Gifted Weekly

It will come as no surprise that gifted students need to be challenged to grow at a rate equivalent to those with less academic ability sitting next to them in the classroom. In a recent meta-analysis, nearly 1000 students were tested over time in grades 5-7 to determine the relationship between “prior knowledge and knowledge growth in six learning environments (i.e., mathematics, German, and English in regular and gifted classes)” (Matthes, Schneider & Preckel, 2024). Researchers found that those who knew more or had more prior knowledge at the outset learned less. And the inverse was also true – those who knew less initially learned more by the end.

It would be silly to argue that knowledge is finite and, therefore, gifted students learn less because there is only so much to learn. Nonetheless, this is an assumption that we live with in the typical, modern classroom. Time is spent on the critical task of bringing students up to grade level, while those above grade level are left to teach their peers or spend undue amounts of time in the Fast Finishers corral.

The focus on proficiency serves as an obstacle to the goal of achieving more overall. The results from Matthes et al., “indicate that school instruction is designed to help all students reach the predefined learning goals and pass criterion-oriented tests. As a result, students with low prior knowledge tend to learn more than high prior knowledge students.” It’s as if all students are asked only to run a mile when others have the ability and endurance to run a half marathon.

“Classrooms where large percentages of students are above grade level, but nearly all of the teacher’s focus is at or below grade level (e.g., Engel et al., 2012; Farkas & Duffett, 2008), are not going to facilitate growth or further development for students who are already working above grade level…

“Regardless of whether the proficiency standards could be raised or lowered, the wide variance in grade-level student mastery will persist and will continue to challenge the educational system. Differentiation as a pedagogical skill is difficult in the best of cases, and only becomes more so as the range of student needs increases (Hertberg-Davis, 2009).”

– Joyce VanTassel-Baska (2018)

TAKEAWAY:

Teachers and parents of students identified as gifted and/or with high levels of prior knowledge need to continue to advocate for their students. Whether you lobby for Beast Academy for the advanced math students, grade acceleration for the overall gifted wunderkind (Palacios Gonzalez, P., & Jung, J. Y., 2021), or remain vigilant about ability groupings, growth will be maximized only if we continue to challenge our students at every level.

SOURCES

Matthes, J., Schneider, M., & Preckel, F. (2024). The relation between prior knowledge and learning in regular and gifted classes: A multigroup latent growth curve analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 116(2), 278–296. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000848

Palacios Gonzalez, P., & Jung, J. Y. (2021). The predictors of attitudes toward acceleration as an educational intervention: Primary school teachers in Mexico. High Ability Studies, 32(1), 27-49. 10.1080/13598139.2019.1692649

VanTassel-Baska, J. (2018). American Policy in Gifted Education. Gifted Child Today, 41(2), 98–103. https://doi-org.ezproxy.neu.edu/10.1177/1076217517753020

VanTassel-Baska, J. (2014). Curriculum Issues: Artful Inquiry: The Use of Questions in Working With the Gifted. Gifted Child Today Magazine, 37(1), 48–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/1076217513509621