Educational Practices For Students With Gifts and Talents

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Evidence-based educational practices are recommended for addressing the instructional and social needs of students with gifts and talents. We first address the thorny issue of early intervention and then focus on strategies for providing academic and social support.

Early Intervention

Early intervention for students with gifts and talents is not mandated by law as it is for students with disabilities. Early identifications are usually made when a young child demonstrates very atypical performances that alert or even alarm their parents. Parents often seek interventions when children learn to read without instruction at 3 or 4 years of age, when they are able to solve problems adults do not expect them to perform, or when they have rapidly expanding and astonishing supplies of knowledge. Keep in mind that the absence of these kinds of behaviors doesn't mean a child is not gifted. However, when such evidence is observed, it is a signal to parents and educators that some unusual and rather immediate efforts may be needed. Early intervention for students with gifts and talents, however, is rare. Schools in most states are not required to provide services, and parents are generally unaware of potential need and benefit. Hence, most instances of these services revolve around prodigious achievement. Many districts actively discourage parents from pursuing any service. When suggestions are made, they generally revolve around some form of acceleration (e.g., early admission or grade skipping).

As students progress though school, the pressure for services generally increases for those who have mastered the curriculum or for those who are not adapting to school-related provisions. These students are mismatched with the curriculum (see the "Site Visit" feature). Various other issues may come into consideration, but choices of whether to offer accelerative options or enrichment options generally revolve around the following five factors.

1. Adequacy of general education curriculum.  In some cases there may be serious questions about whether or not the curriculum is too "dumbed down" (Renzulli, 2002) to be of significant value even if the student could proceed through it rapidly.
2. Ability of student to handle the demands of more rapid presentation of content or placement in higher-level classes.  Determine if the student can adapt to the rapid pace of instruction and the increasing complexity of the material being presented.
3. Separation from age-level peers.  If parents or educators think that there is too much risk to social/emotional adjustment, accelerative options such as grade skipping and early entrance are rejected in favor of options that allow the student to remain with age-level peers.
4. Skepticism about accelerating the curriculum.  If school personnel are opposed to acceleration, they may consciously or unconsciously place road blocks in the way of the intervention.
5. Missing important instruction.  Not having certain instruction could disadvantage the student during future learning activities (Shore, Cornell, Robinson, & Ward, 1991).

Academic Interventions

For students with gifts and talents, academic interventions center on six dimensions: content, complexity, abstraction, pacing, documenting achievement, and choice and independence (Maker & Nielson, 1996).