Raising Bright Sparks: Book 2 -Teaching Gifted Students

While teaching a postgraduate course in Gifted Education some years ago, I was struck by responses from a couple of teachers undertaking the course. One teacher announced at the start of the course that she had been teaching for thirty years and had never had a gifted student in her class. It quickly emerged that this teacher’s perception of a gifted student was significantly different to the characteristics and identification of gifted students, as taught within the Gifted Education course. Another teacher, attending the same postgraduate Gifted Education course, was in tears by the first break when she realised the large number of gifted students she had missed identifying throughout her career as a teacher. I felt both responses, from these experienced teachers, were tragic.

Two bi-partisan, Australian Federal Senate Select Committees, held in 1988 and 2001, identified gifted students as the most educationally disadvantaged students in this country. Together with a number of other recommendations, the earlier report included the statement: “The Committee recommends to teacher training institutions that pre-service training courses include sufficient information about gifted children to make student teachers aware of the needs of those children and the special identification techniques and teaching strategies which the student teachers will have to use with the gifted on graduation.”
Despite key recommendations in both Senate Select Committee Reports, the Melbourne Declaration statement about developing gifts and talents and ACARA’s Australian Curriculum Student Diversity statement: “Gifted and talented students are entitled to rigorous, relevant and engaging learning opportunities drawn from the Australian Curriculum and aligned with their individual learning needs, strengths, interests and goals”, there has been very limited teacher exposure to Gifted Education, via pre-service, postgraduate or professional development courses.

I trust this collection of articles will help to inform educators about the characteristics and learning needs of gifted students.