Gifted knowledge: What does it look like?

© 2016 Dr. Giuseppe Franco SantoroCatering for gifted students in the classroom context is emerging as a priority focus for many schools. Inclusive provision includes protocols for identifying these students and for implementing effective learning opportunities. This research examined options for this provision by using the novice-expert knower model to describe the knowledge characteristics of gifted students. The novice-expert knower model has drawn on previous work utilising the expertise framework. The model describes and interprets the similarities between an expert and gifted understanding. This allows for the identification of giftedness to be based on tasks within the context of the classroom by using the regular student understanding as a reference point. The identification of giftedness within the context of the classroom targets the issue of teachers being able to see instances of gifted thinking within regular classroom interactions. One of the reasons cited for a lack of differentiation for gifted students in the classroom is that teachers lack professional knowledge of what giftedness looks like in the context of regular classroom interactions. The present study investigated the efficacy of the novice-expert knower model for explaining a gifted learning capacity and learning outcomes in multiple domains in order to describe what the knowledge of gifted students looks like. Students were classified as verbally gifted, nonverbally gifted, globally gifted (gifted in both domains) or not gifted in order to assess how the knowledge representations differed across domains of giftedness. Using concept mapping procedures, students’ knowledge characteristics were assessed for two different topics taken from the regular school curriculum. Students’ knowledge characteristics were assessed prior to learning in order to assess their learning capacity for the topics and following teaching to assess their learning outcomes. Results showed that students gifted in both verbal and nonverbal domains (globally gifted students) displayed more expert-type characteristics than those gifted in a single domain and not gifted students prior to teaching (learning capacity) and following teaching (learning outcomes). Students gifted in a single domain varied in their characteristics of knowledge representation both in terms of their learning capacity and their learning outcomes. Overall, the globally gifted students were most likely to spontaneously extend and infer from the teaching ideas and to form either an inferred pattern or a ‘big picture’ understanding of the topics. The findings from the present study demonstrated that the novice-expert knower model can be used as a framework to describe the knowledge of gifted students and the knowledge of gifted students varies for students gifted in verbal and nonverbal domains. Concept mapping emerges as a useful tool for identifying gifted learning characteristics. Furthermore the findings provide more evidence to suggest that relying solely measures of intelligence to identify giftedness does not provide enough information to facilitate pedagogical provision for gifted students in the classroom. Finally, teachers could benefit from using the novice-expert knower framework to identify gifted knowledge in its various forms within the classroom