Education

Able Learners' Enrichment Program

Research

Faulkner M. (2003) Teacher Nomination and Parent Nominations of Gifted Children in Small Towns in Regional Victoria

Background

In 2002-2003, Dr Michael Faulkner in the School of Education at the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University, undertook a study of 33 teacher-nominated or parent-nominated children, children aged between the ages of 8 and 12 years. All children were drawn from small towns with populations of less than 4,000. The invitations to nominate gifted children were made in regional (north and central) Victoria to school principals seeking teacher nominations, and also to local school parent clubs requesting parents to nominate their own children to the study.

In the introductory letter of invitation, teachers and parents were advised to interpret the definition of ‘giftedness’ liberally, to consider intellectual ability, scholastic/academic skills, creativity, artistic talent and/or, leadership qualities. They were guided in this by the suggestion, (and based on Gagne’s model of gifted and talented children), that statistically, at least, one or two children in every classroom can be regarded as gifted (approximately between 4 and10 percent) if giftedness is considered across these five dimensions. This is a wider definition of giftedness than that used for intellectual ability as assessed by individually administered psychological test batteries. On these tests, those who score within the top 2 % relative to a test’s age norms, are considered as achieving results within the ‘gifted’ range.

In this study of children from small towns, all children nominated by teachers or parents for inclusion in the study were assessed on a psychological test of intellectual ability. The test used was the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, 3rd Edition, (WISC-111). In addition, students also completed the self-reporting Student Styles Questionnaire (SSQ), a measure of child temperament.  Further, developmental and school-related information about each child was obtained from both parents and teachers. The WISC-111 (1992) is an individually administered test of general cognitive or intellectual ability, encompassing 12 different sub-tests, around two separate scales, the Verbal Scale, and the Performance (non-verbal) Scale, and widely used by psychologists in education (though the WISC- 111 has been now replaced by the up-dated edition, the WISC- IV). The SSQ (1996) is framed around four temperament continua or dimensions : Extroversion-Introversion, Practical-Imaginative, Thinking-Feeling, and Organised-Flexible. Students typically reveal a strength of temperament preference, as Mild, Moderate or Strong on one of each of the each four poles. The SSQ can reveal useful information about a child’s preferred or optimum learning style.

Research Findings

1. The research findings of this study revealed that generally, there was both a teacher and parent reluctance to nominate able learners as ‘gifted’, a finding not inconsistent with research outcomes elsewhere, including that of the Commonwealth Government’s 2001 Senate Report, The Education of Gifted Children. From a combined school enrolment of 1,750 children in the 41 schools (and based on official school enrolment figures in 2003), invited to participate by nominating children for the study, just 22 gifted children from 14 schools (that is, just 1.25% of the 41 schools’ combined student enrolment) were nominated by teachers. It should be added however, that most of those 14 schools which did nominate children for inclusion in the study, did so on a percentage basis close to that suggested by the researcher (between 5 and 10 percent). From a combined enrolment of 1,600 children in another 32 schools, only11 children were nominated by parents, this being an even lower percentage (0.67%) of the total 8–12 years population in the 32 schools.
2. Follow up phone calls to 15 of the 27 schools declining to participate in the study, was undertaken. Explanations from the principals of these schools revealed varied reasons for a reluctance to participate in the study. For some, there was an unwillingness to nominate children as ‘gifted’, and this was justified on the basis of clearly specified, socially-based reasons. Other schools reported an inability to be able to identify any children as their school as gifted. A few principals stated quite unequivocally, that there were no gifted children among their school’s present enrolment. In other schools, it was noted that the reasons teachers wouldn’t nominate children as ‘ gifted’ was because of small enrolment numbers, and the inference that the probability of there being a gifted child in a small school to be very low. Similarly a couple of principals of offered a perception that in their low socio economic and/or isolated school communities, it was highly unlikely to be any gifted children. A couple of schools put forward a view that teachers as a staff group, or their own School Council did not want to single children out in the way suggested by the research invitation. One principal declined to participate in the research because his school was already participating with other university researchers, and the principals of these schools did not want to overburden their teachers.
   
   The participating schools were typically most accommodating to the research request and principals and teachers interested in the background and the theoretical and practical basis for it. Several principals were keen to talk about the existing provision for gifted and talented children running at their own schools. Others were warmly encouraging about the nature of research. While there are a number of likely contributing reasons for the reluctance for schools to participate in research on gifted children, it is important to recognise and understand the sense of unease in the wider Australian community about intellectual giftedness, and the identification of very able learners, and what is seen as the ‘ social labelling’ of children as ‘gifted’. Many submissions to the 2001 Commonwealth Senate Report, The Education of Gifted Children, have provided considerable evidence of this unease.
3. Teachers were statistically more likely than were parents, to nominate as gifted, children who on their self-assessment reporting Student Styles Questionnaire results, were categorised as having an Extrovert temperament. In later discussion with parents, the SSQ temperament findings about these 33 children were generally confirmed from parents’ own close and longtitudinal knowledge of their own child. The teacher- nominated ‘gifted’ Extrovert finding in this study, is broadly consistent with research elsewhere. The primary school classroom is typically a highly socially interactive environment, and a context which many Extrovert children experience as contextually compatible with their temperament qualities. Extroverted children are more likely to bring themselves to the attention of their teachers, for reasons of both appropriate and inappropriate behaviour.  While the masking one’s skills, knowledge, or personal qualities can occur for both Extroverts and Introvert children, and is likely to manifest in school settings in different ways, some Introvert gifted children, highly sensitive to environmental cues and age peer norms, really do develop quite advanced skills in ‘masking’ their skills, knowledge, or personal qualities.
4. Though statistically more reluctant to nominate their children as ‘gifted’ than were teachers, those parents who did so, were at least as accurate as teachers in identifying intellectually gifted children in terms of averaged IQ on the WISC-111. The IQ mean for the parent-nominated children (IQ 130) was higher than for the teacher nominated group (IQ 123), the difference between the average IQ results for the two groups being the 98th and the 92nd percentile ranks, respectively. The IQ range for the parent-nominated children was 112-148, for the teacher-nominated children 106-140 IQ. Again, this is a finding that concurs with research elsewhere. Parents can be extremely accurate judges of their own childrens’ qualities, and responsive schools are prepared to acknowledge this.
5. A related finding to the above was that some teachers indicated to the researcher that quite consciously, they had nominated children who showed leadership, artistic, or creative qualities, qualities not assessed by the WISC-111 intellectual ability test. This suggests that there exists among some teachers in our schools, a broader conception of giftedness than one exclusively confined to scholastic achievement or intellectual ability.
6. There is an intriguing gender difference in the nominations. Teachers from the 14 schools nominated both genders equally,11 girls and 11 boys. In contrast, parents nominated 9 boys and only 2 girls. Why this should be the case, is an intriguing question. Related to this, was the finding that most parent-nominated children were boys with an Introvert temperament style, as assessed on the self assessed Student Styles Questionnaire. While the sample of children is small in this study, the results nonetheless seem to support the dominant trend of a skewing towards male giftedness nominations in research elsewhere, and the tendency for gifted girls to be more socially conforming, more self effacing, and demonstrating better ‘masking’ skills. The need for more on-going parent education about giftedness and gifted education, particularly as it relates to gifted girls, is one indicator to emerge from this research study in regional Victoria.
7. Among the 33 children, several boys demonstrated clear and intriguing evidence of strong asynchronous development. One boy scored below the 50th percentile rank of 100 IQ on the WISC-111, but he had a very wide sub-test variation, ranging from the 98th to 5th percentile ranks on sub-tests, and a wide disparity between the Verbal and the Performance components of the test. His teacher made available some of his drawings and sketches which for his age, were both very skilled and highly imaginative.  It was not surprising that this child struggled with some of the conventional tasks of schooling, reading, scripting, and creative writing. He was perhaps a good example of what Linda Silverman (2003) refers to as ‘a gifted visual-spatial learner’. Another boy scored extraordinarily well, in the highly gifted range on the Verbal section of the WISC-111, scoring an IQ within the range 135-145, within the top 1 %, but his non-verbal skills (as measured by Performance tasks, were just above average for age.  His school had been very accommodating to his advanced intellect several years in advance of his age peers, as evidenced by his language skills development, his general knowledge and his intense curiosity to learn. Equally, they were tolerant and accommodating in a different way to this boy’s challenges in other parts of school life. What the findings from these two boys suggests, is that the nature of ‘giftedness’ must always an approximation, and the variation of precocious abilities (and sometimes the disabilities), of children relative to age peers fitting that description, can vary enormously.

References

Commonwealth of Australia (2001). The Education of Gifted Children, Senate Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business and Education References Committee, Canberra

Silverman, L. (2002) Up side Down Brilliance, Denver, Deleon Publishing Inc.