Managing giftedness in early childhood

In research for her PhD, Dr Grant followed the lives of seven ‘gifted’ children for one full academic year in Melbourne’s north-east and northern suburbs, watching them interact and integrate with preschool and prep.

She found gifted children often ‘acted out’ their frustrations due to boredom, cried or behaved oddly not to gain attention but because they didn’t have the maturity to deal with issues any other way.

Dr Grant says her study showed a number of early childhood and primary teachers were not well equipped with the resources or knowledge needed to recognise and manage gifted children in the classroom.

She says it is important from gifted children’s earliest experiences of preschool and school that their learning needs are met if they are to maximise their learning potential, given the formative nature of this stage of education.

The term gifted refers to approximately five per cent of the population and applies to those with an IQ above 130. On average about 1 in 20 people in the Australian population fit into the group classified as gifted.

“On average, there is usually one gifted child in every classroom,” Dr Grant says.

“The problem is that some teachers may not recognise they have any gifted children among their cohort, while others may be aware of a child’s giftedness but resources to provide any special attention to them are not available.”

Another problem, she says, is the stigma attached to the term gifted and so-called ‘pushy parents’.

“About 80 per cent of parents don’t tell educators that their children are gifted – they tend to keep quiet about it due to fear of the stigma attached or trust that teachers will recognise it and respond accordingly.

“Further to this, gifted children will use their intellect to watch and work out the culture of the classroom and try to fit in rather than drawing attention to the fact that they are different. But ultimately this leads to further boredom and frustration.

“Some preschool teachers find out only through chance or by recognising small signs of gifted children’s abilities.

“It is a little easier for prep teachers as all students complete a base-line test at the start of school, however this is not really satisfactory as it doesn’t tell a teacher if a child has already advanced beyond baseline knowledge and skills.”

Dr Grant says her study showed that lack of stimulation for a gifted child could lead to seemingly immature behaviour which confused early childhood teachers and made it even less likely that new and interesting learning would be offered to them.

One of Dr Grant’s student subjects ‘Peter’ started school well, but found all the teacher offered at the beginning was play; he got bored, didn’t want to interact in this way and was then very unhappy about going to school.

“Another little boy ‘Stephen’ masked his behaviour so well at three-year-old preschool that his teacher refused to believe he was intellectually advanced even though at the same time at home he was rapidly teaching himself to read and write.

“Another young boy, ‘Michael‘, announced – ‘I don’t play with these sorts of toys, I’m not a child’ – to his teacher on the first day of kindergarten.”

Dr Grant, who worked as a pre-school teacher for more than 20 years prior to beginning her PhD, says she would now like to use the knowledge gained from her research to work with teachers to help them understand the importance of early identification and how to support the development of young gifted children.

“It is vital that teachers, even at preschool and prep level recognise the presence of these children and the need to provide for them educationally,” she says.

www.edfac.unimelb.edu.asu

Check our our Visions vodcast story, ‘Gifted children’, about identifying and supporting giftedness in early childhood education settings.
http://visions.unimelb.edu.au/episode/130