The document discusses managing learning for gifted and talented students. It defines giftedness and discusses identifying gifted students through tests, work quality, and teacher observation. Teachers recognize students with potential ability who don't always try their best. Gifted students display various personalities and learning characteristics like perfectionism and thinking differently. Formal definitions focus on thinking styles and strategies. Teachers should involve gifted students as partners in learning through open discourse, assessment, and independent inquiry.

1. More than I am
…A life without
risks is just as
good as death,
But in my lifetime
I want to take
risks, I need to,
Is it too much to
ask to want to
Managing the Learning of
become more, Gifted & Talented
More than I am, Dr Linda Rush
more than they Vice Dean (Primary ITE & QA)
tell me I can
be…

2. Objectives:
 definitions of high ability/giftedness
 what it means to be a successful lifelong learner
 the role of the teacher in ordinary classroom
settings
 the use and management of teaching time
 a framework of teaching and learning - an
orientational device which allows teachers to
recognise the boundaries and borderlines of their
interactions with learners, and a prospective
device which allows teachers and learners to
develop the qualities of their interactions in the
future.

3. Positionality:
‘Plasticity’ of the human brain
Ability & environment are deeply
intertwined
Interested in the basis for intellectual
superiority
Belief that everyone can be ‘more able’
Conscious of ‘potential ability’
Prospective view of ability and the role of
assessment in respect of this

4. Key Question/Task
What’s your view of high ability or
giftedness (Maybe helpful to consider an
actual student or group of students).
Do you bother to identify or make
yourself aware of students with high
ability or giftedness?
How do you go about identifying high
ability or giftedness?
How do we get to know our students?

5. PhD findings: More Able child
profiles – identification
All teachers used tests of intelligence to
identify the cognitive ability of children in
their class & Assessment Tasks
Teachers also made specific reference
to the quality of the children’s work being
a useful indicator of ability
Recognised ability through teacher
observation
Areas of ability highlighted: cognitive;
technical; practical

6. PhD findings: More Able child
profiles – ‘demonstrated
achievement’ & ‘potential ability’
Some teachers stated that the high
performers were not necessarily the
more able…
Teachers also recognised individuals as
having the potential to be more able:
‘needs to be pushed’, ‘doesn’t always do
his best’, ‘doesn’t always give the
extension’, ‘will do as little as possible’.

7. PhD findings: More Able child profiles –
personalities & learning characteristics
 ‘amazing humour’
 ‘very serious . . . an absolute perfectionist’
 ‘laid back . . . very good at seeing patterns and
things . . . he will tease you and kind of challenge
you’
 ‘deep thinking’
 ‘Can be quite difficult, obstructive at times . . .
eccentric in some of his behaviours’
 ‘stolid plodder’

8. PhD findings: More Able child profiles –
personalities & learning characteristics
 most able liked to get their work right and that
they didn’t like failing
 ‘Perfectionism’ was used more than once to
describe these individuals
 tend to give up if he didn’t get what he was
doing right first time
 some enjoyed working with others…
 always challenging things – not to undermine the
teacher but ‘purely out of curiosity’

9. PhD findings: More Able child profiles –
personalities & learning characteristics
 ‘had his own agenda…he will come back at me
with a counter idea’
 enjoyed bringing in his ‘own ideas not directly
related to [in class] projects’
 ability to ‘think of where a problem is going’
 motivated by challenging work
 some were confident to be challenged and
questioned, and to question themselves
 others were quite shy or particularly
 All teachers also recognised that a
straightforward correlation between ability and
achievement does not exist

10. Formal definitions of
giftedness:
literature on the more able indicates that
they think differently from others…
they are Gestaltist in their thinking.
'in contrast to the less gifted who use
either atomistic or serialistic strategies of
perceiving information, the more gifted
have an analytic strategy’. (Merenheimo,
1991, cited in Freeman1998, p. 23)

11. Giftedness:
Metacognitive – knowing how you
know things & the processes by
which you think
Self-regulating – autonomous
learning, being able to prepare &
supervise one’s own learning
Underpinning this thinking is the
notion of 'individualisation’

12. Renzulli’s model of
giftedness

13. Information processing
psychologists see intelligence as
steps or processes people go
through in solving problems. One
person may be more intelligent
that another because he or she
moves through the same steps
more quickly or efficiently, or is
more familiar with the required
problem solving steps.

14. Advocates of this view (e.g.
Sternberg, 1979) focus on:
how information is internally represented
the kinds of strategies people use in
processing that information
the nature of the components (e.g.
memory, inference, comparison) used in
carrying out those strategies
how decisions are made as to which
strategies to use

15. Urban’s model of giftedness

16. Cigman’s (2006, p. 200) four-
fold distinction:
1. The child who is very bright, and benefits
from propitious environment
2. The child who is very bright, but lacks a
propitious environment
3. The trophy child, who achieves highly as
a result of a pressured environment, but
who seems not bright, and strained or
alienated by the experience
4. The child seems 'not bright', and lacks a
propitious environment.

17. Giftedness: Broader
perspectives
Cigman (2006) Suggest two 'loose' criteria
or 'indicators' of giftedness:
exceptional or remarkable insight,
shown in unsystematic ways...occasional
brilliance, unsteady concentration or
performance
a passion for learning

18. Key Points:
No general agreement about the nature
of intelligence and that of being more
able or gifted
An artificially constructed concept
Identification of ability needs to be
carried out in a useful way – not just to
classify individuals
A concern about ability is a concern
about student developing as individuals
so that their potential is translated into
achievement

19. Key Question/Task
Do you recognise such students in your
classrooms?
In what ways do your highly able
students (drawing on earlier identification
and definitions) fit within the above
categories?

20. ELLI’s seven ‘learning
dimensions’
1.Growth orientation v being stuck and
static
2.Meaning making v data accumulation
3.Critical curiosity v passivity
4.Creativity v rule bound
5.Learning relationships v isolation
6.Strategic awareness v robotic
7.Resilience v dependence

21. Claxton’s Positive Learning
Dispositions
Resilient Resourceful Reflective Reciprocal
Curious Questioning Clear-thinking Collaborative
(proactive) (“How come?”) (logical) (team member)
Adventurous Open-minded Thoughtful Independent
(up for a (‘negative (Where else (can work alone)
challenge) capability’) could I
use this?)
Determined Playful Self-knowing Open to
(persistent) (“Let’s try ...”) (own habits) feedback
Flexible Imaginative Methodical Attentive
(trying other (could be ...) (strategic) (to others)
ways)
Observant Integrating Opportunistic Empathic
(details / (making links) (serendipity) (other people’s
patterns) shoes)
Focused Intuitive Self-evaluative Imitative
(distractions) (reverie) (“How’s it (contagious)
going?”)

22. Pedagogic implications of teaching
the more able
 Students encouraged to take control of their own
learning
 Teacher to involve the learner explicitly as a
partner in the learning process
 Notion of 'open discourse’
 Assessment is not something that is done to them
but done with and by them
 Collaborative and open-ended enquiry is
promoted
 This type of pedagogy can be seen in terms of a
particular type of mediatory power in
teaching/learning interactions

23. PhD findings: Involving the more
able as partners in the learning
process
Allowing the pupils to extend in-class
learning further than anticipated or
planned for.
Flexible time – frame for pupils to work
within.
Modification of planning or learning to
take into account the interests of pupils.
Co-operative and collaborative learning
promoted.

24. PhD findings: Involving the more
able as partners in the learning
process
Whole class, self and peer assessment.
Questions asked or problems set allow
for personal interpretation.
Method(s) and solution(s) of problems
set are unknown to both teacher and
learner.
Inclusive use of language.
Interactive displays.

25. PhD findings: Involving the more
able as partners in the learning
process
Availability of independent activities.
Whole class discussion where pupils as
well as teacher have to explain their
ideas, and where the process of learning
is analysed
The promotion and support (in terms of
time and resources) of independent
study, the focus of which is decided by
the student or group of pupils

26. To varying degrees the roles of ‘teacher’ &
‘learner’ were floating:
 Expectations were made clear to the pupils that they
were dual partners in the learning process
 Pupils’ contributions were frequently volunteered rather
than elicited and were always valued
 Pupils were encouraged to co-construct one another’s
learning at whole class and group level
 Discussion was allowed to shift in an unpredictable
manner
 Inclusive use of language was deployed ‘we’, ‘us’,
‘our’
 Manner and tone of teacher whilst demanding was
warm and friendly

27. Key Question/Task
How do you manage to mediate and
promote the learning of your highly able
students during non-contact?
How do you promote interactive
learning?

30. Key References:
 Baxter Magolda, M.B. 1992. Students’ epistemologies and
academic experiences: Implications for pedagogy. Review of
Higher Education 15, no. 3: 265–87.
 Biggs, J. (2004), Teaching for Quality Learning at University:
What the Student Does. 2nd edn. Maidenhead: Society for
Research into Higher Education & Open University Press
 Bransford, J., A. Brown, and R. Cocking, eds. 2000. How
people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and School Committee
on Developments in the Science of Learning. Commission on
Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education of the National
Research Council National Academy Press.
 Cigman, R. 2006. The Gifted Child: A Conceptual Enquiry.
Oxford Review of Education, 32, no. 2: 197-212

31. Key References:
 Claxton, G. 2007. Expanding Young People’s Capacity to
Learn. British Journal of Educational Studies, 53, no. 2: 115-134.
 Daly, A., Penketh, C., and Rush, L. 2009 ‘Academic
preparedness: Student and tutor perceptions of the
‘academic experience’’. Society for Research in Education
(SRHE) Conference proceedings.
 Fontana, D. 1995. Psychology for Teachers, 3rd Ed, Revised
and updated, London: The British Psychological Society
 Fredricksson, U., and B. Hoskins. 2007. The development of
learning how to learn in a European context. The Curriculum
Journal 18, no. 2: 127–34.

32. Key References:
 Lucas, L., and P.L. Tan. 2005. Developing reflective capacity:
The role of personal epistemologies within undergraduate
education. Research seminar discussion paper, Fourteenth
Improving Student Learning Symposium, September 4–6,
University of Bath.
 Moon, J. 2005. We seek it here . . . a new perspective on the
elusive activity of critical thinking: A theoretical and practical
approach. ESCalate discussion paper. Available online at:
http://escalate.ac.uk/index.cfm?
action1⁄4resources.search&q1⁄4criticalþthinking&rtype1⁄4itehe
lp&rtype1⁄4project&
rtype1⁄4publication&rtype1⁄4resource&rtype1⁄4review
 Moseley, D., Elliot, J., Gregson, M., and Higgins, S,. 2003.
Thinking skills frameworks for use in education and training.
British Educational Research Journal 31, no. 3: 367-390

33. Key References:
 Northedge, A. (2003), ‘Rethinking Teaching in the Context of
Diversity’, Teaching in Higher Education, 8.1, 17-32
 Perry, W.G. 1970. Forms of intellectual and ethical
development in the college years: A scheme. New York: Holt,
Rinehart & Winston.
 Poerksen, B. 2005. Learning how to learn. Kybernetes 34, no.
2/3: 471–84.
 Putnam, R.T., and H. Borko. 2000. What do new views of
knowledge and thinking have to say about research on
teacher learning? Educational Researcher 29, no. 1: 4–15.
Rawson, M. 2000. Learning to learn: More than a skill set.
Studies in Higher Education 25, no. 2: 225–38.

34. Key References:
 Robinson, M. Nancy. 1997. The Role of Universities and
Colleges in Educating Gifted Undergraduates. Peabody
Journal of Education. 72, no. 3/4, Charting a New Course in
Gifted Education: Parts 1 and 2 (1997), 217-236
 Rush, L., and Fisher, A. 2009. Expanding the capacity to learn
of student teachers in Initial Teacher Training. ESCalate,
Academic online paper (http://escalate.ac.uk/5802).
 Rush, L. 2009. Bridging the gap between theory and practice:
one tutor’s endeavors to embed and enact a distinctive
pedagogic approach to learning-to-learn (L2L). NEXUS
Journal 1: 197-212. Edge Hill University, Centre for Teaching
and Learning Research (CLTR)

35. Key References:
 Fisher, A and Rush, L. 2008. Conceptions of learning and
pedagogy: developing trainee teachers’ epistemological
understandings. The Curriculum Journal. 19, No. 3 pp 227-238.
Routledge.
 Rush, L. 2002. An Exploration into how Effective Upper key
Stage Two Teachers Manage to Intervene with More Able
Children in the Classroom Setting Ph.D.
 Schommer-Aitkins, M.A. 2002. An evolving framework for an
epistemological belief system. In Personal epistemology: The
psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing, ed. B.K.
Hofer and P.R. Pintrich. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
 Wingate, U. 2007. A Framework for Transition: Supporting
‘Learning to Learn in Higher Education, Higher Education
Quarterly, 0951-522461. No. 3: 391-405