Does Low Sociometrics Affect Teacher Perception?

Charles Sutton
Galileo School for Gifted Learning
Level 7 Learning

Rizza and Morrison (2003) conducted research that strongly suggests that when a student has emotional/behavioral disability along with giftedness, the teacher may stereotype the students and not identify the student’s characteristics that make him/her gifted. The younger, less experienced teachers in the study were more likely to associate these stereotypes with the student than a more well-seasoned educator. According to the study, this could potentially be a problem for students who are twice-exceptional; these students have above average intelligence, strong task commitment, and/or high creativity (Renzulli, n.d.), but they also have an identified disability that requires services. When a teacher sees some gifted characteristics in these students, s/he may only associate them with the disability even though many of these qualities may equally be signs of a child’s giftedness. This misconception prejudices the selection process. As a result, the student will likely get services for managing his/her academic and/or behavioral weaknesses, but may not receive the additional services needed to enhance the child’s gifts and talents. That being the case, these talents may be squandered. The question this paper raises is why would teachers, regardless of experience, be fooled into missing a child’s gifts and only see the disabilities?
One possibility is sociometrics. Sociometry is the “quantitative study and measurement of relationships within a group of people” (Apple, Inc. , 2015). Most studies of sociometry in school environments look only at peer relationships. For example, Baydik and Bakkaloglu (2009) conducted a study of students to see whether socioeconomic status differences affected elementary school children’s sociometrics status among their peers whether or not the child had a documented disability. What they found was that anything that made a child stand out negatively could cause a decrease in the child’s sociometry and thereby make the child more isolated, but intellectual and behavioral disability was a stronger better predictor of negative sociometrics than physical appearance or socioeconomic status differences. The socially isolated students—the ones with apparent intellect and/or behavior problems—consistently underperformed in school work due to their isolation, and they were moved into remedial groups by their teachers.
From the results of prior studies, the authors of this sociometry research paper hypothesized that students with low performance and also students who had behavior problems that made them stand out as obstacles in the classroom would have the lowest sociometrics. Their results, based mostly on teacher response surveys, confirmed that to be true. This is interesting for possibly understanding where the teacher biases may come from because the teacher responses correlated with the low sociometry based on children’s emotional/behavioral disabilities. Therefore, one could hypothesize that the teacher responses may have been influenced by the kinds of stereotypes that Rizza and Morrison (2003) identified in their study considering that the teachers who filled out the survey materials are the same ones who moved these students into remedial groups. While the Baydik and Bakkaloglu (2009) study does not identify any of the students in their sample as gifted or twice-exceptional, the research may suggest why teachers possibly under-identified some of the talents of the students to whom they gave low sociometrics scores. As was noted above, the students who are isolated by their peers (and perhaps even the teacher) will underperform and the gifts may remain hidden. I suggest that a study should be conducted as a follow up to Rizza and Morrison (2003) to see if sociometrics play a part in the stereotypes identified in the study.

References

Apple, Inc. . (2015). Sociometry. 2.2.1(178).
Baydik, B., & Bakkaloglu, H. (2009). Predictors of sociometric status for low socioeconomic stutus elementary mainstreamed students with and without special needs. Educational Sciences/Theory & Practice, 435–442.
Renzulli, J. (n.d.). Renzulli’s three-ring conception of giftedness. Retrieved from http://www.gigers.com/matthias/gifted/three_rings.html
Rizza, M. G., & Morrison, W. F. (2003). Uncovering stereotypes and identifying characteristics of gifted students and students with emotional/behavioral disabilities. Roeper Review, 25(2), 73–77.

 

STEM, STEAM, and Perfectionism in Gifted Students

The art curriculum could be an excellent place to help alleviate the pressures that gifted children put on themselves due to their tendency toward perfectionism. As a famous artist, Salvador Dali, once said, “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.” The beauty and diversity of art is in the differences caused by imperfections. Conversely, in most forms of mathematics, for example, it is possible to score 100% on exams and assignments all of the time, which can be equated in the gifted child’s mind with perfection. Therefore, when s/he misses one question on a test, s/he also questions her/his abilities regardless that there were no prior mistakes. In art, perfection is impossible; so, if taught correctly, the art room can be a place where gifted children can learn that unavoidable mistakes and differentiation is what gives the world of art such beautiful diversity. In a time when the trend in educations is toward STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), there is extra internal pressure on the gifted child toward perfectionism because each of these is an exact discipline with little room for error. That is why I prefer STEAM, because integrating the arts—the “A” in STEAM stands for arts—and language arts with these things introduces back the ability to have different approaches, some less than perfect, that are equally valuable contributions to the subject area. In gifted programs particularly—and in all programs in general—there needs to be a sharp movement away from STEM toward STEAM so that schools are not trying to produce citizens who place their personal value on exactness. Rather, students of the future will be more valuable to society—and to themselves—if they can contribute imperfectly and still be happy with their production.

 

Gifted Identification in the Urban Classroom

Charles Sutton

Galileo School for Gifted Learning

Level 7 Learning

The Davidson Institute posted a journal article discussing the problem of under-identification of low SES students in gifted programs, and they mention that it particularly a problem urban schools. The authors write about how these school have extreme problems with funding to the point that any resources they have are funneled into interventions for getting the lower-achieving subgroups to pass high stakes tests, while putting little or no investment into the differentiation needs for gifted students (Olszewski-Kubilius & Thomson, 2010). Since these schools are often predominantly in African American and Hispanic communities, the lack of programs in the schools widens the gap for lower SES and ethnic groups in gifted programs in general as a percentage of the population.

Urban schools may present other problems as well. Rodriguez and Bellanca (2007) discuss how many urban teachers lack the confidence in student ability that may be necessary to identify under-achieving gifted students. As a result, they do not provide the high-quality educational experiences that these children need to help them begin to demonstrate their level of gifts and talents. When children do not get quality instruction from their teachers, and the teachers believe that low SES and minority children cannot learn as well as other students, then the underachieving students fall farther and farther below their potential, and they many never develop their true abilities. Therefore, they recommend that teachers in urban districts have to modify their own behaviors using the fifteen TESA recommendations in order to help all children achieve to their potential, including the gifted children. They write that these teachers “…don’t look for a gifted rose garden; they make their little plot of land into a rose garden (p. 10). This allows all children to flourish and grow allowing the gifted students to show their talents, which will more likely allow them to become among the identified gifted students in a district.

Rodriguez and Bellanca (2007) believe that in order to turn around educational opportunities in these low SES urban communities that teachers should receive “…multifaceted professional development wherein workshops…reinforced with peer coaching and strong supervisory support” (p. 25). They should be trained in TESA-recommended teacher behaviors that will help them provide a quality education for each student. If not, negative teacher expectation turns into poor self-evaluation and the underachieving conditions will persist. They write, “…unless the parent of teacher expects these youngsters to change how they think and behave, unless the mediator persists in demanding the changes, most students will form low expectations for themselves and stay trapped in the inability to learn” (p. 37). This condition will further reinforce the identification gap in gifted programs.

According to Parsons (2001), the problem is also one of privilege and built in advantage. She claims that even when students of socioeconomic advantage and low SES students occupy the same academic building, there are still factors that provide built-in academic edges to the higher SES, white, male student over the others. If the teacher has different expectations for the students based on their family’s economic wealth or the students race, ethnicity, or gender then those biases affect the quality of the education each of the children will receive. If, on the other hand, the teacher—like the teacher in her study—understands that s/he can affect the performance of the students based on her/his expectations, then a teacher who believes that everyone has an equal chance to succeed (and even an equal chance to be identified for gifted programs) will provide better quality learning materials and differentiation for all students to allow their skills and talents to show through. She writes, “…the teacher’s job is to influence students toward educational ends…” (p. 332). That being the case, it is time that we hold teachers responsible for providing equitable educational opportunities for all students—urban or otherwise—that accounts for the differences in SES and family/community culture. Upon doing so we may see more students identified for gifted services from the underrepresented groups. Schools and districts need to provide professional development opportunities, coaching, and other support systems to ensure that it happens.

Frequently, it seems that educators want to blame the students’ cultural values, behaviors, family circumstances, parent involvement, and a wide range of other socioeconomic factors when confronted with achievement gaps. Yet, the most effective way to mediate these gaps is by providing good-quality learning opportunities for all students (Rodriguez & Bellanca, 2007). Perhaps, instead of blaming others, teachers need to “…acknowledge[d] the power inherent in teaching and use[d] it to address equal and fair access for all students to the experiences of the classroom” (Parsons, 2001, p. 332). It is only the ethical use of the teacher’s power used in an ethical manner that can help us recognize which students need gifted services in low SES and urban settings.

References

Olszewski-Kubilius, P., & Thomson, D. (2010). Gifted programming for poor or minority urban students: Issues and lessons learned. Gifted Child Today, 33(4), 58–64. Retrieved from Davidson Institute: http://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10670
Parsons, E. C. (2001, December). Using power and caring to mediate white male privilege, equality, and equity in an urban elementary classroom: Implications for teacher preparation. The Urban Review, 33(4), 321–338.
Rodriguez, E., & Bellanca, J. (2007). What is it about me you can’t teach?: An instruction guide for the urban educator (Second Edition ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.

 

Poverty and Gifted Identification

Charles Sutton
Galileo School for Gifted Learning
Level 7 Learning

This week’s readings in my gifted endorsement program are related to the cultural biases in education that account for the underrepresentation of non-white families and families from poverty in gifted programs. Kitano (2003) writes, “…while intense poverty limits the presence of Black, Hispanic, and Native American students among the highest achievers, inadequate school resources, racial and ethnic prejudice, families’ limited educational resources, and cultural differences contribute to underrepresentation” (293). This paper will use the two articles from the reading assignments along with some other experiences and information to illustrate Kitano’s point.

According to Beegle (2003) families from low socioeconomic status—especially if the family is from generational poverty—are often stuck in the lower levels of what Maslow identified as a hierarchy of needs (McLeod, 2007; Huitt, 2007). Parents from generational poverty spend the majority of their resources trying to meet the physical and safety needs of the family, so there is little or nothing left to invest into school, which is a much higher-level need reaching the social, esteem, and self-actualization areas of Maslow’s pyramid. As a result, the parents lack the monetary, educational, and time resources needed to invest in ensuring that their children get into gifted programs despite the child’s individual strengths and talents. That leaves the work of identifying to the teachers and school, which is already prejudiced toward middle class values for academics and behaviors as well as scores on standardized tests that are written to the advantage of white, middle class students (Payne, n.d.; Slocumb & Payne, 2000). Slocumb and Payne (2000) claim that the current “…identification processes do not factor in environmental differences” (p. 28), thereby favoring identification of middle class students over low SES and culturally diverse students. Montoya, Matias, Nishi, and Sarcedo (2016) suggest that this inequity situation is institutionalized racism that needs to end. Having little confidence that the identification system can be repaired, they call for an end to segregated gifted and talented programs and to instead use a differentiation model to service each student’s gifts and talents in the integrated classroom. This model also has the benefit of giving gifted children who have asynchronous development the social and emotional interactions with children who may be more aligned with those needs than some of the more evenly developed gifted students.

Others have more confidence that they system can and should be fixed because of the extremely high needs of gifted and talented students that may be more difficult to service in an integrated classroom. For example, as a remedy to the current segregated system, Slocumb and Payne (2000) suggest that schools should “…develop an identification process for the gifted and talented that takes into account the inequality that exists between students from poverty and those from middle class” (p. 29). To do so would require taking away standardized test scores and other grading systems that favor middle class students as identifying tools, and in their place schools should develop more formative evaluations to help identify students based on skills that are not traditionally valued in school. This could include opening up evaluation systems that use a wider range of Gardner’s identified intelligences (Lane, n.d.), especially the ones that are undervalued in the current gifted identification process.

Another possible solution is to use the model that we use at the Galileo School, which is to teach each student enrolled in our school in a gifted style regardless of identification or designation. Of course, that requires a lot of differentiation as mentioned in the Montoya, Matias, Nishi, and Sarcedo (2016) article, but the difference is that the teachers are not simply using the gifted-style of learning to differentiate for the gifted students. Rather, all students received the benefit of gifted style learning with the academic elements of the learning tailored to their own educational needs and development. As a result, all of the children benefit from things like enhancement, acceleration, and choice.

References

Beegle, D. (2003, October/November). Overcoming the silence of generational poverty. Talking Points, 15(1), 11-20.
Huitt, W. (2007). Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Retrieved from Educational Psychology Interactive: http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/conation/maslow.html
Kitano, M. K. (2003). Gifted potential and poverty: A calll for extraordinary action. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 26(4), 292–303.
Lane, C. (n.d.). Multiple intelligences. Retrieved from Tecweb: http://www.tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html
McLeod, S. (2007). Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Retrieved from Simply Psychology: http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
Montoya, R., Matias, C. E., Nishi, N. W., & Sarcedo, G. L. (2016, March). Words are wind: Using Du Bois and Borudieu to ‘unveil’ the capricious nature of gifted and talented programs. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 14(1), 127–143.
Payne, R. (n.d.). Understanding and working with students and adults from poverty. Retrieved from Homepages : http://homepages.wmich.edu/~ljohnson/Payne.pdf
Slocumb, P. D., & Payne, R. K. (2000, May). Identifying and nurturing the gifted poor. Principal: The New Diversity, 79(5), 28–32.

 

Development of Divergent Areas of Students and How They May Affect Gifted Children

Charles Sutton
Galileo School for Gifted Learning
Level 7 Learning

Introduction
The current assignment in my gifted endorsement class asks the learner to consider the developmental stages that individuals go through as they pass from childhood to adulthood and how the stages of development may be affected by a person’s giftedness. In turn, it is important to note how asynchronous development within the child and variant development from grade level peers may have an effect on the child’s socioemotional growth. Upon reviewing the developmental stages, it became obvious that there are many different ways that stages of development have been analyzed over the years, and that each of these may affect how a student learns differently according to his/her social and emotional needs. These divergent areas of development include the cognitive stages identified by Piaget and Vygotsky, the emotional stages identified by Ericson, the moral development stages identified by Kohlberg, and the stages of artistic development identified by Lowenfeld. Since all of these stages of development may cause specific challenges on the social and emotional states for gifted learners in the art classroom, it is appropriate to mention each one and to explore how they may specifically affect elementary and middle-school art students.

Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky—Cognitive Stages
Of Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development—sensory motor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational—it is likely that the final two will be present in elementary/middle-school classes because of the typical ages of the students. Most of the students will fall into the concrete operational stage, which, according to Piaget, runs for most children through elementary grades and into early adolescence. Because Piaget’s levels are based solely on cognitive development, many of my gifted and talented students will likely surpass this stage in the elementary grades, and they will enter into the formal operational stage before their typically developing classmates. This means that they will be able to use abstract concepts in their learning prior to others in their cohort who are still working on logical and systematic learning. Since this is the case, there may be some need for grouping with other gifted peers to learn together to help one another work out the abstract ideas that their classmates are not yet prepared to handle. This is especially important as Piaget insists that development must precede learning, so the students in the concrete operational stage are unable to learn at the level of the higher stage students despite instructional inputs (Huitt & Hummel, 2003).

While there are some significant differences between Vygotsky’s stages of cognitive development and Piaget’s, perhaps—for the proposes of this paper—the most important variance is that Vygotsky’s theory features social interaction as the driving force between the stages, while Piaget feels that the stages come more naturally and precede learning (McLeod, 2007; Huitt & Hummel, 2003). Vygotsky believes that the child is in a zone of proximal development, and her/his social interactions are what expand that zone allowing the child to move to higher levels of cognition. Knowing this, one might be tempted to use the gifted students to help develop the other students in the classroom, thereby raising the cognitive level of the entire class. However, doing this is not in the best interest of the gifted students because their own zone is not expanding when we are using them to stretch the developmental growth of others. As a result, it is still important that the gifted students learn together at least at times to help one another stretch and grow their relative cognitive strengths, while still keeping them with people who may be closer to social/emotional peers.

Erik Erikson—Socioemotional Stages
Erik Erikson’s stages of development speak more to the social and emotional development rather than moving through cognitive stages. In Erikson, most of the students in elementary and middle school classes should fall into stage four, which is the competence stage—also known as industry versus inferiority. This stage includes most of elementary school up to and including some of middle school. Children in this stage are learning things like interpersonal cooperation, structured play, teamwork, and more advanced academic studies (Child Development Institute, n.d.).

For gifted students, there may be some developmental variance between their cognitive age and their socio-emotional age lending itself to crisis if the teachers/parents aren’t aware of the discrepancies. For example, they may understand more complex rules, but still lack the social skills to engage in the more advanced types of team play and cooperative learning. Chou (2013) says, “Yet, gifted children still encounter a myriad of difficulties within the socioemotional realm…Many gifted children experience challenges relating to peers…” (para 2). Since some gifted students have a higher understanding of the cognitive structure of the learning, then sometimes teachers assume that they should have more success with the socioemotional aspects as well. However, this is not necessarily the case as children with high cognitive understanding often have more typical social and emotional development. When they are put into cooperative groups with students on differing levels of development, they may have difficulty negotiating the situation. Sometimes they are taken advantage of and end up doing the majority of the work for the entire group. That is another reason why they need to develop peers with similar giftedness in cooperative groups to help themselves negotiate these difficult variances. Teachers need to be aware of this need.

The other stage in Erikson that may be present in some of my older/more advanced students is the fidelity stage, also known as learning identify versus identify. In this stage, students start to develop “…self-certainty as opposed to self-consciousness or self-doubt” (Child Development Institute, n.d., para 8). This is where some gifted students might want to show that they are always right and exhibit behaviors that may be perceived as negative, like correcting their teachers and other students. The attitude of self-certainty may alienate them from their classmates, so it is especially imporant for teachers to understand and help them manage what may become difficult social times for the gifted children.

Lawrence Kohlberg—Moral Stages
Kohlberg describes six stages of moral development that he arrived at through presenting ethically-based scenarios to various subjects. While there is some alignment between age, cognitive development stage, and emotional development stage that affects the outcomes of which ethical stage the subjects fall into, there is a wider variance between ethical age and other kinds of development. Generally, younger children are less morally developed and older children have higher moral sensibilities, but there can be a wide range of moral developments within each age group. In Kohlberg’s theory, students in the lower levels of ethical development base their moral judgements on punishment and consequences, but more highly developed students are able to see that intentions are important to consider in ethical situations as well (Crain, 1985).

Since students can be a varying levels of moral development throughout the elementary and middle school years, it is important to recognize that when asking moral or ethical questions. Gifted students can be at varying stages within the same age range. Some of their moral/ethical development may be driven by their advanced academic knowledge and skills, while others may be tied more closely to the socioemoational development of the particular student, which may be considerably lower. Therefore, it is important to recognize that there might be a wider incongruency between knowledge level and moral development than there is in other areas of the gifted child’s development.

Kohlberg says that our stages of ethical development are neither tied to an unfolding “genetic blueprint,” nor are they the “…the product of socialization” (Crain, 1985, p. 125). Rather, they emerge from toiling with moral problems; thus, the stage that each child is currently in can vary greatly based on prior introduction to moral dilemmas (Crain, 1985). While moral questions may have been considered by some gifted children at an earlier age than their typically developed peers, others may have been more insolated from such problems. Therefore, the teacher should not prejudge the moral development stages for children based solely on her/his level of giftedness. Rather, each child should be presented with a wide range of moral/ethical questions and helped to develop using his/her intellect and thought processes.

Viktor Lowenfeld—Artistic Stages
As an art teacher, it would be incorrect to evaluate how developmental stages may affect the socioemotional growth of gifted children without considering the stages of artistic development as well. Lowenfeld divides artistic development into six stages, including the following:
• Scribble (1-3 years old)
• Preschemaitc (3-4 years old)
• Schematic (5-6 years old)
• Dawning Realism (7-9 years old)
• Pseudo-Naturalistic (10-13 years old)
• Decision (13-16 years old)

Judging by the ages/grade levels of the students in elementary and middle school programs, the children will mostly fall into the dawning realism and pseudo-naturalistic stages; however, the author has already witnessed many students with advanced artistic talents at much earlier ages than Lowenfeld describes. Therefore, this paper will also consider the possible socioemotional effects of the decision making stage though most of the students will not yet be 13 years old. Additionally, though most students are not in the lower stages by entering elementary school, some will be. Therefore, there will be a brief discussion about the schematic and preschmatic stages as well.

Some students entering school for the first time in kindergarten are still in the preschematic stages of drawing. That is, they have just begun to draw with correlation between shapes and real world objects. At this point one sees stick figures emerging and some recognition that two lines can represent arms, two others—legs, a circle for the head, and so forth (Fussell, 2011). Yet, some of the more artistically talented students already enter elementary school at higher levels of artistic development. Others, as witnessed by the author, may be stuck in the preschematic stage much later in elementary school. For example, this year, the first-grade teachers asked for artistic intervention to help their students—many of whom were still stuck on drawing stick figures. They had not yet reached the schematic stages where they could formulate a plan to use more accurate shapes to visually represent real world things (Fussell, 2011).

This situation was more true of students who were more developmentally delayed in other areas than it was of the typical or gifted and talented students at the same grade level, but some did show lower skill development. However, the gifted students were more likely able to not only plan shapes to fit the visual represenations in the objects and people they were drawing as notable in the schematic stage, their drawings were created more realistically as one might see in the dawning realism or even the pesudonaturalistic states. While the more talented students’ artworks were generally praised by their peers—who were stills struggling themselves in the preschematic and schematic drawing stages—the gifted and artistically talented students were also more critical of their own work as is characteristic in more advanced stages of artistic development (Fussell, 2011). They were more likely to say that they made a mistake and they wanted to start over; they even become more dispondent over their own perceived artistic inconsistencies and flaws than were their lower-developed classmates. This may be a particular developmental challenge for gifted and talented students than it is for the general population.

As the older students get to the pseudo-naturalistic and decision states, their drawing become more accurate as they start to represent ligth and shadow along with basic shapes to develop forms. However, with their increased artistic accuracy also comes amplified self-criticism. They compare their works to exemplary art and fail in their own eyes. Therefore, many students will opt out of art electives in the middle school years (Fussell, 2011). This may be a critical stage were teachers can be particularly useful in helping gifted students find value in visually describing the real world to help facilitate understanding rather than focusing solely on comparative deficiencies. However, if the student has opted out of art, it is more difficult for the art teacher to develop these skills. Therefore, the art teacher should work with the classroom teachers to develop artistic enhancements that are available for all students at these stages of development, not just those who feel artistically competent. Visual storytelling and photography may be ways that schools can help students develop artistic self-confidence and assurance.

Summary
Development happens in many areas of a child’s life at different times. Though some, like Piaget, argue that development is chronological, others see asyncrhonous development as dependent on different socioemotional and ethical opportunities. Children develop cognitively, emotionally, morally, and even artistically in stages, and the developments in each area for gifted studets may or may not be aligned with other age-level peers. Therefore, teachers need to consider the differences in development for each of these, to anticipate possible consequences for the differences, and to develop remedies for the varous issues that may arise for gifted and talented children.

References

Child Development Institute. (n.d.). Stages of social-emotional development—Erik Erikson. Retrieved from Child Development Institute: https://childdevelopmentinfo.com/child-development/erickson/
Chou, S. H. (2013, December). Director’s corner: The phychosocial development of gifted children. Retrieved from SENG: http://sengifted.org/archives/articles/directors-corner-the-psychosocial-development-of-gifted-children
Crain, W. (1985). Theories of development. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Fussell, M. (2011, June). The stages of artistic development. Retrieved from The Virtual Instructor: http://thevirtualinstructor.com/blog/the-stages-of-artistic-development
Huitt, W., & Hummel, J. (2003). Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Retrieved from Educational Psychology Interactive: http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/piaget.html
McLeod, S. (2007). Lev Vygotsky. Retrieved from Simply Pshcyology: http://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html

 

The Role of Curriculum in Identifying Giftedness

Charles Sutton
Galileo School for Gifted Learning
Level 7 Learning

In Hart and Risley’s (1995) landmark study about the diverse language experiences of children in their early years as a direct result of the education and professional differences between their parents, the researchers identified that children raised in poverty with undereducated parents experienced about 8 million fewer words spoken to them in the early years in contrast with the children of educated, professional parents. These differences in the years where children typically formulate language and early reading skills accounts for a tremendous disadvantage for some children when they arrive school age where they are building on those early skills. Other children have a much firmer structure upon which to develop new skills. Based on the research, it is no wonder that these children are also not identified as gifted and talented with the same frequency as their peers as they enter school with a far smaller lexicon from which to demonstrate their talents. Hart and Risley (1995) conclude from their estimates that it would take “…41 hours per week of out-of-home experience as rich in words addressed to the child as the average professional home…” (p. 205) from the very beginning in order to give the children from poverty an equal footing with those children born to more affluent families. Therefore, using testing that is language based to decide whether a child has gifts and talents that need development can only necessarily expand the gap between the percentages of children from different cultures and their identification and placement in gifted programs. Therefore, there needs to be additional methods for identifying latent talent through the use of curriculum.
One problem is tracking, which is placing students into academic tracks where students get varying quality curriculum based on the perceived intelligence and gifts of the students in the track. Spencer and Dowden (2014) suggest that these academic tracks cause “…discriminatory practices and the stratified nature of our schools creates an environment where African Americans [as one example] are not afforded exposure to advanced courses or post-secondary opportunities” (p. 2). In other words, in these tracks they lack the quality curriculum that children in the gifted and talent tracks and programs receive, so it widens that achievement gap later on. If children from poverty, including racial and ethnic minorities, are excluded from quality curriculum, and many are already at a disadvantage when it comes to identification through IQ and other kinds of standardized academic testing because of cultural biases of the tests (Spencer & Dowden, 2014), then how is it possible to identify the gifts and talents in these populations? It seems that many of the gifts and talents of these students may be revealed only if they are already receiving quality curriculum, but tracking and academic placement often prevents that from happening.
Here is where eliminating tracks and preferential placements can help. According to Montoya, Matias, Nishi, and Sarcedo (2016), it is recommended that “…districts dial back separate gifted programs in favor of personalized/differentiated and more challenging curriculum for all kids in every class” (p. 137). In doing so, the students who enter school at an academic disadvantage, like the one shown in Hart and Risley’s (1995) study, can have the opportunity to show their talents by working on more academically appropriate curriculum.

References

Hart, B., & Ridley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday esperience of young American children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.
Montoya, R., Matias, C. E., Nishi, N. W., & Sarcedo, G. L. (2016, March). Words are wind: Using Du Bois and Borudieu to ‘unveil’ the capricious nature of gifted and talented programs. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 14(1), 127–143.
Spencer, N. F., & Dowden, A. R. (2014, November). Racial identify development and academic achievement of academically gifted African American students: Implications for school counselors. Georgia School Counselors Association Journal, 21(1), 1–8. Retrieved from Georgia School Counselors Association Journal.

 

Thoughts about Assessing Creativity

Charles Sutton
Galileo School for Gifted Learning
Level 7 Learning
The theme of this week’s readings in my gifted endorsement class is related to assessing creativity in the classroom. It focuses on different kinds of qualitative and quantitative tools that can be used to measure various aspects of creativity from students. These tools include outside tools, that is tools that were created by other for the purpose of assessing student creativity, but there is also discussion of teacher/classroom creativity standards, and how the two should be considered together to ensure that what the school intends to measure is aligned well enough to the assessment tools to have meaningful results. Yet, the whole idea of quantifying creativity through testing seems counterproductive to the idea of being creative itself. So, additional sources were considered that discussed measuring creativity.

One resources that was discovered was an article by Susan M. Brookhart (2013) from the ASCD’s Educational Leadership page. In her discussion about assessing the creative processes used by children, the author has a rubric that she suggests using or modifying for that purpose. Yet, she also cautions the reader that the rubric should not be used to grade creativity. It’s only purpose is to give a visual scale by which the teacher can give feedback or the student can self-assess her/his creativity in the assignment. She writes

I created this rubric with some trepidation—because where there’s a rubric, there will be someone who’s thinking of using it to grade. Generating a grade is not the intended purpose of the rubric for creativity. Rubrics help clarify criteria for success and show what the continuum of performance looks like, from low to high, from imitative to very creative. For that reason, rubrics are useful for sharing with students what they’re aiming for, where they are now, and what they should do next. I do not recommend grading creativity (Brookhart, 2013, para. 22).

It seems wise to counsel against grading creativity because any attempt to quantify it diminishes the quality that makes it creative in the first place. Yet, as the author points out, we need tools to show students how they can increase their creative learning process. The question remains whether rubrics are the right approach to solve this problem.

It seems that the biggest hurdle to assessing creativity in school is the fact that teachers fail to recognize creativity in the first place. We score students on conformity rather than difference and rarely give the opposite feedback.
Brookhart (2013) demonstrates this by showing two poems, one that uses correct form and spelling and even includes a carefully drawn illustration that is a direct copy of the school’s logo, and the other which is about a boy’s self-perception that uses poor form and has spelling errors. The teacher gave only positive feedback for the first, but only negative for the second. Brookhart’s point is that the teacher failed to recognize that the second poem was more creative than the first one even though the quality of the work—the uniformity of the style—was inversely related to the level of creativity. Accordingly, the teacher only gave half the feedback.

Perhaps there is another aspect of creativity that is only marginally addressed by the discussion at hand. It seems that the grading system itself has not only limited children’s creativity, but made it less likely that teachers can see or assess creativity at all without at least making a concerted effort to do so. A large part of the problem is that recognizing creativity in the first place is left to non-creative standards. One of the first noticeable things is that most of the authors writing about the topic are defining creativity as putting together two or more divergent things in a unique way, and copying of any sort is considered less creative. Yet, if every child is taught to create by putting together to or more different things, then s/he isn’t being creative. S/he is copying the two or more divergent concepts idea of creativity. What is creative about that?

When the entire fine art’s world was becoming more and more abstract, then abstract and non-objective art became conventional. If everyone is doing divergent, non-copying, then it seems that it may not be so original to continue doing that. Yet, in the midst of these movements pop art developed were artists began copying things from popular culture like Campbell’s soup cans, ice cream cones, and balloon animals. Likewise, photorealism started to develop, where the artist became as close to camera-like in his/her reproduction skills. Were these forms of art less creative due to the copying aspects of their work, or were they more creative because they took a leap against a tide that was constantly moving toward creating works that expressed moods and feelings over anything tangible? In the pop art movement, there may have been some putting together of divergent ideas, like commercialism, society, and fine arts, but can one say the same about the photorealism movement? Yet, some extremely creative images started to develop from that movement as well. However, by Brookhart’s rubric, those artworks wouldn’t be considered creative because they don’t consider a “…variety of concepts from different contexts or disciplines…a wide variety of sources…[and they don’t combine ideas] in original and surprising ways…” (2013, fig. 1). They simply move against the tide and flow of the rest of the movements in art.

Considering this, it is questionable whether teachers can even recognize and define what creativity is, much less create rubrics or measuring tools to quantify it. Treffinger, Young, Selby, & Shepardson (2002) write, “The complex and multidimensional nature of creativity cannot be captured effectively and comprehensively by any single instrument or analytical procedure” (p. 25). Conversely, Brookhart (2013) says, “Creativity is a simple concept that can be difficult to get your head around. In its most basic sense, creativity means ‘original and high quality’” (para. 7). The reality is the definition of creativity is more elusive and dependent upon the times as well as the circumstances in which something is created than either group can accurately assess. It is certainly not something that can easily, in any sense, be assessed by teachers who aren’t really sure how to define it themselves. Rather than try to quantify or even qualify student creativity, teachers need to begin developing their own creativity and then make their thinking process transparent as an exemplar to their students of how to think creatively in any content area. Instead, we tend to show physical exemplars of what we think are creative works, which the students try to copy.

References

Brookhart, S. M. (2013, February). Assessing Creativity. Retrieved from Educational Leadership: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb13/vol70/num05/Assessing-Creativity.aspx
Treffinger, D. J., Young, G. C., Selby, E. C., & Shepardson, C. (2002). Assessing creativity: A guide for educators. Sarasota, FL: Center for Creative Learning.

 

From Where Does Inspiration Come? And, What Is Originality?

As teachers it is natural to want to invite our students to create original works in all subjects. We show exemplars of created works of art, music, dance, literature, photography, and various other mediums in order to inspire them to have original thoughts that they can build into new creations. Yet, we do not often define what originality is for ourselves or for our students. While researching the topics of inspiration, an answer to the question of originality was discovered that will help teachers get students to understand the processes of original thought and creativity.

Shaun Tan (2011) suggests that original ideas are not things that spring from something totally new. If we did come up with completely original ideas from nowhere, they would probably be too foreign for people to appreciate. Rather, he suggests that originality is combining several inspirations from varying sources in a unique way to develop a new way to show something. He gives several examples from his own work and tells about the wide range of materials that inspired each work. He writes, “Looking at my own work as an illustrator, I can discuss how this has a lot to do with combining various ideas from different sources to produce unexpected results, very much like rubbing different stones together for sparks, and gradually working these into flames” (pp. 4–5).

It seems that until students understand that when we ask them to be creative and original, we are not asking for a miraculous new creation from a blank slate, they will not take the time required for original thought. Rather, creativity, like innovation, is looking at seemingly dissimilar things and finding unique ways to combine them in new ways producing an original result. Tan’s (2011) descriptions of how he decided on the illustrations for The Rabbits come from inspirational sources that include other’s works of art, history, physics and math textbooks, observations of tree kangaroos, Victorian photography, antique furniture, architecture, and much more. He admits, “When I received John Marsden’s text for this book [The Rabbits], via my publisher, I experienced a sensation that usually accompanies the beginning of a new project: not knowing what to do. By itself, the half-page fax of text generated no ideas visually…” (pp. 4–5). He says this to explain that his creativity did not spring forth from the words of the story. Rather, he had to create a parallel story of his own based on his research, some inspirational materials, his own experiences, and his understanding of the metaphorical aspects of the story. Only then, did the creativity begin and his original ideas began to flow.

All too often students think if they don’t get that feeling or original thought instantly that it will not come at all. This is a fallacy that needs to be addressed. Originality and creativity are hard work. Inspirational images, songs, videos, photographs, stories, and other mediums can help produce new thoughts only once we have done the work to put them together and rub hard enough to create the sparks.

References
Tan, S. (2011, July 12). Originality and Creativity. Retrieved from Eric: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED458582.pdf

 

How to Separate the Good from the Bad in Cooperative Learning Scenarios

One of the things that is consistent with all of the team-based, problem-solving, education programs is that they incorporate some level of competition within a cooperative learning environment. While talking to a parent at my school last week who has a son on the Odyssey of the Mind team, she said, “…they did great. Took third place in the state. They just missed getting to the nationals. I have never seen so many kids so disappointed and upset about getting third prize for the state” (anonymous, personal communication, May 10, 2016). This conversation, among other recent competition-based events, reinforced my feelings that competition is inherently bad for education; it is the antithesis to cooperative learning. While Odyssey of the Mind, Future Problem Solvers, Lego Robotics, and other similar programs all incorporate cooperative learning and problem solving aspects, they also involve competition which seems to run counter to the benefits of the programs.

Robert Marzano (2007), who advocates for competition for the purpose of engagement, also suggests tempering its use saying, “…qualifications apply to the use of competition. First and foremost, it should not cause embarrassment…members of losing teams might feel devalued and even scapegoat individuals…” (p. 103). He goes on to say that if we use competition in a friendly manner for fun, then it has value as a motivating factor. Yet, it seems difficult, if not impossible, to predict whether the students will accept the fun aspect of the competition without getting too competitive on their own or even against teacher guidance. Rather, it is more likely that the students will become more competitive than the teacher directs just based on the competitive nature of American society.

Lickona (1991) writes, “Competition in America has deep cultural roots. But cooperative interaction, experienced regularly in some form over the full course of children’s schooling, at least holds out the hope of tempering the worst aspects of the competitive ethic that now bedevils our culture” (p. 188). Instead of tempering the bad aspects of competition through cooperative learning, it seems that eliminating competition—especially from projects that are cooperative in nature—would allow the full benefit of cooperative learning experiences to shine through. Kohn (1993) take it a step further saying that competition is harmful on a number of levels. First, he compares competition to lead paint. While eating candy and other sweets is relatively harmless and benign in small amounts, there is no correlation to eating lead paint. It is always bad regardless of how little one ingests. Like sugar to our teeth, Kohn suggests that completion slowly eats away at the safe and secure learning environment that children need while eroding self-esteem. Furthermore, using competition in school sends the basic message that others are obstacles in our way toward success, which is the exact antithesis of cooperative learning which sends the message that we all succeed at a higher level when we work together. Finally, making winning, which is always the goal of competitors, the motivational reason to do the work reduces the classwork as a means toward achieving an extrinsic reward. That cheapens the value of the learning itself and the cooperative aspects of the scenario in the eyes of the child. Why would I want to do the work or cooperate for its own sake if it is just a way to achieve something else? The fact that I need a reward at the end means that the work itself is not worth doing. These are all reasons why good programs like Odyssey of the Mind and Future Problem Solvers should eliminate the competitive aspects of their programs.

If the programs eliminated competition as the motivating factor, then what would be left to encourage the children to do the work? Well, the nature of the problem solving scenario in and of itself has intrinsic motivational value. If the students see real world applications that they can use their learned skills to solve, and the problem is interesting and authentic to the student, then the work itself should be motivational. O’Brien and Dillon (2008) write that one of the strongest motivating factors can be achieved in the following way. They write, “Providing more compelling reasons to read and to practice and build fluency with a range of texts…includes information on what readers understand and how they understand it—not just competition and comparative performance, but a focus on reading to learn interesting things” (p. 83). That is, when we make the materials interesting and compelling, and the participants can understand why they should do the work, then the work itself is reason enough to motivate students. Cooperation can work uninhibited by competition with the students getting the full benefit of both learning and cooperation without using extrinsic rewards (and punishments by losing) to coerce the student to learn. This is the limit to where it may be beneficial to using strategies like Odyssey of the Mind and Future Problems solvers while working in gifted education. Students can become engaged in meaningful work for the greater good with its own intrinsic rewards, but it should be done in a completely non-competitive environment for full benefit.

References

Kohn, A. (1993). Is competition ever appropriate in a cooperative classroom? . Retrieved from Alfie Kohn: http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/competition-ever-appropriate-cooperative-classroom/
Lickona, T. (1991). Educating for character: How our schools can teahc respect and responsibility. New York: Bantam Books.
Marzano, R. J. (2007). The art and science of teaching: A comprehensive framework for effective instruction. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
O’Brien, D. G., & Dillon, D. R. (2008). The role of motivation in engaged reading of adolescents. In K. A. Hinchman, H. K. Sheridan-Thomas, K. A. Hinchman, & H. K. Sheridan-Thomas (Eds.). New York: The Guilford Press.

 

How is creativity subjugated to other subjects and devalued in school

by Charles Sutton

Watching the Amy Tan (2008) and Sir Ken Robinson (2007) TED education videos about creativity raised questions regarding the seemingly reciprocal relationship between schools and creativity. In yet another TED video, sixteen year old entrepreneur Eddy Zhong (2015) makes a similar point. Zhong discusses how schools teach academic intelligence while ignoring all of the other kinds of intelligence that people can and must be able to develop to thrive. Among these intelligences that suffer most in traditional school settings is creative intelligence.
Zhong (2015) talks about how poorly he had been doing in school until he was given the opportunity to use his strengths to creatively developing new, innovative product designs for various entrepreneurial conferences. When he approached his high school peers to see if they would be interested in partnering with him to develop some of his new technology ideas, he was essentially disregarded by the entirety of the high school population. Yet, when he brought the same ideas to younger children, roughly 5–6 years younger than his peer group, they were enthusiastic about his creative endeavors offering their lunch money and ideas to support the creative development of the products. Zhong reasons that something about school over those five to six years from elementary school to high school makes the children lose their ability to think creatively and to take risks. This is strongly similar to the message that Robinson (2007) delivers in his own TED video.

What all of these videos have in common is that they show that creativity involves risk taking. Schools, on the other hand, are built to promote correct answers and specific academic intelligences. In an article entitled The Risks of Rewards by Alfie Kohn (1994), Kohn point out that study after study demonstrate that extrinsic rewards—including grades—diminish a child’s creative abilities. He writes, “students who are encouraged to think about grades, stickers, or other “goodies” become less inclined to explore ideas, think creatively, and take chances” (para 10). In other words, the more we reward children with good grades and other extrinsic incentives—and and punish with bad grades and other negative reinforcements—based on being correct in ways that require only a narrow scope of academic intelligences, the farther we are from fostering the other intelligences that students need to become successful adults. This is especially true of creativity because being creative requires risk taking that runs counter to the play-it-safe kinds of intelligence that is primarily supported by stressing the necessity to always give correct answers.

If this is the case, how can educators foster the different kinds of intelligences that are not currently being supported with as much rigor as are the traditional academic intelligences? It seems that a key may be found in Kohn’s (2016) most recent blog post. In the article, Kohn discuss how educators (and parents) often mistake quantity for quality when it comes to some of the key aspects required for learning. For example, we think that children need to be more motivated and more loved. Students must develop more self-esteem and they must internalize more of the values that we are trying to present if they want to be successful. Notice the emphasis on “more,” which is a term describing quantity.

While all of these things seem reasonable upon first inspection, they are counterproductive because—like intelligence—we tend view them as one-dimensional entities when in reality each of them is multi-dimensional. Instead of saying that children need more motivation; so, we will give them good and grades to help drive them, educators should be asking what kinds of motivations are constructive to better overall education quality promoting various kinds of intelligence, including creative intelligence. If we do, we will certainly want to foster intrinsic motivations and abandon rewards and punishments, including the current grading systems which only work on extrinsic motivational levels. Similarly, instead of thinking about all love as good, we need to realize that children primarily need unconditional love to help foster better learning in a safe environment. Conversely, if we heap on more conditional love for only those who act like we expect them to act and/or for only those who always get correct answers, then we are using love to control them while at the same time we are reinforcing less use of the creative intelligences with which children run the risk of making mistakes, thereby getting less love. Similar points can be made for self-esteem and internalization.

While Gardner introduced the concept that there are multiple intelligences that young people must develop, schools tend to ignore most of them in favor of linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence, and even then only promote a very narrow view of those intelligences that ignore the child’s creative potential (Lane, n.d.). While many educators do make a concerted effort to include multiple intelligences in their lesson plans, for the most part the other intelligences are used to support the brand of academic intelligence that is promoted in school instead of teaching via these intelligences for their own sake.

Even art and music teachers tend to support the inclusion of their own programs in school by saying that learning music or art helps a child succeed in mathematics or other traditional academic disciplines. Kohn (2015) writes, “[about justifying music education] Lending new meaning to the phrase ‘instrumental justification,’ efforts to bring music to children’s lives are often defended on the grounds of improved performance in math or a boost in general cognitive capabilities. (When was the last time you heard someone justify algebra as a way to help kids be better musicians?)” (para 4).

His point is that music, art, dance, drama, poetry, and other creative endeavors have independent value. They don’t need to subjugate themselves to math and language arts to be worthwhile. Certainly no one makes the point that math and language arts should be taught to help students perform in music and art better, although it is certainly true that they do just that. Educators automatically recognize the individual value of these intelligences while ignoring the value of teaching the creative intelligences for their own sake. This diminishes the students’ creative abilities.

Kohn (2015) goes on to discuss four reasons why subjugating the creative and other intelligences to the traditional academic subjects that schools tend to value over the others is counterproductive to a child’s overall education. Yet, the most compelling reason is that in doing so we devalue some of the very intelligences that help children succeed as well-rounded individuals. The being better at math or linguistic studies becomes a reward for using the arts and thereby children become less interest in the artistic activity in a similar way to the way that many students become about academic subjects when extrinsic rewards are offered. He writes, “Scores of studies have found that offering people a reward for doing something (such as reading or helping) tends to reduce their interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. One reason for this effect, though not the only one, is that anything presented as a prerequisite for something else — a means to another end — comes to be seen as less desirable. The recipient of the reward figures, ‘If they have to bribe me to do this, it must be something I wouldn’t want to do’” (Kohn, 2015, para. 8). A child hearing the argument that we should teach art or music to make them better at math or language arts thinks, on a subconscious level, that if math performance is the only reason to teach creative arts, then why should I want to do it at all?

In summary, schools tend to subjugate the creative intelligences to some of the more traditional academic values. This devaluation of creativity is the primary reason that traditional education programs tend to turn out adults who haven’t learned how to innovate or create. By focusing on two of the seven intelligences identified by Gardner, educators are ignoring large areas for the development of creative skill. Instead of using the arts for their own value, which is essentially creative, schools want to justify creative programs as enrichments or elective that help students become better at mathematics and language arts. This subjugation of one intelligence to another makes creatively less important and even less desirable to children.

References
Kohn, A. (1994, December). The risks of rewards. Retrieved from Alfie Kohn: http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/risks-rewards/
Kohn, A. (2015, September 30). Do this and you’ll get that: A bad way to defend good programs. Retrieved from Alfie Kohn: http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/do-this/
Kohn, A. (2016, April 23). Why lots of love (or motivation) isn’t enough. Retrieved from Alfie Kohn: http://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/lots-of-love/
Lane, C. (n.d.). Multiple intelligences. Retrieved from Tecweb: http://www.tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html
Robinson, S. K. (2007, January 6). Do schools kille creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson | TED Talks. Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
Tan, A. (2008, February). Where does creativity hide? . Retrieved from TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_tan_on_creativity
Zhong, E. (2015, February 6). How school makes kids less intelligent | Eddy Zhong TEDxYouth@BeaconStreet. Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yt6raj-S1M