Gifted children and learning

A
AAcross most countries, whether a child counts as gifted is settled by performance on a general intelligence, or IQ, test: those scoring above an agreed threshold, typically the top two to five per cent, qualify. Yet such tests are heavily shaped by what a child has already been taught, so what they really capture is present attainment weighed against age-norms — that is, how skilfully a youngster handles knowledge within the format of the test itself. Vocabulary items illustrate the point neatly, since a word can be recognised only when it has previously been heard. What an IQ score cannot do is reveal how thinking and learning actually unfold, nor can it forecast a child's creative capacity.
B
BNo one reaches an outstanding level without the right kind of assistance. Genuinely able children require the tools of learning — resources to work with and demanding, well-targeted teaching — together with the encouragement to pursue their ambitions. How the most able think seems to differ in a qualitative way from the thinking of average or older pupils, whose shortage of internal regulation is frequently made up for by the teacher regulating them from outside. Children become most effective at governing themselves once they are helped to recognise their own methods of learning — a capacity known as metacognition, which covers planning, monitoring, evaluation and deciding what to study. Since being aware of one's own emotions forms part of metacognition too, pupils ought to be guided to notice how they feel about whatever is being learned — curiosity or confidence, say.
C
CSet beside weaker learners, strong achievers turn to self-regulatory strategies both more frequently and more skilfully, and they carry those strategies across more readily when faced with unfamiliar problems. In certain children the tendency is so pronounced that they look as though they possess a gift for particular subjects. Surveying the evidence on how highly able children think, Brandt and Nyström (1994) framed the teacher's dilemma crisply: were the gifted simply thinking faster, we would only have to teach faster, and were they simply making fewer mistakes, we could trim the amount of practice. Reality, though, is less tidy, and both teaching and learning have to be reshaped to allow for the many different ways in which individuals think.
D
DLearning is coloured by feelings — those of the learner and those of the people who matter to them. Where positive emotions open up the creative side of learning, negative ones close it down. Fear is the clearest instance: because curiosity drives the problem-solving that powers scientific progress, anything that breeds anxiety can stunt that curiosity before it can develop. When Lindqvist (1990) examined the part played by emotion in the learning of children with very high IQs and strong records of achievement, she found their emotional energies working in concert with their aims. Such children were not merely inquisitive; many were also keen to take charge of their surroundings, to learn more efficiently and to build up their own store of learning resources.
E
ETo learn on their own, though, gifted pupils still need a measure of help from their teachers. The danger runs the other way too, for a teacher inclined to 'overdirect' can erode the very autonomy such pupils depend on. Spoon-feeding may deliver spectacular examination marks, yet those marks are not always matched by comparable achievements later in life, and leaning too heavily on teachers puts a child's independence and appetite for discovery at risk. Where teachers instead invite pupils to think back over what and how they have been learning, self-regulation grows; with a young child, even a plain 'What did you learn today?' can do the job. Since one central aim of schooling is to hand control of learning from teacher to pupil, sharpening the skill of learning how to learn ought to rank among its chief results — above all for the ablest. A range of newer approaches serves this end, among them learning that the child sets in motion and tutoring by peers of similar ability, and these have proved especially valuable for able children growing up in disadvantaged districts.
F
FHigh achievement, then, is never purely a matter of the individual. Halloran (2011) found a very close positive link between children's IQ scores and the educational resources of their homes: the higher a child's score — particularly beyond an IQ of 130 — the richer the home support, judged by how much parents talked with the child and by the quantity of books and activities on hand. Environment aside, sheer knowledge counts for a great deal, since someone who knows an enormous amount about a given field will, as Verhoeven (1996) showed, outperform someone who does not. Studying creative scientists, Ferraro (1989) concluded that past a certain elevated level it is qualities such as independence, rather than raw intellectual ability, that do most to lift a person to the summit of expertise — a reflection of the sheer effort and time that deep learning and practice demand. Creativity of every kind, in the end, can be read as expertise fused with a powerful drive to succeed, as Almeida (1992) puts it.

Question 1 - 4

Which paragraph contains the following information?

mention of how a child's home surroundings can affect their exceptional ability

a description of what a pupil may forfeit when directed too closely

an account of the harm that fear can do

instances of teaching approaches that benefit pupils from poorer backgrounds

mention of how a child's home surroundings can affect their exceptional ability

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