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Developing young learnersâ identity
Some key points about developing young gifted and talented learnersâ identity are made in this chapter.
As early years educators we:
- can impact learner identities
- can create positive learning environments
- have a view about our own learner identity
- need to foster positive learning dispositions.
We need to remember that:
- learner identities can change depending on the learning context
- children who are gifted and talented face issues and have additional support needs?
Introduction
The children we care for will be busy developing their identities. It is an exciting time as they work out who they are, what they can do, how they fit into different groups and how they relate to the world about them. Many of the books about identity are concerned with developing social competence. While this is important it is not the focus for this book. This book is about how we, as practitioners, can develop and contribute to a childâs âlearnerâ identity. In other words, how can we help children achieve a greater understanding and acceptance of their own abilities and the abilities of others?
Like all children, those who are gifted and talented will develop learner identities through interaction with others. The experiences they encounter as they are growing up will accumulate and feed into their beliefs about themselves as learners.
Sometimes gifted and talented children assume everyone is the same as them and it is not until they arrive in nursery or school that they realize they have particular abilities. As a gifted child said: âI thought everybody was the same as me until I went to school.â
The realization that they are in some way different can start early in life. It is important, therefore, that we consider how we act with and react to children in our care who are somehow âdifferentâ, since this can have a huge impact on the childâs learner identity. Depending on our reaction, we can either leave them with the feeling it is a bad thing to be different, or with the feeling that difference is something positive. Indeed, if a child is relatively unaware of difference until they arrive in an educational setting, we perhaps have to question what our educational settings are doing to exacerbate that difference.
A good label to have?
If you had to be assigned a label, then you might think that the label of âgifted and talentedâ would be a good one to have. After all, being gifted and talented means that you must be really good at something, it might even mean you are really good at everything you try. However, talking to children who have this label, and talking to their parents, challenges this idea. In fact, like any other label, âgifted and talentedâ can be problematic for children, peers, parents and educators alike.
Issues for gifted and talented children
Gifted and talented children can experience:
- jealousy from age peers
- sibling rivalry
- constant pressure to succeed
- being misunderstood by those around them
- an expectation that they will be perfect
- difficulties in forming relationships with peers.
Gifted and talented children tend to process large amounts of information rapidly. When, as is often the case, learning is broken down into small manageable steps, so that all children can understand, the gifted and talented child may become frustrated or even stressed. For such children, complexity and challenge are important and when these are absent from the learning experience they may simply opt out or learn to underachieve. Gifted and talented children can also experience internal conflict as they try to understand and come to terms with their abilities. Unconsciously we may exacerbate the issues faced by young gifted and talented children if, for example, we ignore their abilities.
Issues for peers
Peers can experience:
- a feeling that they are not as âgoodâ as the gifted and talented child
- an inability to relate to the gifted and talented child
- being compared to the gifted and talented child
- frustration at not being able to do things the gifted and talented child can do.
Unconsciously we may exacerbate the issues faced by the peers of young gifted and talented children. If we constantly praise the gifted and talented child for what they can do or have achieved, then their peers will feel inadequate. If young children are making sense of the world around them and if they are working out what makes them good or bad, then there is a danger they will believe that their inability to do the things the gifted child can makes them bad (Dweck, 1995).
Issues for parents
Parents experience:
- jealousy from other parents
- dealing with sibling rivalry
- difficulty helping friends and family to understand their childâs abilities
- being misunderstood by those around them
- being classed as a âpushy parentâ
- being worried about finding an educational establishment that will offer an appropriate level of challenge
- wanting their child to find a friend
- trying to understand their childâs thought processes
- feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility they have towards their child.
Every parent wants the best for their child, and ultimately this is what we also strive for. The difference is that as educators we are trying to do the best for a large number of children, whereas a parent may be striving to meet the needs of a (hopefully) much smaller number. I have found that many parents of young gifted and talented learners I talk to are trying hard to come to terms with the fact that their young child is so advanced in their learning for their age. They say things like
- I donât know where he/she gets this from. Neither of us are good at maths.
- Her big brother isnât like this.
- I just wish he/she was normal.
- He/she constantly asks questions I donât know the answers to.
They also struggle to reconcile this advancement with the range of age behaviours they demonstrate. When asked to put their toys away they may behave like any other 3-year-old and yet when reading they are like an 8-year-old, and when thinking about global warming they may be more akin to a 22-year-old. These discrepancies can be difficult for all concerned: parents, peers, early years educators and the child.
Issues for educators
Early years educators experience:
- lack of training in how to support a gifted and talented child
- worrying about how they can cater for the childâs needs when they have other children with additional support needs in the group
- disquiet that the child already knows more than they do about specific topics
- concern that the child will develop socially and emotionally as well as academically
- anxiety over the child reaching a plateau in their learning.
We are all keen to do the best for all children in our care, but considering in detail the needs of gifted and talented children does not mean we are excluding others. Meeting the needs of gifted and talented children will help us to meet the needs of all children. Knowing where to go for support and information will also help us to feel we are not alone as we try to cater for individual children in our care. Sometimes we ignore the abilities of young gifted and talented children because we are not sure how best to help and support them.
The label gifted and talented, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad. It is how we react to that label, what we believe about that label and how we offer support to all those involved that will result in the label having a positive or negative effect on a childâs view of themselves as a learner.
Learner identity
We have all developed an identity. Indeed, we may have several identities that change depending on the situation we find ourselves in. These identities will have developed over time and will be the result of many thousands of interactions with friends, family and significant others in our lives. Our learner identity will have been developed and honed according to life experiences and interactions with others during learning experiences. For some children growing up will be confusing and complex due to the circumstances in which they find themselves. As educators we need to consider how this will impact on individual children and how we can best support them. Individual experiences will not necessarily have a long-lasting effect on learner identity, however, ...
