Understanding and Assessing Giftedness in Young Children

1
Understanding and Assessing Giftedness in Young
Children

• Marion Porath
• Faculty of Education, UBC
• marion.porath_at_ubc.ca

2
Laying the Foundation

• What is your understanding of giftedness?
• What are three questions you have about
  giftedness in young children?
• Is there a particular child (or children) you
  have in mind as you think about these questions?

3
Constructing a Framework

• Defining giftedness
• An ongoing debate
• One intelligence or many?
• Multiple/cultural intelligences
• Current terminology is imprecise
• Not a categorical type
• Profound breadth of diversity across intellectual
  and nonintellectual characteristics

4
The Architectural Design

• Distribution within a distribution in top 1 of
  intellectual ability
• Profiles of ability
• Motivational variables
• Drive
• Capacity for work
• Perseverance

5
Psychological and Contextual Features

• Learning profiles that include disability as well
  as advanced abilities
• Gender
• Culture
• Socioeconomic status

6
A Design for Development

• A more important framework
• Developmental advancement developmental needs
• Supports needed for optimal intellectual,
  academic, and social-emotional development
• Need for correspondent learning environments (the
  optimal match)

7
Understanding Giftedness

• A developmental concept
• Giftedness does not happen at age 9 can be
  seen in infancy
• Characterized by developmental advancement in one
  or more areas
• Early giftedness can look different than later
  giftedness
• Children may shift gifts as they mature
• Development matters

8
Examples of Advanced Development

• Spatial knowledge
• Social maturity and social understanding
• Art
• Bodily-kinesthetic

9
Examples of Advanced Development

• Language
• Reading
• Math
• Understanding of self and emotions
• Science
• Music

10
Some General Characteristics

• Ability to concentrate
• Abstract knowledge
• High level of involvement

• Curiosity
• Ability to learn quickly
• Good memory
• Ability to work with complex concepts

11
An Example Using Math

• Long periods of absorption with problems in which
  they are engaged
• Reluctance to give up on unsolved problems
• Sees connections between problems or ideas from
  another discipline
• Pleasure in posing original, difficult problems

12
Math

• Number sense
• Frequent step-skipping in problem solving
• Unexpected ways of solving problems
• Capacity for inventing strategies

13
Math

• Rapid and intuitive understanding
• Think faster than they can write or describe
  procedure
• Exceptional mathematical reasoning ability and
  memory

14
Math

• Interest in mathematical symbols and
  representations
• Ability to hold problems in mind that arent
  figured out yet to ponder them from time to
  time until the answer emerges
• Joy in working with big numbers

15
Math

• Advanced computational skills
• Advanced reasoning ability
• Rapid mastery of typical math curriculum
• Awareness of numbers in their surroundings
• Tendency to frame questions numerically
• Interest in looking for and explaining patterns
  and relationships

16
Examples from Other Domains

• Language, art, social understanding

17
Implications for Assessment

• Developmental considerations
• Importance of early childhood
• Cognitive and social development
• Individuals may demonstrate different abilities
  over time
• Define and assess abilities differently
  throughout development
• Development of the child and development of the
  domain

18
Some Principles

• Nurture/nature - Key in a lock (Brazelton
  Greenspan, 2000)
• The importance of the right experiences
• Familiarity, support, and task factors as
  variables in highly able performance
• Absolutist vs. relativistic conceptions of
  giftedness
• Study young people at work

19
Some More Principles

• Provide opportunities for demonstration of
  ability
• A rich learning environment
• Smart context

20
The Learning Environment

• Aesthetic
• Learner friendly
• Respectful of childrens competence

21
Excellence

• Understanding excellence
• What are the criteria for excellence?
• Appreciating excellence
• Living with excellence
• Exposure
• Discussion

22
Collections of Childrens Work

• The portfolio ?
• The process folio (Gardner, 1991)
• Stories (taped, transcribed)
• Drawings, paintings
• Photos of constructions, sculptures
• Audio or videotaped recordings of musical
  performances
• Records of interests, accomplishments
• Notes on observations
• Records of childrens reflections, observations

23
Evidence of Working and Learning Styles

• Best captured in a process folio
• Thinking in a domain
• How do children think about their progress in a
  field that interests them?
• Do they take note of their own progress?
• Do they think of themselves as writers, artists,
  scientists, mathematicians ?

24
Working and Learning Styles

• Process folio
• Thinking about a domain
• Are children aware of artistic or literary style?
• Do they make comments about their own or others
  work that indicate they have a feel for language,
  social insights, or visual detail?

25
Working and Learning Styles

• Process folio
• Approach to working in a domain
• Do children immerse themselves in painting,
  construction, drama, music, etc.?
• Do they have distinctive ways of, for example,
  editing work, using previous drawings to compose
  a new drawing, connecting scientific and social
  information, re-representing knowledge?

26
Rubrics
27
What About Tests?
28
Identities of Achievement

• Extent of human potential
• Investment in human capital (Willms, 2002)
• Frame discussions about the nature and nurture of
  giftedness within social, cultural, intellectual,
  and philosophical contexts
• Affirm students abilities to themselves and to
  their communities (Delpit, 2003)

29
Revisiting Initial Questions

• Have your three questions been addressed?
• Do you have remaining questions related to your
  initial three?

30
A Philosophy

• The essence of our effort to see that every child
  has a chance must be to assure each an equal
  opportunity, not to become equal, but to become
  different to realize whatever unique potential
  of body, mind and spirit he or she possesses.
• John Fischer

31
Moving Forward

• Application and reflection
• Building a community
• Continued learning