Designing the Learning Context in School for Talent Development

Introduction

In the state of Washington, school districts are mandated to identify students for gifted education (highly capable programs) as young as kindergarten, and the definition of a gifted student is the following, “Highly capable students are students who perform or show potential [italics added] for performing at significantly advanced academic levels when compared with others of their age, experiences, or environments,” Washington Administrative Code. Yet the demographics of children enrolled in gifted programs were 59% White, 22% Asian, 7% Latino, and 4% Black, compared with the demographics of the total K-12 population: 57% White, 7% Asian, 22% Latino, and 5% Black (State of Washington, Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, 2016). Clearly, White and Asian children were disproportionately identified for gifted education, indicating inequities in whose talents are developed and served in gifted programs.

In her book titled The Pedagogy of Confidence, Jackson (2011) cited a fundamental question from Asa Hilliard, “With all good intentions and stipulations, why is there still not a systematic practice or pedagogy aimed at developing high intellectual performance in all students instead of instilling marginalizing practices for students of color, especially those in urban areas?” (p. 30). She articulated what she described in classrooms that she toured in urban settings as pedagogy reflective of Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

Jackson’s (2011) “The Pedagogy of Confidence” is influenced by Renzulli’s model of talent development. She said,

What I discovered was that at the very same time that policies mandating a focus on weaknesses were proliferating for students labeled as “disadvantaged,” other policies were being enacted for students who were labeled “gifted” that entitled them to a pedagogy that would identify and nurture their strengths. (p. 23)

She took these four pillars of gifted education and incorporated them into her model:

The pedagogy of gifted education develops students’ interests, passions, pushes them to excel and achieve with creative, critical, and analytical thinking. The pedagogy of gifted education focuses on challenge—and teachers in the field of gifted education are taught specific strategies on how to challenge their students—strategies that also work well within the general curriculum. Research has shown that all students benefit from some of the same curriculum and instruction used in gifted education (National Association for Gifted Children, n.d.).

Jackson’s work demonstrates that instruction matters, teacher beliefs matter, empowering students to engage in their own learning matters, breaking down barriers so that more students have access to intellectually engaging, and advanced learning means making systemic and structural changes to our learning environments. These changes involve families, school boards, institutions of higher education, social services, and more.

Conditions such as those that Jackson described in urban school environments make talent development within the school context challenging—if not impossible. The structures and mandates that have been placed on teachers, principals, and state education agencies in the United States have minimized opportunities to create environments that optimize talent development at school.

Children as Competent Learners

In gifted education programs, teachers assume students are competent, and have been placed in gifted programs because they need advanced level work. Unfortunately, the mind-set for all students is not one that sees them from a strength perspective. Learning from the philosophical approach of early childhood education in Reggio Emilia, Italy (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 2012), children come to the learning environment as competent, curious, and having rights to be taught respectfully. The image of the child in Reggio Emilia focuses teachers on learning about the child, and being intentional about creating an environment that maximizes and develops the child’s potential. Thus, there is an essential underpinning for the relationship between teacher belief systems and how they design instruction.

How do teachers know and understand a particular child’s potential? Potential means “not yet,” so teachers need to plan for skills, interests, and dispositions, that are not yet developed. Teachers should be reluctant to predetermine who may develop specific skills or competencies. Because potential talent needs to be nurtured and developed in young children, educators have a responsibility to be thoughtful and intentionally create optimal environments for talent development.

Inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach, where the environment is the “Third Teacher,” rich learning contexts include aesthetic environments, nurturing and respectful relationships between teachers, students, and their families, and curriculum and instruction that maximizes opportunities for children to express themselves. In Reggio Emilia, there is a theme of 100 Languages of Children. Teachers acknowledge that children have hundreds of ways of expressing themselves, and graphic artists (atelieristas) use multimedia as tools to help children express their ideas.

Another tenet of the approach in Reggio Emilia, is called the “pedagogy of listening.” This is a metaphor for really knowing the children, paying attention to their ideas and the way they learn. Teachers carefully observe and document the numerous ways in which children share their ideas and creativity. Through prolonged work on in-depth projects, students have opportunities to explore their misconceptions and problem solve toward deeper understandings.

In these rich learning environments, students share their strengths and collaborate with others to extend and challenge their thinking. Creativity is greatly enhanced because students have opportunities to engage with multimedia materials and technology to represent their ideas.

These learning environments in Reggio Emilia are in stark contrast to those described by Jackson, as well as those that are fairly common in public school elementary classrooms today. What changes could be made in public school settings that would allow teachers to illuminate the strengths and talents of their students whose potential is not yet recognized? Could the nature of the learning environment be changed to increase motivation, achievement, and engagement of students who were not normally identified for gifted education services?

Implementing Project-Based Learning

Three approaches to instruction incorporate strategies to challenge students—the focus of gifted education. These include project-based learning, problem-based learning, and design-based learning. Although these may be distinctly different approaches, they typically involve a specific type of activity that is focused on using reasoning and resources to solve a problem.

There is a great deal of research to support project-based and inquiry learning pedagogies for all students. An overview of this research by Barron and Darling-Hammond (2008) reveals an overall positive impact of project-based learning in these three ways.

Although there are many ways of implementing an inquiry-based curriculum, the Project Approach articulated by Katz, Chard, and Kogan (2014) focuses on a three-phase structure of inquiry that teachers can implement at all grade levels, including kindergarten. In Phase 1, teachers elicit current levels of understanding about a topic that has been chosen for investigation. In Phase 2, students pursue answers to their questions about the topic, generally in small study groups based on the students’ interests, and in Phase 3, students share their findings through multiple ways of representation. Research that involved implementing the Project Approach resulted not only in positive outcomes for students but it also changed teachers’ attitudes about how they saw the competencies and strengths of their students (Hertzog, 2001, 2007).

An example of the transformation from a traditional first-grade curricular activity to a project-based activity follows. The first-grade teacher before learning about the Project Approach studied fall every year. In one corner of the room, she set up an art station for students to make “Mr. Appleman.” The art center consisted of precut big apples for the head, smaller apples for the stomach, tiny apples for the hands and feet, and little green accordion folded strips of paper for their arms and legs. The children at the center would follow the directions to glue the pieces together and make a face on the head. Then, the teacher displayed all of the “Mr. Applemen” on the bulletin board. Only differences one could see was in the way students glued on the pieces. Otherwise, they were identical—and did not reveal any students’ understandings or thinking about apples.

The next year, this teacher studied apples using the Project Approach. She began the investigation by brainstorming questions on large chart paper that students had about apples:

How tall do the trees grow?

What are the differences between yellow, green, and red apples?

How many seeds are in each kind of apple, and does that vary between kinds?

How do they keep insects from eating the apples?

She facilitated the entire fall unit by helping students answer these questions. At the apple orchard, students drew sketches of the apple trees and focused on whether they were red or green apple trees. Students interviewed the orchard workers and asked them how they sorted the apples, which were sweeter, and how they kept the apples from rotting. They toured the beehives, and talked with a beekeeper who taught them about pollination. When they came back to their room, they drew memory drawings of the apple orchard, and created their own representations of the orchard from their drawings. By doing this project, teachers saw the children begin to demonstrate characteristics that are on questionnaires about giftedness such as curiosity, persistent, interest, and independence.

In a 3-year study (Hertzog, 2005), kindergarten teachers turned a science unit, “Hot and Cold,” into a project investigation. Students became interested in temperature. After listing questions about hot and cold, they designed experiments to answer their questions. They put thermometers all over the school and measured the temperature of their principal’s office (air conditioned) and compared it with their classroom (not air conditioned). They measured the temperature of the tap water and of their soup in their cafeteria. This type of instruction encouraged critical thinking, and allowed students to pursue learning that was meaningful and challenging to them.

Independence, ownership, and reflective thinking characterized the second year of the 3-year implementation of the Project Approach for the kindergarten teachers. Both teachers enthusiastically supported project-based learning as a way to engage students and recognize their strengths.

As reported in the publication of the study,

In short, the students “acted more gifted” by taking on some of the characteristics we tend to use to identify children for gifted programs. These include showing curiosity by asking questions, staying focused and engaged for long periods of time, learning new things rapidly, problem solving creatively, and becoming self-motivated to learn more and go in more depth with a topic. (Hertzog, 2005, p. 243)

In this 3-year implementation, teachers shared how their classroom climate became more conducive to learning, how teachers and students were more engaged, parents were more involved, teachers were empowered and collaborated on instruction with each other, and they raised their expectations of their students. These elements define what is needed for schools to become contexts for talent development.

But implementing project-based learning is not easy. Teachers, cited time and resources as their biggest barriers to implementation. Teachers felt that they had to cover the curriculum for their students to do well on standardized tests. And they were not convinced that by doing in-depth project work, students would acquire the skills they needed to do well on the state testing. Their concerns about whether their students would do well on standardized testing if they pursued project investigations tapped into their core belief system of how children learn.

Kohlberg and Mayer (1972) describe three streams of thought about how children learn: romantic, cultural transmission, and cognitive developmental. The three streams of thought provide a vocabulary and a framework for why teachers implement certain types of pedagogy, and what they believe about children that influences the way they implement curriculum in their classrooms.

Influenced by Rousseau, or Walden, the romantic view of the child allows him to mature and grow as naturally as flowers and trees. This is the maturational and developmental view of the child. Using the metaphor of the garden, the teacher is the gardener, providing nourishing water, but not altering the natural growth in any way. From this developmental perspective, all things will come in time. You cannot speed up growth. Teachers who have this perspective would likely be warm and nurturing, but not necessarily challenging. They are reluctant to put anything in the children’s environment that would influence their thinking. They are likely to be more passive in the learning environment and just let children play with the materials that are there.

In the cultural transformation stream of thought, the teacher passes knowledge onto the child. The metaphor is one of an empty vessel and the teacher pours information into it. The child learns the predetermined established curriculum in the way in which the teacher presents it. This was very much the factory model of mass education in the United States commencing with the Industrial Age. Many children were put into grade-level classrooms to learn what is important for all children of that age. The goal of education was to make the children be better workers for society. Therefore, students had to follow orders, rules, and work toward established standards, much like they would have to do in a factory. It is called the cultural transmission model because the role of the teacher was to transmit the culture of society onto the child.

The third stream of thought is called the cognitive developmental model. In this model, the role of the teacher is critical. Kohlberg and Mayer (1972) favor this model because teachers are empowered to challenge children, still within a student-centered, warm, and nurturing environment. This model emphasizes the interactions between the teacher and the students as critical to enhancing their potential. Thus, the goal of education within this perspective is to help students become more rational and logical thinkers. Kohlberg and Mayer’s (1972) metaphor was that of a philosopher or a poet whereby children must play with creative ideas and have cognitive conflict to grow.

Teachers who believe that their role is to challenge their students and help them develop their thinking skills are more likely to inherently follow the cognitive developmental stream of thought. These teachers are more open to designing learning environments that provide opportunities for students to reveal their thinking, and to engage in cognitive conflict.

To fully embrace project-based learning, many things had to change in the learning environment, including the beliefs of the teacher, structure, discipline, role of the teacher, and what students perceived was valued in their learning environment. An essential focus in the learning environment would be to enhance student autonomy and strengthen the disposition of all children to learn.

Hertberg and Brighton’s (2005) research on differentiation of instruction where they found that some teachers only used some aspects of differentiation (the accessorizers) and others were total renovators, demonstrated a need for helping teachers make changes. Teachers needed not only to embrace project-based learning but they also needed to make many changes in their classrooms—thus the name, “Extreme Classroom Makeovers.” For students to pursue answers to their own questions and work in small groups with varying levels of expertise, the physical space, content, family involvement, and most important, the affective climate in the classroom needed to be changed. Teachers had to restructure their classrooms so children could pursue choices, take risks, offer possibilities for solutions, and not focus on getting “correct” answers to questions.

The Extreme Classroom Makeover—TV Reality Show

Imagine a framework for making both physical and instructional changes in a teacher’s classroom. What would be necessary for classrooms environments to be designed for talent development? What could empower teachers to be innovative and show beautiful, engaging classrooms? How could teachers be motivated and excited about school reform and innovation? Teachers may be excited about making changes if it were sequenced like a TV reality show: “The Extreme Classroom Makeover.”

Today’s Classroom Renaissance: What Is the New Modern Age in Schooling?

Innovation in education isn’t about the latest gadget or app, or about how adept a student is at using a smartphone to consume the latest Internet meme. It’s about how technological tools can empower students to become who they want to be, and who we need them to be — the kind of children and young people who ask, “What can I improve? How can I help? What can I build?”(Duncan, 2015)

Almost every aspect of what is most familiar about education is getting recalibrated. Students are as likely to learn from one another as they are from their teacher. A final exam may be a design challenge with real-world implications, not just a test for a grade. Today’s students are also much more likely to expect their school to adjust to their needs.

Today’s students are different from older generations: They are digital natives. Classroom environments are filled with technology. Today, there is a movement to create makerspaces in schools and for students to pursue “design-based learning.” Design-based lessons have several features that make them ideal for developing technical and subject matter knowledge (Newstetter, 2000). For example, design activity supports revisions and iterative activity as students create, assess, and redesign their work product. The complexity of the work often dictates the need for collaboration and specific roles for different students, providing them with the opportunity to become “experts” in a particular area. Design projects require students to set constraints, generate ideas, create prototypes, and develop plans through storyboarding or other representational practices. These are all critical 21st-century skills.

Makerspaces (Designing Makerspaces—Edutopia) provide hands-on, creative ways to encourage students to design, experiment, build, and invent as they deeply engage in science, engineering, and tinkering. A makerspace is not solely a science lab, woodshop, computer lab, or art room, but it may contain elements found in all of these familiar spaces. Therefore, it must be designed to accommodate a wide range of activities, tools, and materials. Diversity and cross-pollination of activities are critical to the design, making, and exploration process, and they are what set makerspaces and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, & Math) labs apart from single-use spaces. A possible range of activities might include cardboard construction prototyping, woodworking, electronics, robotics, digital fabrication, building bicycles and kinetic machines, and textiles and sewing. Makerspaces are studio spaces where students create representations of their ideas to deepen their project inquiries. Representations require understanding and application of knowledge. Children are also collaborative in makerspace areas and in classrooms where they are working together on project investigations or creating representations. Research supports benefits of collaborative learning. Collaborative learning results in higher student achievement, higher self-esteem, and higher motivation (Johnson & Johnson, 2009).

Today’s schools should be designed not for students to work in factories, but for students to be able to solve today’s problems. “Today’s problems—from global poverty to climate change to the obesity epidemic—are more interconnected and intertwined than ever before and they can’t possibly be solved in the academic or research ‘silos’ of the twentieth century,” writes Frank Moss, the former head of the M.I.T. Media Lab (MindShift, 2012).

Seventeen-year-old Nikhil Goyal (2012), a senior in high school at the time he wrote his book, gives the modern day student perspective on education and echoes Dewey in his insistence that school must represent real life. He suggests students need to travel to places, work with mentors, and inquire about the world around them.

A modern day classroom described by Richtel (2011) in The New York Times had students engaged with an abundance of technological tools (iPads, laptops, smartboards, etc.) and a spending bill of 33 million dollars by the district to include the most up-to-date learning technologies. Teachers were encouraged to guide instruction and allow students to learn at their own pace with their devices. However, he reported that standardized test scores did not rise. This conundrum calls into question one of the most significant contemporary educational movements. Advocates for giving schools a major technological upgrade—which include powerful educators, Silicon Valley titans and White House appointees—say digital devices let students learn at their own pace, teach skills needed in a modern economy and hold the attention of a generation (MindShift, 2012).

This begs the question, “What does matter in the new century?” How should teachers and parents respond to changing students and classroom environments? What would be the context for maximum learning to occur, and for talents to emerge?

Conclusion

Classrooms need to be places for talent development, especially for children who have not had prior experiences to develop their strengths and talents. In order for classrooms to be contexts for talent development, student ideas need to be valued, encouraged, and nurtured. Teachers must have the skills, belief systems, and desire to create learning environments that foster creativity, critical thinking, and student autonomy. Schools must be inviting safe zones for exploration, collaboration, and high achievement in all domains. Parents and families must value environments where children engage in exploration, collaboration, hands-on learning, and risk-taking to become lifelong learners. They must value learning as a lifelong endeavor and not test scores or grades as the ultimate goal of schooling. What is clear is that many aspects of the school environment need to change—including beliefs about learning, and current structures which emphasize grades, competition, and conformity. Future research questions to examine how to make these changes and see their impacts are suggested: