We all construct our understanding of the world in a different way. For example, look at the picture above. What is your first thought? Jazz? Legend? Musician? Art? Blue? Or something completely different? This picture in itself could lead to many discussions. This being the case, why should teachers then teach the same way to all students?
According to the Office of the Gifted and Talented (1976), differentiation is "the process of instruction which is capable of being integrated into the school program and is adaptable to varying levels of individual learning response in the education of the gifted and talented and includes but is not limited to:
- high level of cognitive and affective concepts and processes
- strategies to accommodate unique learning styles of gifted and talented
- mentor ship, special classes, etc."*
This is good advice. For all educators. However, for the purpose of this writing, I will be focusing on gifted and bright students.
As Carol Ann Tomlinson notes in
Differentiation for Gifted and Talented Students, "providing differentiated experiences to a selected group of children is one critical component of gifted education" (p. 78).
A common notion about gifted and bright students is that they all "get it." Many teachers that I have spoken to think that teaching gifted students would be easy because they are all bright, so differentiation isn't really necessary. This, however, is not the case. Much like a mainstream classroom, students in a gifted class learn at different rates, in different ways, and for different reasons. Differentiated learning allows students to work at their own rate, with their own learning style, investigating their own interests, and producing work that fits their abilities (Tomlinson, p. 78). It is important that educators allow gifted students the opportunity to allow students to not only vary the
product that is created (iMovie, Animoto, Prezi, etc.- see previous post
Construct and Create for more ideas), but also allow for variance in the
process. In other words, one student might have to write every detail down in order to prove that he knows what he needs to know, while another will read a plethora of books and remember every detail. Teachers need to acknowledge this variance in process, and allow it to happen (not always an easy task).
Virgil Ward (the "godfather of gifted education") stated that "the education of the gifted child should emphasize enduring methods and sources of learning, as opposed to a terminal emphasis upon present states of knowledge" (
Education for the Gifted: An Axiomatic Approach p.156). Furthermore, "learning should be conceived as the continuous, ongoing acquisition of data pertinent to problem situations, not as a set of given facts which, it is hoped, will apply to problems that arise subsequently in the life career" (p. 156). Clearly Ward was a proponent for setting learning goals and intrinsic motivation.
Harry Passow's seven guiding principles to differentiation states the importance of the "gifted response." While his guidelines are clear and still relevant, he focusses on the "should" rather than the "must." For this reason,
Renzulli modified Passow's principles to include "musts" (such as:
must go beyond the regular curriculum,
must accommodate students' preferred styles of learning, etc.) for students, and
Maker (1982) lists "musts" for teachers of gifted students: be more complex, move beyond regular curriculum, be more concerned with the abstract, etc. (Tomlinson, p. 83).
If differentiation is what teachers should aim for, then it is imperative to allow for open-ended tasks (activities with multiple responses), rather than one correct answer. Furthermore, this variety should not only include the end product, but the process.
With the free-flow of information, differentiation can be made easy. The solution: technology (provided that your school and/ or students have access to it). This allows for more choice, and more opportunity for breadth and depth, self-initiated tasks, and all other principles suggested by
Passow.
Coming up next...The Art of Differentiation for Gifted and Talented Students
*Tomlinson, Carol Ann. (2004) Differentiation for Gifted and Talented Students (p. 81). Thousand Oaks, CAL, Corwin Press
Ward, Virgil (1961). Education for the Gifted: An Axiomatic Approach. Charles E. Merrill Books, University of California
