Classroom Management for Gifted and Twice-Exceptional Students Using Functional Behavior Assessment

A Step-by-Step Professional Learning Program for Teachers

Yara N. Farah, Susan K. Johnsen, Yarah Farah

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000491098
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Behavioural Management

Classroom Management for Gifted and Twice-Exceptional Students Using Functional Behavior Assessment assists educators in understanding how to identify and target behaviors that influence the success of students and daily classroom instruction. Each module:

• Provides case studies with examples of the concepts being taught.
• Includes presentations, interactive graphic organizers, and small-group problem-solving activities.
• Offers self-assessments and resources for developing interventions.
• May be used within a university course, a series of workshops, or professional teacher learning communities.
• Uses functional behavior assessment (FBA), a successful research-based approach to behavioral interventions.

Using this book, teachers can learn to manage student behavior and implement differentiation in the classroom.

MODULE 1Characteristics of Gifted and Twice-Exceptional Students

DOI: 10.4324/9781003233640-2

OVERVIEW

This module will describe the historical back ground, definitions, and characteristics of gifted students and gifted students with disabilities (i.e., twice-exceptional, or 2e, students).

GOALS

At the conclusion of this module, participants will be able to:

• define and describe the characteristics of gifted students,
• define and describe the characteristics of twice-exceptional students, and
• compare and contrast the strengths and needs of gifted and 2e students.

MAIN IDEAS

• Definitions of gifted students emphasize their potential for high performance; their variability relative to others of the same age, experience, and background; and their need for services.
• Gifted students have individual strengths, needs, and interests.
• Characteristics vary by area of giftedness, culture, socioeconomic class, school conditions, social and emotional areas, and disability.
• Twice-exceptional students are those with both a gift and a disability, which may mask one another.
• Working with gifted and twice-exceptional students requires specialized professional development.

Background Information for the Instructor

The information in the following sections provides background for the instructor, which may or may not be used with the participants depending on the instructor’s goals and the participants’ knowledge and skill level.

Is This Student Gifted?

Jeff is a high school student. He plays the trombone and enjoys time with his friends in the school band. He and a small group of his friends have started a jazz ensemble that plays at school and community events. He is also academically talented and enjoys writing, recently publishing a short story in a literary magazine. This past week, he learned that he is a National Merit Scholar.

Stephanie is in middle school and attends a school for gifted and talented students. She performs at the top of her science and math classes but is struggling with her classes in English language arts, particularly in writing. Realizing that students are not talented in every domain, the teachers have begun to differentiate their classrooms to match the strengths and needs of the students. However, even with this assistance in her language arts classes, Stephanie is still struggling.

Allen is in fourth grade and has been identified as a student with gifts and talents because he performed in the top 5% on both achievement and intelligence tests. He currently attends a weekly magnet school program in his school district that offers opportunities for investigations in areas of interest and problem-based interdisciplinary units. However, he is very disruptive in his magnet school classroom, often talking with his friends during instructional time. Because his behavior has become quite disruptive to the other students, the teachers are considering removing him from the program.

Jennifer is in fifth grade and does just enough work to pass from one year to the next. She appears to do well on the required state achievement tests but does not seem to be very engaged in her classwork. Recently Jennifer has been building mechanical objects in her backyard, much to the delight of her neighborhood friends! She holds performances each week, weaving her mechanical objects into puppet shows.

All of these examples describe children who are gifted and talented. These students demonstrate their gifts in different contexts—at home, at school, and with their friends—and in a variety of areas—music, writing, leadership, science, math, drama. Although Jeff would definitely be identified as gifted and talented because of his outstanding performance in school and on assessments, Jennifer might not because of her underachievement, and Allen and Stephanie may be at risk of not receiving services in the gifted program.

Who Are Gifted Students?

Brief Historical Perspective of Intelligence

In the beginning of the 20th century, the concept of giftedness was closely associated with highly intelligent and academically achieving children who were typically identified by scores on intelligence tests (Henry, 1920; Whipple, 1924). As an example, Terman (1925) identified individuals as gifted if they performed in the top 1% of the school populations as measured by the Stanford Revision, an extension of the Binet-Simon Scales for Measuring Intelligence (Terman, 1917). Hollingworth (1926) also defined gifted children as those in the top 1% of the school population, although she did note, “a gifted child may be far more excellent in some capacities than in others” (p. 202). In the 1920s, Spearman (1923) viewed intelligence as an underlying ability common to all tests and tasks, which he labeled g, for general intelligence. He also identified variations of g as s—a two-factor theory.

In 1950, at an address to the American Psychological Association, Guilford added another kind of ability, divergent production, which he identified using factor analysis. He distinguished divergent production from other abilities found on intelligence tests, such as comprehension, memory, evaluation, and convergent production. A decade later, Cattell (1963) represented Spearman’s g by two kinds of ability—fluid and crystalized. Fluid ability referred to the successful adaptation in situations in which previously learned skills offer no advantage, whereas crystallized ability referred to those areas influenced by experience and education. Carroll (1993) later elaborated Cattell’s view by analyzing different ability matrices and developing a three-stratum taxonomic structure in which g, general intelligence, is at the apex of a hierarchical structure of abilities followed by eight broad factors that include crystallized and fluid intelligence, general memory and learning, and other general processes (e.g., visual and auditory perception, retrieval, and speed). The bottom stratum consists of 65 narrow abilities, such as those found in core academic areas. The Cattell-Horn-Carroll model is central to the design of most current intelligence tests.

Models of Giftedness and Talent

These definitions reflect the changing conception of giftedness that initially was associated with intelligence. The most current models focus on the number of influences that contribute to giftedness as well as talent development. For example, Tannenbaum (2003) described how excellence is influenced by general ability; special aptitudes in specific areas; nonintellectual facilitators, such as persistence, mental health, and metalearning; environment, such as caregivers, peers, culture, social class, and classrooms; and chance, ranging from accidental to personalized action. Gagné (2005) placed these areas into a developmental model. He suggested that individuals are born with natural abilities or gifts that are developed into talents systematically. The development of gifts into talents has three subcomponents: access to a systematic program of activities; investment of time, money, and psychological energy; and progress from novice to expert. Contributors to this developmental process include environmental (individual, milieu, and provisions) and intrapersonal (physical, mental, motivation, awareness, volition) catalysts. All of the components of Gagné’s model are influenced by chance, such as being born into a particular family, time, and culture.

Definitions of Gifted and Talented

The first federal definition of gifted and talented children was provided by the Advisory Panel to the U.S. Office of Education in 1972 in its report to Congress Education of the Gifted and Talented (Marland, 1972):

Gifted and talented children are those identified by professionally qualified persons who, by virtue of outstanding abilities, are capable of high performance. These are children who require differentiated educational programs and/or services beyond those normally provided by the regular school program in order to realize their contribution to self and society.

Children capable of high performance include those with demonstrated achievement and/or potential ability in any of the following areas, singly or in combination:

1. general intellectual ability;
2. specific academic aptitude;
3. creative or productive thinking;
4. leadership ability;
5. visual and performing arts;
6. psychomotor ability. (p. 9)

According to Marland (1972), general intellectual abilities included verbal, number, spatial, memory, and reasoning factors most often associated with superior performance in school and on intelligence tests. Specific academic aptitude included abilities in one or more school subject areas, such as science, mathematics, social studies, and language. Creative or productive thinking represented originality in solving problems, flexibility in thinking, and fluency in ideas. The category of leadership ability included those individuals who demonstrated an ability to improve human relationships and assist groups in attaining goals. Gifts and talents in the visual and performing arts were demonstrated by the abilities and skills of prominent artists, dancers, writers, musicians, and actors in their fields. Psychomotor ability was demonstrated in athletics or in those mechanical skills required by engineering, fine arts, and science. Although psychomotor was dropped from the definition in 1976, this definition focusing on multiple areas of giftedness continues to dominate the field of gifted education.

In the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement (Ross, 1993) issued a report titled National Excellence: A Case for Developing America’s Talent, which included this definition:

Children and youth with outstanding talent perform or show the potential for performing at remarkably high levels of accomplishment when compared with others of their age, experience, or environment. These children and youth exhibit high performance capability in intellectual, creative, and/or artistic areas, possess an unusual leadership capacity, or excel in spec...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents Page
• Introduction
• MODULE 1 Characteristics of Gifted and Twice-Exceptional Students
• MODULE 2 Beliefs About Classroom Management
• MODULE 3 Influences on Behavior: The A-B-C Model
• MODULE 4 Defining and Describing Behaviors
• MODULE 5 Antecedents and Contextual Variables
• MODULE 6 Identifying and Describing Consequences
• MODULE 7 Identifying Schedules of Reinforcing Consequences
• MODULE 8 Analyzing Data to Examine Functions: Developing a Hypothesis
• MODULE 9 Implementing a Behavioral Intervention With a Student
• MODULE 10 Creating a Classroom Environment That Influences Desired Behaviors
• Glossary
• References
• About the Authors