Practical Advice

Theories about giftedness are terrific. But what do you do when you actually have academically talented child in your class? We asked three gifted experts to provide practical, day-to-day advice on how to deal with gifted students.

First, Miraca Gross discusses how to identify gifted students in “Is That a Gifted Child in the Second Row?” Jean Peterson tackles “Social-Emotional Issues” with gifted students. Finally, Sally Reis explores whether gifted boys and gifted girls are different in “The Gender Issue”.

IS THAT A GIFTED CHILD IN THE SECOND ROW?

CTD Talent Editor: Do you have a highly gifted child in your classroom? How would a teacher know? What should s/he do if s/he does?

Miraca Gross: Highly gifted students appear rarely in our schools—for example children of IQ 145 appear at a ratio of 1 in 1,000—and most teachers assume they don’t have one in the classroom. We imagine they are more often in private schools, or in ‘advantaged’ school districts, or being home schooled. Actually they may be right under our noses but we won’t see them if we don’t look for them.

Most highly gifted children are poignantly aware that they are different and rather than becoming conceited about their abilities, they may begin to ‘dumb down’ for peer acceptance even in the early years of school. Ian, by age 5 ½, read and spoke like a 10-year-old but developed a ‘camouflage’ vocabulary for school so that his peers would not reject him (Gross, 2004).

How can we find gifted students?

Above level testing can be a great help. If a child scores at the ceiling of an age-appropriate test of math or reading we simply don’t know how much better he would have scored if the test had been harder! As in athletics, we need to raise the bar to see how much higher the child can soar! Give the child a test designed for students at least two years older; you’ll get a fuller understanding of her advancement. If she ‘ceilings out’ on that test, too, raise the bar again. Talent Searches are a great source of above-level testing.

Research shows that highly gifted children very often learn to read before school entry, teaching themselves from television, street signs and billboards. Contrary to popular belief, it’s rarely an ambitious mom with flashcards! Ask the parents of your able young students about their developmental milestones in speech, movement and reading. Early childhood advancement in these areas often indicates high cognitive ability.

Watch for the child whose sense of humor seems more mature than the others. Make a joke that should be above the level of your students and watch who chuckles. This may be a highly gifted child breaking camouflage.

If you believe you have a highly gifted child in your class, do try to arrange for an IQ test. Just as with other special needs areas, children at different levels of giftedness need different forms of intervention, and it’s necessary to know the full extent of the child’s abilities. Highly gifted children can usually benefit from one or more of the many forms of acceleration. A recent report on acceleration which you can download free from its own website nationdeceived.org has a wealth of practical advice.

Highly gifted children need to work, for at least part of each day, with other gifted children. In general, they are more emotionally mature than their age-peers. It can be painfully lonely for them to spend days, weeks or even months without any real social companionship. Pullout programs can help, but placing a cluster of gifted students in the class of a teacher who has a special interest, or training in gifted education, may be a better solution.

The best solution for highly gifted students?

Probably a combination of fulltime ability grouping and acceleration. This provides access to a faster-paced, higher-pitched curriculum in the company of other students with whom they share more similarities than differences.

Dr. Miraca Gross is Professor of Gifted Education and Director of the Gifted Education Research, Resource and Information Centre (GERRIC) at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. She is recognized for her longitudinal studies of highly gifted children.

SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL ISSUES

CTD Talent Editor: What are the five most prevalent social-emotional issues that can occur with gifted students in a classroom and what can/should a teacher do about them?

Jean Peterson

1. Underachievement

When aware of impressive test data, teachers do not feel affirmed when gifted students perform poorly. Sometimes teachers are not aware of gifted underachievers’ potential, perhaps because performance is inhibited by low English proficiency, cultural values not promoting “standing out,” learning disabilities, discomfort in the competitive school environment, poor social skills, depression, or difficult family situations. Nevertheless, students’ lack of focus, motivation, concentration, or reticence may contribute to an uncomfortable teacher-student dynamic. Probably no one intervention will “fix” underachievers, and maybe change should not even be the goal. However, raised awareness regarding the complexity of underachievement can help teachers withhold judgment, focus on building a relationship, be alert to student strengths, understand that development may play a role, and know that low achievement does not automatically doom a child for life. Nor does high achievement guarantee life satisfaction, of course. My own longitudinal studies have shown that change is possible.

2. Intensity, self-criticism, and perfectionism

Much of the scholarly literature has highlighted giftedness as an asset. However, characteristics such as these can be burdensome for both achievers and underachievers. Underachievers might be unwilling to invest in a flawed academic world, be paralyzed by perfectionism, or be frozen by lack of “perfect” direction. Achievers may not enjoy assignments because of tense awareness of evaluation—or be driven to “hyperachievement.” In my experience with discussion groups for gifted adolescents, which I recommend to address these issues, most underachievers seemed less tense and more forthcoming than were high achievers. They seemed to have considered themselves complexly apart from the academic fray and eagerly offered perspectives. Intense achievers sometimes remarked that they envied underachievers’ ability to articulate social and emotional concerns. We contemplated what each would “lose” and “gain” if they became the opposite of what they were—always an engaging discussion.

3 and 4. Loneliness and low self-esteem

Some gifted kids without interpersonal ease experience harassment and friendship difficulties. All teachers, including those in gifted education, need to ensure that their classrooms are safe for everyone. An affective curriculum in gifted education gives gifted kids, who are "different” by definition, opportunities beyond (or even in place of) “more and faster” academic work, where no grades are given and peer connections are made. Gifted kids want to be known as more than “performers.” School counselors can help programs facilitate connections with discussion groups, developing important skills and laying a foundation for future family and employment relationships.

5. A strong sense of social justice

When family life, societal problems, global politics, and school culture do not make sense, it is important that gifted kids have a chance to express feelings and concerns with those who can relate to them—preferably, in small groups. I have long contended that attending to social and emotional concerns should be the first concern of gifted education.

Dr. Jean Peterson, coordinator of school counseling at Purdue University, was a classroom or gifted-education teacher prior to her career in counselor education. She has contributed over 60 publications to school counseling and gifted-education literature, many of them focusing on the social and emotional development of gifted adolescents. She is currently chair of the Counseling and Guidance Division of NAGC. Her two Talk with Teens books are used in schools and counseling centers as an affective curriculum.

THE GENDER ISSUE

CTD Talent Editor: Are gifted girls and gifted boys different? If so, how? Are gender differences different for gifted children compared to non-gifted children? What can teachers do to promote academic achievement and talent development for both genders in their classrooms? What can parents do?

Sally Reis: Males and females differ in fundamental ways. Decades of personality research suggested that, on average, men are more assertive and have higher self-esteem than women, while women are more extroverted, anxious, and trusting (Feingold, 1994). Gifted girls and gifted boys also differ in fundamental ways, although they can also be similar. In one somewhat depressing study, for example, Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, and Whalen (1993) found that male and female academically talented adolescents were “equally likely to continue in or become disengaged from the domain of the area of their talent by the end of high school” (p. 207).

CTD Talent Editor: In what other ways do gifted girls differ from gifted boys?

Sally Reis: Talented girls begin to have lower self-confidence in elementary school and that trend continues as they get older. Reis (1987; 1998) found that gifted girls have decreasing self-confidence and self-perceived abilities through high school. As gifted girls reach adolescence, they may value their own personal achievements less. For example, in a qualitative study of gifted girls, not one participant attributed her success in school to extraordinary ability (Callahan, Cunningham, & Plucker, 1994).

Identification as gifted and accepting one’s gifts and talents may be problematic for girls and boys due to the accompanying negative social consequences (Reis, 1987), although some research suggests that this occurs more in girls than in boys. Reis (1998) also found that gifted girls deliberately underestimated their abilities in order to avoid being seen as physically unattractive or lacking in social competence. Swiatek (2001) found that gifted girls sacrificed giftedness for acceptance and that they denied their giftedness. Buescher, Olszewski, and Higham (1987) found that gifted boys and girls were more alike than their peers not identified as gifted, except in the critical area of the recognition and acceptance of their own level of ability.

Other gender differences exist, as well. Underachievement differentially affects adolescent boys and girls, as more academically talented boys are identified as underachievers than girls. Even though we suspect that as many academically talented girls underachieve as do boys, they may just underachieve more quietly, without acting out (Reis & McCoach, 2000). Reis, Hébert, Díaz, Maxfield, & Ratley (1995) studied gifted girls and boys who were underachieving and identified several problems that contributed to their underachievement, including inappropriate curricular and counseling experiences, problematic family issues, a negative peer group and environmental influences, and discipline problems. In particular, a lack of belief in self contributed to underachievement in the high potential students who underachieved. In that study, more boys were identified as underachieving than girls, and other research suggests that more gifted boys than girls are identified as twice exceptional, that is they have both gifts and learning disabilities (Reis, Neu, & McGuire, 1995).

Sally M. Reis is a Professor and the Department Head of the Educational Psychology Department at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, where she also serves as Principal Investigator of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. She was a teacher for 15 years, 11 of which were spent working with gifted students at the elementary, junior high, and high school levels. She has authored more than 130 articles, nine books, 40 book chapters, and numerous monographs and technical reports.