What is Gifted Education?

Welcome to Vanguard Gifted Academy's educational blog. This is our first article in a new series that we're doing on gifted education. I'm Elizabeth Blaetz, the Head of School at Vanguard Gifted Academy. Today, I want to share with you why gifted education can seem so complex to many families; and why you may have questions about which model is best for your child.  

Decades ago it was determined that every child would be educated based upon their age, as a result, the industrial style of education was formed and it is still the standard of education that we use here in the U.S. today. 

Several educational experts realized though that there was a group of children who weren't being well-served by this model; it was through these individuals that gifted education came about.

The first ones I will mention are Stanley and Brody.  These two worked with students who were outstanding in mathematics and science through the SMPY (science and math for precocious youth) program. They established gifted programs similar to many that are offered today. They looked for students that were very strong in a specific domain, and then those students attended classes through a local college.  They weren’t college-level classes, but they were classes where students had an opportunity to work in the domain in which they were passionate or which was their strength. Being part of these classes allowed students to learn and study advanced topics with peers who were also strong in that domain. These opportunities were offered to gifted kids outside of the school day, on the weekends, and oftentimes over the summer. 

Rena Subotnik is an amazing lady that studied musical prodigies. She noted that so many of these amazing young prodigies were not coming into eminence as adults. In her studies, she did a lot of work to determine what these prodigies needed besides being talented in their own musical domain. She found that in order to transform their excellence in music to eminence as an adult they also needed traits such as showmanship, social ease, perseverance, and the ability to promote one’s self. These traits may not come naturally and often need to be part of the mentoring and/or educational development of musical prodigies whose training occurs outside the regular school day.

Then we have two educational psychologists who wanted to find a way to introduce gifted education into the school day...

Joseph Renzulli developed a program that was not based on a specific strength or domain; his program identification was based on how strong of a student you were. For these top students, he offered opportunities to be pulled out of their regular classes within the school day to participate in gifted classes. Many public schools today still offer a pull-out program for gifted education based on his model. According to Renzulli, those pull-out programs are an opportunity for children who are achieving at the top of their class, who have persistence and willingness to stick with a problem, and who demonstrate creative thought, to get together with peers and do project-based learning beyond the curriculum within the school day.

Francoys Gagne had a different idea about giftedness. He didn't specify the domain, but he realized that gifted children had potential. His program was based on the catalysts that impact a child while they're learning. For example, if you had a child who was very talented and interested in music but never got reinforcement for their music or never had the opportunity to be involved in higher music education, that potential would just be squashed.

His model is all about putting the student in an environment that is going to release their potential and allow them to soar; thereby realizing their true talent. 

The elements of gifted education are confusing to many parents because, as you’ve read above, the people in the field of gifted education don't agree. They have many different ideas of what giftedness is and those different ideas result in different ways to serve the gifted child. All of these people do have something in common though; they all realize that gifted children make up only a small portion of the community. They also agree that these children need something more than the traditional school model in order for their gifts to bring them to eminence or bring them to the level of being recognized as talented. That support needs to come from some type of additional education or specialized education within the school model. 

For me, this really came to light when I was taking a master's program in gifted education with a group of educators who were teaching gifted students at the time. This was a really dynamic group of people, all of which were passionate about gifted education. We started talking and analyzing our schools’ models of gifted education and our own visions of giftedness. We soon realized that the best service that we could offer for gifted kids is to point them to the right school. That each of our schools, instead of being competitors for gifted children, really should be focused on serving the different types of gifted children. That for us to do the very best that we could, to serve gifted learners, we should make sure that each child went to the right school because that would allow them to be the most successful. 

If you have any comments or any questions that you'd like to share, I'd love to hear from you.

Thank you for following Vanguard Gifted Academy.

Resources
Renzulli's model: www.gigers.com/matthias/gifted/three_rings.html  
Gagne's model: www.gigers.com/matthias/gifted/gagne_dmgt.html