Gifted education for all teachers: A study of 10,000 students indicates if you teach children as if they are gifted, more children will perform as if they are gifted. Gifted is as gifted does—or in this case—gifted is as gifted is taught.
Teachers were trained as part of Project Bright Idea to educate their students using techniques generally employed with gifted students. The results? Out of the 10,000 student who participated, Jane Stancill reports, “the study found that within three years, the number of children identified by their school districts as being academically and intellectually gifted ranged from 15 percent to 20 percent. That compared with just 10 percent of children in a control group.”
The results of this study are not surprising. As a teacher of gifted students I often pondered the great outcomes we could achieve if we could take the time to prepare regular classroom teachers with gifted resources and knowledge. While teachers cannot bestow more brain power to a student, they can teach bright children how to use their abilities to think at a higher level.
Year ago, when I was first starting out in education, I was told a story about a teacher who received his class list and mistakenly thought the students’ locker numbers were IQ scores. He preceded to teach as if the students had high abilities and this had great impact on the students’ performance. I never knew if the little parable was true, but as a new teacher, I liked the story.
Now, it seems Project Bright Idea has taken an old story to a new level and can make the claim that not only should we teach to a higher level but we should take the time and money to help teachers do so.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but best case scenario you identify 1,000 more children. That leaves 9,000 of whom did not benefit from being taught as gifted. And I’ll bet a lot of those students were either lost or not learning as much as if the instruction had been differentiated to their level of understanding. And just as not all students are academically gifted, not all teachers are sufficiently able to teach the gifted. JMHO
Upon further investigation, I see that out of the 10,000 students studied in K – 2nd 5,000 were in a control group and 5,000 in the study. With 10% identified in the control group as gifted and at best 20% in the study, this would be an increase of only 500 identified and 4,500 remaining the same. It may be statistically significant, but in real numbers it does not appear so. Also, teacher training costs would be prohibitive in today’s economy. I find this study to be counterproductive to gifted advocacy and detrimental to regular educational goals.
Definitely, I agree the last thing we need is anymore money being pulled from gifted ed. I have always been a believer in coursework or in-services to help the regular ed teacher implement gifted strategies in the regular classroom. It is my belief this would help bright children immensely and gifted students alike.