EDPS 420 Mind Map

Importance of Unit

  • Being able to define giftedness helps gifted programs be able to identify and provide adequate services to gifted students.
  • Without these definitions, students may not be identified and kept in a traditional classroom that does not keep up with their needs.
  • In addition, gifted education programs need definitions of giftedness to align their program to. Without a definition of giftedness, programs would struggle to create programs that benefit gifted students.

Importance of Unit

  • When teachers are able to recognize common characteristics of gifted students, they are easier to identify. Additionally, teachers also know how to better help their students and any problems they might be facing. For example, teachers can work to incorporate affective skills into lessons to help prevent asynchronous development.
  • This unit also highlights common misconceptions about gifted students. When individuals understand that these commonly held beliefs are oftentimes false, they can provide gifted students with the services they need without any additional bias or stereotyping.

Importance of Unit

  • This unit brings awareness to the various identities gifted students can hold. This is important because it recognizes potential inequalities these students might face not only during the gifted identification process, but within the gifted program as well. By understanding these inequalities, educators can work to identify and fix any bias and marginalization within a gifted program.

Importance of Unit

  • This unit highlights how educators and other school personnel can assess and evaluate student test results. It is important to know the different types of assessments students can take, how they are evaluated, and what qualifies a student for the gifted education program. When educators understand this, they can better identify gifted students within their school and provide better specialized services.

Importance of Unit

  • Much like being able to identify gifted students, it is also important to provide program that matches students' needs. Thus, it is essential to understand the various forms of delivery systems and curriculum options. With this knowledge, a gifted education program can make a more knowledgable and research-based decision when designing and implementing their program.

Importance of Unit

  • Like students in special education and general education, gifted education students do not all perform at the same level. Thus, it is crucial to differentiate lessons based on these students' skills and abilities. This unit provides valuable information as to how a teacher can accomplish this within a classroom, whether it is filled with only gifted students or a mixture of both gifted and general education students.

Unit 1: Who is Gifted? Who Cares?

Definitions

Unit 2: What are Gifted Cognitive/Affective Characteristics?

Cognitive Characteristics

  • Relate to the process of knowing, perceiving, development, and memory
    Examples:
  • rapid learning: students learn faster and want to learn more
  • abstract/complex/logical thinking: students think differently and need to engage with complex problems
  • curiosity: students week out exploration and need space to experiment
  • connection/extrapolation of knowledge: students seek connections broadly

Affective Characteristics

  • Relate to mood, feelings, attitudes, and social relationships
    Examples:
  • empathy/moral maturity: having a deep concern for others and spirituality
  • multipotentiality: when someone has multiple interests and creative pursuits; encourages idea synthesis, rapid learning, and adaptability
  • perfectionism: strive for lawlessness; can influence class and major choices, group projects, mental health, assignment completion, and professional innovations
  • self-talk: person talks to themselves inside their head
  • cognitive distortion: inaccurate thoughts used to reinforce negative thinking or emotions; examples: all or none thinking, mind reader, and shoulds

Modern Thinking

  • Renzulli: 3 ring model of giftedness
  • Borland: giftedness is a social construct
  • Sternberg: triarchic theory of intelligence
  • Cross and Coleman: in early ages, giftedness can be based on potential, but as an individual ages, it needs to be based on performance
  • Gagné: gifted are separate from talents; gifted are natural abilities; talents are the mastery of knowledge and skills
  • Gardner - multiple intelligences

Unit 3: Identity and Gifted Students

What Identity Influences

  • Occupation/hobby, relationship with others, religion or ethnicity, stigmatized groups, political affiliation
  • Cognitive behaviors (how you think), motivation, behavior/actions (individual and group)

Race

  • concerns involve: underrepresentation in identification and participation, parents declining services, inappropriate programming, including deficit approaches
  • program needs: counseling support, role of parents/involvement with families, career education/exposure to different career options, multicultural curriculum, racial diversity within faculty and students, bridge programs to ensure they are meeting all students' needs (example: Meyehoff Program)
  • programs should also work to ensure white students support marginalized students by exploring race in society, discovering one's own privilege, and integrating and sustaining commitment

Gender/Sexuality

  • challenges facing gifted girls: questions of ability and talent, personal decisions about family, mentors and role models to support high levels of talent development, duty regarding caring, personal, religious, and social issues, lack of focus, overcommitment, physical illnesses
  • challenges facing gifted boys: negotiating masculinity, identity development, role of outside interests, selective achievement, schools not responding to males' interest, role models, need for physical movement
  • dangers facing LGBTQ youth: lower psychological well-being, substance abuse, suicidal attempts, homelessness, loss of friends
  • programs should create safe spaces, be representative of different voices, and spread awareness on mental health

Unit 4: Identification of Gifted Students

Identification should align with the program and the definition.

Ability/Aptitude Tests

  • measure an individual's potential to achieve
    Examples:
  • WISC
  • OLSAT
  • CogAT

Response to Intervention (RTI)

  • method of scaffolding support and instruction to meet different students’ needs. There are three tiers, moving from the least amount of intervention to the most.
  • applicable to gifted learners through: tiered approach to services, early identification prior to formal identification, universal screening, fidelity of implementation, progress monitoring, use of professional development, collaborative problem-solving structures, greater parental involvement

Unit 5: Programming for Gifted Students

Real-Life Examples

  • Adora: advanced cognitive abilities
  • Caine: advanced creative thinking skills
    Both present giftedness in different ways. However, both still need specialized services to match their needs and abilities.

Why Gifted Education Matters/Is Important

  • Some students need specialized instruction that isn't provided in a traditional classroom to meet their educational needs
  • These students need to be labeled so they receive the special services and instruction they need
  • Helps gifted students from losing interest and passion in learning
  • Helps prevent gifted students from feeling alienated at school from peers and teachers

Asynchronous Development

  • When anything is out of sync (uneven intellectual, physical, and/or emotional development)
  • Occurs frequently with gifted students when their cognitive abilities do not match social abilities, or when they have extreme ability in one area but not another

Common Mixed Messages

  • asks many questions: interested, curious vs. seeks attention, dominates class
  • offers many answers: has much information vs. impulsive, ignores others
  • prefers to work alone: independent, self-directed vs. socially awkward, unconfident
  • becomes upset by how others are treated: sensitive, caring vs. emotitonal

How Teachers Can Help Students

  • growth mindset instead of fixed mindset
  • movement (exercise, yoga)
  • breathing
  • purposeful prayer/meditation
  • quiet time
  • art/creation time
  • discussion groups
  • guided reading/viewing
  • role playing
  • pair problem solving
  • journal writing
  • spatial strategies
  • mode switching
  • promote task value and self-efficacy

Achievement/Underachievement

  • underachievement: severe discrepancy between expected and actual achievement
  • identification of underachievement and its cause is important so students can receive proper interventions
  • Achievement Orientation Model
  • Rimm's Model for Reversing Underachievement

Intersectional Identity

  • When multiple identities overlap

Twice Exceptional

  • hard to identify students because their disability can pull down their area of strength so they look "average" in a classroom; their gifts and liabilities can mask each other
  • challenges: parents see strengths and teachers report weaknesses, camouflage and inconstancies, frustration in trying to find identity, at risk loners, depression, internalized anxiety, fear of failure due to high expectations and low achievement, organizational skills, separating the pieces for appropriate support
  • programs should provide enrichment in students' areas of interests, create a positive environment, and work on developing affective characteristics along with academics

Many twice exceptional gifted students struggle with asynchronous development

Students can fit into multiple identities of race, gender, sexuality, and twice exceptionalism which then affects their identity within a gifted education program

Normative and Criterion Assessments

  • normative: compare a student with a norm/average (ability and achievement assessments)
  • criterion: measures if a student meets a certain criteria (NWEA, state assessments)

have to qualify in at least one to follow the state's definition of giftedness

used when students are "on the bubble"/within the standard measure of error on an assessment

Grouping

  • self-contained classroom: when gifted students are in one classroom all day (can be multiple grades); students should be tested in multiple areas and subjects
  • cluster-grouping: when a small group of gifted students are in a classroom with one teacher; identification practice depends on goal
  • regrouping for subjects: when students with similar strengths and needs are grouped together for a specific content area; needs to be subject-level specific

Continuum of Services

  • variety of services that provides differentiated instruction
  • important because there are different levels of giftedness that require different needs

Qualitative Measures

  • teacher/parent rating scales
  • performance assessments/curriculum-based assessments

Approaches
Article from Phi Delta Kappan, 2020

  • acceleration: moving particular students forward more quickly than is typical, such as by having them enter kindergarten early, skip grades, study a telescoped curriculum, or participate in dual enrollment or early college programs; strong research base
  • ability grouping: grouping that can change as student abilities and needs change; strong research base
  • curricular interventions: pre-differentiated, prescriptive curricula for advanced learners (those who have provided evidence in particular domains of learning); strong research base
  • enrichment: focus on the development of process skills (creative thinking, higher-level thinking skills, etc.); strong evidence, but require additional research
  • AP/IB: classes that allow high schoolers to take college-level classes and earn college credit; strong evidence, but require additional research
  • selective high schools: public high schools that selectively choose high-performing students based on entrance exam scores; supported by few casual studies
  • psychosocial interventions: behavior management interventions that target growth mindset, grit, or learning styles; little evidence of effectiveness

Key Components

  • delivery: how the program is being administered
  • curriculum: what is happening in the program

Curriculum

Accelerated Content

  • often includes: reduced number of practice problems/requirements, opportunities to advance to the next topic rapidly after demonstrating mastery, integrating topics beyond the current grade level
  • curriculum compacting: modifying or “streamlining” the regular curriculum in order to eliminate repetition of previously mastered material. The teacher needs to pre-assess students and alter instruction based on the results. Curriculum compacting provides time for enrichment and/or acceleration activities while ensuring the mastery of basic skills.
  • curriculum compacting is beneficial because it accounts for the various needs, abilities, and interests of students. In addition, repeated work can lead to boredom, and discipline issues; curriculum compacting helps alleviate this problem. Then, the extra time gained can be used for enrichment and acceleration opportunities.

Authentic Products/Methods

  • teach students to act like practicing professionals
  • students learn how to read primary sources, how to apply and connect k knowledge, how to synthesize and cite information to answer and support their claims

Interdisciplinary Connections/Explorations

  • introduces students to multiple perspectives, experiences, and ways of thinking across a multitude of different areas of study

Critical Thinking

  • teach students how to conceptualize, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication

Creative Thinking

  • students explore different approaches/methods to solve a problem, different connections, and original ideas

Independent Investigations

  • provides students with opportunities to guide and direct projects that are of interest to them
  • benefits: nurture student passions and talents, empower student voice, honor student choice, increase motivation and engagement, foster curiosity and a love for learning, teach self-regulation, develop research skills, deepen understanding of content, enable student ownership
  • issues to keep in mind: needs an increase in rigor, lack of supporting student regulation

Differentiation

  • content and instruction is altered to meet individual student needs and abilities
  • beneficial for gifted education because there are different levels of giftedness that require different levels of services

Unit 6: Differentiation

Big Ideas of Differentiation

  • groups are flexible
  • all students are treated as practicing professionals
  • students all receive honorable tasks
  • everyone can contribute to the discussion
  • students have an opportunity to work with others who will challenge their thinking
  • pre-assessment matches the lesson

Guiding Differentiation

Readiness

  • a student's current proximity to a learning goal
  • establish with using and evaluating pre-assessment
  • differentiate by curriculum compacting and tiered lessons
  • allows for and promotes growth

Interests

  • a student's proclivity or inclination for a topic
  • determine by giving students a list and seeing which topics interest them
    differentiate with independent projects and research and choices within lessons
  • increases motivation

Learning Profile

  • considering the environment in which a student inhabits and the student's identity and working preferences
  • differentiate by integrating identity and thinking about environment conditions
    universal design: intersectionality of representation, action, and expression, and engagement; it creates an environment and products that are accessible for everyone and creates an equal opportunity to succeed
  • improve efficiency

Overview

  • the first step is to establish the goals
  • respectful tasks honor student intelligence; has multiple solutions or solution pathways; supports student student agency and the experience of productive struggle

Content

  • What do you want students to know?
  • differentiate with independent projects and research and choices

Process

  • What do you want students to do?
  • differentiate with reference materials, expectations, and levels of scaffolds

Product

  • What do you want students to produce?
    differentiate with the un-essay project and products for authentic audiences

Historical Thinking

  • Sir Frances Galton: asked how one measures giftedness; created some of the first IQ tests
  • Alfred Binet: worked with attention, memory, judgment, reasoning, and comprehension
  • Lewis Terman: "grandfather of giftedness"; Stanford Binet test
  • Leta S. Hollingsworth: move towards giftedness in education
  • Spearman's g: there is one overarching factor of giftedness
  • Guilford's Structure of Intellect: creativity research; system of defining intelligence
  • Sputnik: sparked US interest in gifted education
  • The Marland Report: US definition of giftedness
  • Current Federal Definition: students who give high evidence of high achievement capability... and need services not ordinarily provided

Callahan's Five Major Principles

  • Traits and characteristics of giftedness are malleable and variable over the course of an individual's lifetime.
  • The manifestation of characteristics of giftedness is influenced by the environment in which a child develops.
  • Not all traits of giftedness manifest in positive ways; not all traits associated with giftedness are positive.
  • Not all gifted student in a given domain exhibit all he characteristics of giftedness in that domain; and not all gifted students will exhibit the traits that characterize them as gifted all of the time.
  • Characterisitics of giftedness will not necessarily lead to high achievement (in school or in life).

Bronfenbrenner's Model

  • The individual is located in the center of the model. The individual’s identify is influenced and affected by many layers emanating out of the center. These layers, from the closest to the farthest of the center, include microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem.

Achievement Tests

  • measure an individual's actual performance levels
    Examples:
  • Woodcock Johnson
  • Iowa
  • Stanford

Delivery Systems

  • in-class differentiation
  • pull-out classes
  • resource room
  • grouping for subjects
  • multi-grade classrooms
  • apprenticeships
  • SAT/summer enrichment
  • early entrance to college
  • specialized school
  • self-contained classes
  • school-within-a-school
  • grade skipping
  • early entrance to kindergarten
  • subject-specific grade skipping

Importance of Discussion of Differentiation Beforehand

  • It helps prevent any reactive questions from parents. By discussing it beforehand, the teacher is being proactive so everyone is on the same page and understands why differentiating is important and happening in the classroom.

Importance of Class
This class is important because it provides an overview of what gifted education is. It delves into how giftedness is defined, how this definition affects identification and programming, and how programming is designed and accounts for student differences. The course demonstrates the intersection of these different topics throughout the units and shows how one affects the other. In general, I feel that this course has provided me with very valuable information about giftedness and gifted education that I can take with me in future courses and my future career.

Provides scaffolding within instruction

Differentiation is apart of a gifted education program's curriculum

Different ways to group students are apart of a program's delivery system

The definition of giftedness affects how students are identified

If individuals are unaware of these principles and instead stereotype what giftedness looks like, it can cause issues with identification

Historical thinking has influenced how modern psychologists think and theorize about giftedness

There can be bias in the identification of gifted students based on student identities

forms of differentiation

Identity can affect how one views themselves or others, which can impact their affective characteristics