive measures that school people and parents alike must take to ensure the safety of at-risk gifted children. They outline the nature of intervention strategies that may be applied to ease the pain of these young people and suggest that we are not vigilant enough in our attention to their social and emotional development.

The Brown chapter provides a model for professional development in gifted education that would allow school leaders to plan effectively for promoting the social and emotional development of gifted students at all stages of development. She argues for the importance of school leaders acknowledging this area of programming and holding teachers and counselors accountable for providing it. Her chapter suggests the use of both the new teacher education standards and the NAGC program standards as a basis for constructing a model professional development program in this area. Key questions and modes of delivery also are discussed.

The concluding chapter of the book pulls together the major themes noted across the chapters and examines new directions for addressing the social and emotional development of gifted learners in schools and outside of schools. It raises new issues and questions about how attention to the whole gifted child will be possible in the current climate of No Child Left Behind and suggests the need to consider alternative services outside of tradit...