Challenges in the Implementation of Gifted Education
Gifted learners have unique learning needs that extend beyond conventional learning that is offered in regular classrooms. Additionally, the nature of their abilities necessitates differentiated learning encounters and opportunities to optimize their potential. Educators need to develop comprehensive assessment techniques that enhance the quality of learner’s experiences while adjusting the pace to meet individual needs. The term gifted is used to describe a broad spectrum of human unique performance and individual who exhibit high levels of competence in socially or culturally valued domains such as arts, education and music, among others. This paper critically analyses the concept of gifted education in the Dekalb County School system.
Furthermore, the trend for curricular designed for gifted learners in the Dekalb County School system must embrace paradox. This implies that it must provide learners with a rigorous and high-quality experience that ensures that they are ready to traverse the educational trajectory challenges in top tier universities as well as position them in self-learning and social learning of the moment. According to Kettler, Oveross, & Salman (2017), Gifted learners have outstanding performance in the area of specialization, and teachers must prepare them to find true self in amidst of growing towards professional careers. Assessment of learners is a critical component of educational programs from kindergarten throughout graduate school. Examinations are generally categorized in terms of the way they relate to instructional activities. Moreover, assessments have a crucial role to play in enhancing educational outcomes by measuring students learning.
Political, legal, and current issues
Implementation of the gifted education in the US suffers due to lack of legal definition of the term giftedness. Gifted students lack federal support in the provision of the services they need in the schools. As such, there is no federal funding to facilitate the learning of gifted students. This results in a situation characterized by extreme inconsistency in the provision of education services across school districts (Stephens, 2018). By law, every child in the US is entitled to free, relevant, public education. The term free, public and appropriate is contentious and ambiguous.
Also, the law concerning special education is complex, under the Georgia code, special education refers to a classroom, hospital, home, institutional and administrative services required to meet the unique needs of children living with disabilities. It also encompasses transportation of children with disabilities who are not able to use public transport; supporting and corrective services alongside diagnostic and evaluation services, social services, occupational and physical therapy, braille, typist, readers for the blind and specified materials and equipment needed for special education(Zirkel, 2016). This definition by design leaves out many individual cases, such as identifying and assessing learners intellectual gifts.
The term gift and talent are considered as umbrella concepts since they encompass various aspects of excellence or possibility of excellence. Tirri & Laine (2017) notes that the meaning of these two terms is subject to a myriad of debate within and outside the academic field. Scientists and educators highlight that the basis of gifted and talented performance lies in the general mental power. For this reason, giftedness can be assessed through IQ test scores, talented performance or any other diverse expression of excellence. Lack of a standard definition impedes efforts by the education agencies to lobby for government funding to support gifted education.
specific needs of the students in the school district
Firstly, gifted students need to develop advance research skills and methods. The curriculum for gifted students should ensure that these students acquire top-notch skills through in-depth learning of self-selected topics within the area of specialization. This need is grounded on the tenet that gifted learners possess extensive knowledge and tend to learn at an accelerated pace as compared to average learners. These students are highly curious and intrinsically motivated in particular to pursue topics that excites them. As compared to their age peers, gifted students have longer concentration spans, demonstrate a stronger will to know and can follow up by gauging themselves with assignments(Crabtree, Richardson, & Lewis, 2019). If the gifted students are to benefit from their abilities, the curriculum must be tailored towards enabling them to become effective learners.
Secondly, gifted students need to develop creative thinking and problem-solving capabilities through undertaking a variety of complex topics within their pertinent area of academia. It generally takes less time for gifted students to grasp new material and acquire new skills. One technique of differentiating instructions for gifted learners is to transform units and lesson in such a way that learners can spend a large portion of time on higher-order thinking using the concepts they have acquired to develop their comprehension of the key concepts further and practice critical thinking.
Thirdly, gifted students need to develop communication skills to encourage precise articulation of new techniques, materials and formats in the development of products that will be shared with real audiences. Throughout history, individuals are recognized because of the impact they have made on society as well as other individuals through their excellent communication skills. Feedback from, the audience enables the gifted students to polish their communication skills.
- Propose at least three applications your topic has to K–12 assessment in your chosen school district.
Dekalb County School system usually use standardized achievement test to assess learning for every student. be that as it may, by their nature, they are not good indicators of a high level or low achievement among students. Students with intellectual learning disabilities and gifted learners may not get an accurate depiction of accomplishment from the outcomes of these tests. For this reason, the Dekalb County can incorporate a pre-post assessment method, formative assessment and differentiated assessment approach to cater to the unique needs of the gifted learners.
Alluding to Parr & Stevens (2019), Educators can incorporate pre-post performance-based assessments to assess multiple aspects of a given unit of study. In this context, teachers can easily know the baseline level of learners concerning content learning, the capability to engage in advanced level thinkings and distinct conceptual levels across subject areas through the utilization of macro concept assessment tool. The pre-assessment data can be used to adjust the teaching need of students due to their diverse needs.
In addition to pre-post assessment tools, the teacher can
incorporate formative assessments to monitor students progress in a given unit of study. This may involve a collection of tasks that are designed to gauge how well students can apply their knowledge in society. For instance, as students study the concepts of science, they can be asked to apply their knowledge of systems to the state’s system of transportation. This endeavour will generally separate gifted students from their age peers based on how the learners will use their knowledge of concepts and transfer them to real-world problems.
Differentiated assessment technique provides authentic results to assess gifted students development in learning. While performance-based assessments are important in gauging student knowledge of the learned concepts, portfolio assessment approach is more instrumental in helping the students to further their academic expertise. Portfolio approach provides an opportunity for the learners to select some of their best work and provide an explanation for their choice and the nature of learning accrued(Kamarulzaman, Azman & Zahidi, 2017). To this end, the portfolios can be presented to parents and the community, thus allowing for deeper insights into the learning process that gifted learners are encountering.
On the whole, gifted children possess adept abilities not only in education but also outside the realm of standardized assessments. They may possess talents in music, art, photography, creative writing, group leadership and scientific thinking, to name only a few. Additionally, gifted learners have the ability to understand different concepts easily than average learners. Educators have an ethical responsibility of ensuring that each student in the classroom attains their full potential. However, the government has failed to provide a regulatory framework of gifted education as well as a special curriculum to assess gifted learners. As it is, the educators lack government support in terms of funding and institution of policies to facilitate the learning of the gifted students. However, appeals have been made in the court to include gifted education in the public school system based on the concept of equity where diverse students need will be met. The main goal behind the advocacy is for the gifted learners to go with what works instead of subjecting them to standard programs that hinder their success not only in academics but in life at large.