Gifted Education in a Changing Landscape: How to Keep Your Head Above Water

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sindi/4039745295/

Kathy RayCindy Sheets

TGIFColumbus, MS

February 22, 2013

AHA-Learners.org

What is the Same/Different for our Gifted Students in Today’s Classroom?

The Landscape is Changing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Polar_bear_arctic.JPG CCUSGS Public Domain

New Definitions of Giftedness

• Fixed vs Malleable• Talent Development

• Gifted education has contributed greatly to general education “best practices”

• Problem-based learning, differentiation, cluster grouping, creative/critical thinking, Bloom’s Taxonomy

• Research – Talent Development based• Giftedness as a state one grows into and acquired as a result

of learning and achievement

• Practice – G as a stable trait identified through testing• Programs driven by identification rather than by service models

Malleable Minds

Psychologists now believe that IQ represents only a part of intelligence, and intelligence is

only one factor in both retardation and giftedness. . . . The growth of a more recent concept, the malleability of intelligence, has

also served to discredit labeling.

http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/malleableminds.html

IQ May Not Be Stable

• As Brain Changes, So Can IQ• Wall Street Journal, 10-20-2011• Changes up to 20 IQ points (both directions)• Study reported in Nature

http://bit.ly/WRxuhJ

Mindset

• Research work of Dr. Carol S. Dweck• Fixed or Growth Mindset• Internal beliefs about your own intelligence• Praise

• Negative or positive

• Importance of effort and belief that brain is malleable

• Parents and teachers who take to heart the message that ability is malleable and teach their children accordingly lay the long term ‐groundwork for eager, courageous learning and the willingness to stick with the difficult.

• Nancy M Robinson, University of Washington, Seattle

What Does This Mean for Gifted Education?

Changing Roles of Gifted Education Specialist

A more elaborate, expansive, and integrative gifted education program illustrates the new roles and

responsibilities of gifted education specialists. These include

providing instructional support for classroom teachers,

direct educational services, coordination of out-of-school resources and programs,

and advice on curriculum and instruction.

~Nancy Hertzog

Curriculum Experts?

• Who, me?• Differentiation is NOT easy• RTI? PBL?• How can we help classroom teachers enrich

and challenge our gifted students?• Advocate for their right to learn something

new every day

Common Core Standards

• Increasingly important to advocate for advanced students

• Expanded role as mentor/coach in implementation efforts and understanding needs for differentiation

http://www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=8982

ByrdSeed

• http://www.byrdseed.com/714p898d4591f/Improve%20Your%20Gifted%20Classroom.pdf

/Users/cindys2449/Documents/Byrdseed Differentiator.pn

Improve your gifted classroom booklet

What Are We Doing Well for Gifted Students?

21st Century Skills

Why We Need Common Core:I Choose C

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY2mRM4i6tY

http://www.flickr.com/photos/albertogp123/5843577306/

21st Century Learning EnvironmentsKansas

RelationshipsRelevance

Rigorous Learning EnvironmentResults

Responsive Culture(Embrace innovation and creativity, students’ interests,

motivating and challenging)

21st Century Skills

Learning Environment & Tools

There are three competing visions of educational computing.

We can use classroom computers to benefit the

system, the teacher, or the student.

Gifted Students and

21st Century Learning

‘Our kids will spend the

rest of their lives

in the future.Are we

getting them ready?’

Kevin Honeycutt

Digital Citizenship Protect?

Or Teach?

Digital Footprints

Digital Literacy

Facilitating Classrooms

WHAT IS PROBLEM BASED LEARNING?

NEED TO KNOW-GPS coordinates lead to geocaches

Authentic Audience- presenting to engineers their energy proposal after in-depth

research

Paleontology

What animal is this?

• driving question• need to know

• reflection and revision

Mock Trial• In-Depth Inquiry• Authentic audience

Change is the law of life.And those who look only to

the past or present are certain to miss the

future.

John F. Kennedy

Process not Product

“We teach a subject not to produce little living libraries on that subject,

but rather to get a student to think mathematically for himself, to consider

matters as an historian does, to take part in the process of knowledge-

getting. Knowing is a process, not a product.”

(Bruner, 1966, p. 72)

Life and Career

Skills

“What we resolve to do in school only makes sense when considered in the broader context of what the society intends to accomplish through its

educational investment in the young.”

Jerome S. Bruner, The Culture of

Education

Change Can Be Difficult

Become a powerful advocate for change

Share your knowledge and passion

Showcase your work and

student’s work

Have High Expectations

Use All Available Resources

And be sure to gather a support group . . .

In the final analysis it is not what you do for your children but what you

have taught them to do for themselves that will make them

successful human beings. Ann Landers Advice Column

Need Reinforcements?• Karen Rogers – synthesis of research on benefits of various service models

• http://austega.com/gifted/articles/Rogers_researchsynthesis.htm

• Lessons Learned about Educating the Gifted and Talented - Gifted Child Quarterly, 2007 (SAGE Publishing

• Sandra Kaplan – concentric circles of knowledge – curriculum

• Cluster grouping research• http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/gentry.html

• Parallel curriculum – concept-based curriculum• NAGC bookstore

• H. Lynn Erickson

• Problem Based Learning, one to one laptopsGinger Lewman ginglerl@essdack.org

True "college and career readiness" is more than a particular knowledge base, more than how many hours of nonfiction one has read, more than how much evidence one has used to develop ideas. Being ready for college and career also has something to do with self-belief, care for others, taking risks, falling down and getting back up.

Chris Lehman

I worry that in the age of the Common Core we can mistake "initiatives" with "learning." That we can be led to believe that adopting the CCSS means what teachers must do, instead of seeing how students are doing in comparison to the standards. That we can get swept into a frenzy of initiatives-to-check-off.

Chris Lehman