VAGTC Vision A4 Book 2022 vol 33 no1 EMAG

The Victorian Association for Gifted and Talented Children

Volume 33, No.1 2022

Facilitating Gifted Students’ Thriving in Mixed Ability Classrooms • ‘Teach up’ for excellence • Student engagement • Making friendships in mixed ability context • Student reflections: what works

Volume 33, No.1 2022 VISION, VOLUME 33 NO.1 2022 © 2022 Victorian Association for Gifted and Talented Children 2/3 Wellington Street, Kew, Victoria, 3101

CONNECT WITH US www.FaceBook.com/VAGTC Twitter @VicAGTC

SUBSCRIBE. BECOME A MEMBER www.VAGTC.org.au

EDITORIAL, ART & PRODUCTION TEAM VAGTC Committee Members: Karen Glauser-Edwards, Irene Anderson, Susan Nikakis, Kathy Harrison, Mark Smith and Amy Horneman.

COVER DESIGN Mariko Francis

DOCUMENT LAYOUT FOR PRINTING Douthat Design & Print | info@douthatdesignprint.com

MANY THANKS TO THIS ISSUE’S CONTRIBUTORS The most amazing people volunteered to make this issue what it is.

Much gratitude to: Verity, Lyvia, Elizabeth, Dhinara, Hannah, Andee, Madison, Fletcher, Kathy Harrison, Carol Ann Tomlinson, Edwin Lou Javius, Jennifer Riedl Cross, Tracy L. Cross, Amy Berry, Nicole Barnett, Bernadette Sheedy, Ralph Pirozzo, Victoria Poulos, and Amy Horneman.

For advertising inquiries and submission guidelines please visit www.VAGTC.org.au/Vision.

VISION Magazine welcomes contributions from members and students and invite student submissions of artwork, photographs, poetry, or short stories.

Best-practices, reflections and educator-submitted reviews and articles are also welcome.

Copyright. The Victorian Association for Gifted and Talented Children (VAGTC) 2022 All rights reserved.

VISION is published by the Victorian Association for Gifted and Talented Children (VAGTC) in two volumes each year and distributed to all VAGTC membership subscribers.

All material in VISION is wholly copyright (unless otherwise stated via CC license and reproduction without the written permission of VAGTC is strictly forbidden.

Neither this publication nor its contents constitute an explicit endorsement by the VAGTC of the products or services mentioned in advertising or editorial content.

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, VAGTC shall not have any liability for errors or omissions.

We’ve done our best to acknowledge all images used in this publication.

In some instances images have been provided to us by those who appear editorially and we have their permission in each case to use the images.

This publication contains links to websites at domains other than www.VAGTC.org.au.

Such sites are controlled or produced by third parties. Except as indicated, we do not control,endorse, sponsor or approve any such websites or any content on them, nor do we provide any warranty or take any responsibility for any aspect of the content of this publication.

We apologize if anything appears incorrectly. Please let us know and we will be sure to acknowledge it in the next issue.

1

32 No. 1 2022 2021 VISION, Volume 33

Tree of Zacchaeus - by Verity, Year 4, Our Lady of the Way, Kingsbury.

VAGTC provides professional development for educators and support to parents through seminar presentations provided online or face to face. Seminar lengths vary from one hour to a full day, and cover a wide variety of topics. We aim to expand our offerings.

Do you have expertise or resources that you would like to share? If you are interested in developing seminars and/or presenting, please send your expression of interest to info@vagtc.org.au. Remuneration is on an hourly basis.

Presenters should have: • Minimum of 5 years experience in gifted education • Post graduate qualifications in gifted education and/ or extensive experience working with gifted children 2

• Experience and ability in presenting at conferences/ seminars • VIT registration • ABN

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Contents Title Page Contributor

Student Voice Tree of Zacchaeus

2

Verity

Self-advocacy

4

Lyvia

Looking Through a Window

4

Elizabeth

Cubism Musical Instruments

9

Dhinara

Cubism Musical Instruments

9

Hannah

Differentiation in the Classroom 12

Andee

Poem 15

Imogen

Opportunities to do More 16

Madison

My Brother 16

Fletcher

Welcome From the President

5

Kathy Harrison

Resource Teach Up for Excellence All students deserve equitable access to an engaging and rigorous curriculum

6

Carol Ann Tomlinson & Edwin Lou Javius

Making Friends in Mixed Ability Relationships

10

Jennifer Riedl Cross PhD & Tracy L. Cross PhD

Raising the Bar for Student Engagement from Doing School to Driving Learning

13

Amy Berry

Facilitating Gifted Students to Thrive in the Classroom: Linking Research and Practice by Understanding School Context

17

Nicole Barnett

Facilitating Gifted Students’ Thriving in Mixed Ability Classrooms - A Reflection

20

Bernadette Sheedy

Providing for Bright Students through Cirriculum Differentiation

23

Ralph Pirozzo

Perspective & Reflection The Voices of Gifted Students in Mixed Ability Classes 26 Victoria Poulos

News Funding Continues for Department Schools

19

Centre for Higher Education 19 Studies (CHES) Launches in 2023!

3

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Student Voice

Self-advocacy Lyvia Song IT IS MY BELIEF THAT SELF-ADVOCACY FROM STUDENTS LIKE MYSELF IS VITAL SO THAT TEACHERS CAN GAUGE OUR UNDERSTANDING OF CLASSWORK AND WHETHER OR NOT A STUDENT HAS BEEN SUFFICIENTLY CHALLENGED.

However, many students like my younger self, and even as I experience from time to time nowadays, may find it difficult to approach teachers and convey their situation. I, for one, always overthought the simple interaction, worrying that my frequent requests for extra challenges would be irritating to the teacher, though this has never been the reality.

For this reason, it is essential that schools encourage communication and self-advocacy between students and teachers so that students are not being held back from their untapped potential as a result of hesitance to talk to teachers. Students should certainly not feel belittled by teachers in an environment that was created for the purpose of fostering growing minds. In this way, communication is essential for quality learning and individual development to occur.

At the time I began writing this, I felt, in reference to Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development diagram, that I was in the centre (student can complete on his/her own) for most subjects. I desired extension activities that put me in the middle ring, the zone of proximal development, as that would allow me to develop my knowledge and understanding of a specific area of a subject whilst still ensuring that I had completely understood the assigned coursework. As of this year, a new system has been introduced in my school. In every lesson posted on the digital platform we use for learning, there is a list of tasks to submit. Written in red text are the essential tasks; the bare minimum; what must be done. Next is green, standard, what most students should be aiming for.

And finally, blue text, which is extension work. These are supplementary

tasks that are optional but recommended that students undertake for a further challenge, often requiring students to conduct independent research of the topic that was introduced during the lesson. I have found this system very clearly labelled in regards to what I should be aiming for since I usually try to put in the extra effort to gain a deeper understanding of the unit that is being learned. Whenever I see the dark blue text at the bottom of the page, there is a sense of obligation to complete it, for I know that in doing so, my understanding of the coursework would be reinforced and bolstered. This is one step that my school has taken to ensure that all students complete what is necessary for them, personally, whatever their targets are; be it red, green, or blue.

Additional select classes consisting of two adjacent year levels of students with similar abilities in say, maths, English, or leadership and communication, is also a way in which my learning has been elevated.

I have participated in these lessons for a while now, and have found them to be engaging and refreshing since many of the discussions and activities attempted differ from what I complete in regular classes.

However, the most beneficial factor in the progression of my learning, even more so than described above, has been the guidance of an exquisite teacher who prompted discussions, encouraged participation in activities outside my comfort zone, presented new opportunities, and most importantly, inspired, and is still inspiring, me to date. Ultimately, the support, insights, and inspiration that a teacher can give far outweighs any trifling changes made to a schooling system. This is my opinion as a student whose advanced learning has been beneficially facilitated.

- Lyvia Song, Year 8, Northside Christian College

Looking Through a Window - by Elizabeth, Year 12, Emmaus College, Vermont South.

4

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Welcome

From the President Kathy Harrison AS WE EMERGE FROM THE CHALLENGE OF REMOTE EDUCATION, LOCKDOWNS, AND DISRUPTION TO SCHOOL ROUTINES, WE FIND OURSELVES FACED WITH NEW CHALLENGES. It has been a tough time for people in education

researchers. Some snippets to whet your appetite include making friends

and many are simply tired. And for some of us, it has robbed us of

but rather focus on being a good friend and reinforcing things which

our energy and creativity. I was reminded recently of the importance

bind us. Carol Ann Tomlinson reminds us that differentiation as opposed

of hope and optimism, taking time to celebrate simple pleasures and

to segregation is an equity issue. Ralph Pirozzo outlines strategies and

achievements. I find it so encouraging to hear stories of such pleasures

tools for use in the classroom. Woven through the different perspectives

and achievements, especially from our students. Some of these were

is the theme that students and teachers need (and want) to form

told in the recent Stories of the Gifted (National Education Symposium

powerful partnerships in learning. Amy Berry focuses on this partnership

facilitated by Mark Smith and Amy Horneman). Some were expressed in

and shared responsibility in the quest to improve student engagement.

submissions to our Gifted Awareness Week competition, themed ‘Like

Students Andee and Maddie explain why they want to be challenged

Minds’ – see this issue for a winning poetry entry. Parents have shared

and share the times when learning has been very rewarding. Teachers

their stories in our parent seminars and our consult line. I thank each and

Victoria Poulos, Bernadette Sheedy and Nicole Barnett reflect on their

every one of these people for showing how a desire to use our talents

own practice, what works and what doesn’t. Victoria mentions that the

to change the world really does lead to transformation of ourselves and

best lessons are sometimes the ones that appear to have gone completely

the world around us.

off track – in response to the students. Nicole offers us a framework for

Other news from VAGTC - we are expanding our online offerings to parents to include more informal Q&A sessions online, alongside a range of seminars on topics that parents have identified as helpful. Outside presenters from SENG and local neuropsychologist, Ruth Tesselaar will join us as will Joe Santoro… We were delighted to feature the positive impact of our parent seminars in a presentation at the Asia Pacific Conference for Gifted by myself and Dr Susan Nikakis.

This edition features many facets of differentiation in the mixed ability classroom and many voices, from students to practicing teachers to

in the mixed ability classroom: making difference less visible. The idea of visibility of difference is interesting as we don’t do away with differences,

reflection as a whole school, sharing her findings and suggestions for next steps. Thanks to all the contributors for their insights. I look forward to hearing how some of you have resonated with the ideas presented when we meet for a discussion evening later in the semester.

Kat hy H a о – Kathy Harrison VAGTC President

Call for Submissions - VISION Magazine Volume 33, No 2 Submissions are invited for our next edition on the theme of Strengthening Advocacy for Gifted Children. Due date 30th October, 2022.

VISION welcomes contributions on gifted education matters, including academic papers, reports on research, book reviews, perspectives from best practice and reflections. Some issues produced by VAGTC for VISION are thematic in nature. All written material should include a brief biographical note (approximately 30 words).

Photographs and images should be original, copyrighted to the author, of suitable quality for print reproduction (no smaller than 300dpi) and emailed in jpeg format. Articles should be between 800-1500 words and be original work. All material submitted will be evaluated by the editors and outside referees where appropriate.

The editors reserve the right to edit accepted works in order to fit the publication formatting and language.

Email to: vision@vagtc.org.au

5

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Keynote Resource

Teach Up for Excellence All students deserve equitable access to an engaging and rigorous curriculum.

Carol Ann Tomlinson & Edwin Lou Javius WITHIN THE LIFETIME OF A SIGNIFICANT SEGMENT OF THE POPULATION, SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES OPERATED UNDER THE BANNER OF “SEPARATE BUT EQUAL” OPPORTUNITY. In time, and at considerable cost, we came to grips with the reality that separate is seldom equal. But half a century later, and with integration a given, many of our students still have separate and drastically unequal learning experiences (DarlingHammond, 2010).

Many of our schools are over whelmingly attended by low-income and racially and linguistically diverse students, whereas nearby schools are largely attended by students from more affluent and privileged backgrounds (Kozol, 2005). Another kind of separateness exists within schools. It’s frequently the case that students attend classes that correlate highly with learners’ race and socioeconomic status, with less privileged students in lower learning groups or tracks and more privileged students in more advanced ones (Darling-Hammond, 2010).

The logic behind separating students by what educators perceive to be their ability is that it enables teachers to provide students with the kind of instruction they need. Teachers can remediate students who perform at a lower level of proficiency and accelerate those who perform at a higher level. All too often, however, students in lower-level classrooms receive a level of education that ensures they will remain at the tail end of the learning spectrum. High-end students may (or may not) experience rich and challenging learning opportunities, and students in the middle too often encounter uninspired learning experiences that may not be crippling but are seldom energizing. No group comes to know, understand, and value the others. Schools in which this arrangement is the norm often display an “us versus them” attitude that either defines the school environment or dwells just below the surface of daily exchanges.

Difficult to Defend Research finds that sorting, this 21st century version of school segregation, correlates strongly with student race and economic status and predicts and contributes to student outcomes, with students in higher-level classes typically experiencing better teachers, curriculum, and achievement levels than peers in lower-level classes (Carbonaro & Gamoran, 2003). Further, when lower-performing students experience curriculum and instruction focused on meaning and understanding, they increase their skills at least as much as their higher-achieving peers do (Educational Research Service, 1992).

These findings are even more problematic when combined with our current understanding that the human brain is incredibly malleable and that individuals can nearly always outperform our expectations for them. The sorting mechanisms often used in school are not only poor predictors of success in life, but also poor measures of what a young person can accomplish, given the right context (Dweck, 2007). Virtually all students would benefit from the kind of curriculum and instruction 6

we have often reserved for advanced learners—that is, curriculum and instruction designed to engage students, with a focus on meaning making, problem solving, logical thinking, and transfer of learning (National Research Council, 1999).

In addition, the demographic reality is that low-income students of color and English language learners will soon become the majority of students in our schools (Center for Public Education, 2007; Gray & Fleischman, 2004). Given that low-level classes are largely made up of students from these groups and that students in such classes fare poorly in terms of academic achievement, the societal cost of continuing to support sorting students is likely to be high (Darling-Hammond, 2006).

Finally, Americans tend to be justly proud of the democratic ideals that represent this nation. We nourish those ideals when we invest in systems that enable each individual to achieve his or her best (Gardner, 1961). In contrast, we undercut those ideals when the systems we create contribute to a widening gap between those who have privilege and those who do not (Fullan, 2001).

Too few students—including those who excel academically—regularly have education experiences that stimulate and stretch them. Teaching up is one key approach that teachers can use to regularly make such experiences available to all students, regardless of their backgrounds and starting points.

Seven Principles of Teaching Up To create classrooms that give students equal access to excellence, educators at all levels need to focus on seven interrelated principles.

1. Accept that human differences are not only normal but also desirable. Each person has something of value to contribute to the group, and the group is diminished without that contribution. Teachers who teach up create a community of learners in which everyone works together to benefit both individuals and the group. These teachers know that the power of learning is magnified when the classroom functions effectively as a microcosm of a world in which we want to live. They craft culturally and economically inclusive classrooms that take into account the power of race, culture, and economic status in how students construct meaning; and they support students in making meaning in multiple ways (Gay, 2000).

2. Develop a growth mind-set. Providing equity of access to excellence through teaching up has its roots in a teacher’s mind-set about the capacity of each learner to succeed (Dweck, 2007). It requires doggedly challenging the preconception that high ability dwells largely in more privileged students. The greatest barrier to learning is often not what the student knows, but what the teacher expects of the student (Good, 1987).

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

A teacher with a growth mind-set creates learning experiences that reinforce the principle that effort rather than background is the greatest determinant of success, a notion that can dramatically help students who experience institutional and instructional racism. A growth mindset also creates classrooms that persistently demonstrate to students and teachers alike that when a student works hard and intelligently, the result is consistent growth that enables people to accomplish their goals.

Teachers who teach up provide students with clear learning targets, guidelines, and feedback as well as a safe learning environment that supports them as they take their next steps in growth, no matter what their current level of performance is. Through words, actions, and caring, the teacher conveys to students “I know you have the capacity to do what’s required for success; therefore, I expect much of you. Because I expect much, I’ll support your success in every way I can. I’m here to be your partner in achievement.”

3. Work to understand students’ cultures, interests, needs, and perspectives. People are shaped by their backgrounds, and respecting students means respecting their backgrounds—including their race and culture. Teaching any student well means striving to understand how that student approaches learning and creating an environment that is respectful of and responsive to what each student brings to the classroom.

Many of us know the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would want to be treated. In classrooms that work for a wide spectrum of people, the Platinum Rule works better: Treat others as they want to be treated. This principle relates not only to teacher and student interactions, but also to teacher choices about curriculum and instruction.

For teachers who teach up, understanding students’ learning profiles is the driving force behind instructional planning and delivery. A learning profile refers to how individuals learn most efficiently and effectively.

How we learn is shaped by a variety of factors, including culture, gender, environmental preferences, and personal strengths or weaknesses.

Teachers can talk with their students about preferred approaches to learning, offer varied routes to accomplishing required goals, and observe which options students select and how those options support learning (or don’t). Teachers who teach up select instructional strategies and approaches in response to what they know of their students’ interests and learning preferences, rather than beginning with a strategy and hoping it works. Teaching up is not about hope. It’s about purposeful instructional planning that aims at ensuring high-level success for each student.

4. Create a base of rigorous learning opportunities. Teachers who teach up help students form a conceptual understanding of the disciplines, connect what they learn to their own lives, address significant problems using essential knowledge and skills, collaborate with peers, examine varied perspectives, and create authentic products for meaningful audiences. These teachers develop classrooms that are literacy-rich and that incorporate a wide range of resources that attend to student interests and support student learning.

Teachers who teach up also ensure that students develop the skills of independence, self-direction, collaboration, and production that are necessary for success. They commend excellence as a way of life and demonstrate to learners the satisfaction that comes from accepting a challenge and investing one’s best effort in achieving it. They know that when tasks help students make sense of important ideas, are highly relevant to students’ life experiences, and are designed at a moderate level of challenge, students are willing to do the hard work that is the

hallmark of excellence. These teachers scaffold each student as he or she takes the next step toward excellence.

For example, a high school teacher began a study of Romeo and Juliet by having students think of instances in books, movies, TV shows, or their own lives when people’s perceptions of others made it difficult to have certain friends, be in love with a particular person, or feel supported in their marriage. In this culturally diverse class, every student offered examples. They were fascinated with how often this theme played out across cultures, and they eagerly talked about what the examples had in common. As the teacher continued to guide them in relating the play to their own examples, the students remained highly engaged with a classic that might otherwise have seemed remote to them. When students make cultural and linguistic connections with content, they display more sophisticated thinking about essential learning goals (Gibbons, 2002).

5. Understand that students come to the classroom with varied points of entry into a curriculum and move through it at different rates.

For intellectual risk-taking to occur, classrooms need to feel safe to students from a full range of cultural, racial, and economic backgrounds.

Teachers who teach up understand that some students may feel racially and culturally isolated in their classes. Therefore, they find multiple ways for students to display their insights for the group. These teachers understand that every student needs “peacock” moments of success so classmates accept them as intellectual contributors.

For instance, a teacher might observe a student in a small-group setting who is questioning his peers about the solution to a math problem they are pursuing because it does not seem correct to him. A teacher who overhears the exchange might simply say to the group, “It seems important to me that Anthony raised the question he posed to you. His thinking brought to your attention the need to think further about your solution. The ability to ask a challenging question at the right time is a good talent to have.” Elizabeth Cohen (1994) calls that attribution of status.

Teaching up means monitoring student growth so that when students fall behind, misunderstand, or move beyond expectations, teachers are primed to take appropriate instructional action. They guide all students in working with the “melody line” of the curriculum—the essential knowledge, understanding, and skills—while ensuring ample opportunity for individuals and small groups to work with “accompaniments”— that is, scaffolding for students who need additional work with prerequisites and extending depth for students who need to move ahead. For example, some students might need additional work with academic vocabulary, the cornerstone skills of literacy and numeracy, or self-awareness and self-direction. Other students will explore and apply understandings at more expert levels.

Teaching up also calls on teachers to use formative assessment data to guide instructional planning, scaffold the learning of struggling students, and extend learning for advanced students. In other words, teaching up requires both high expectations and high personalization.

For instance, in a middle school science study of simple machines, the teacher made certain to preteach key vocabulary to students who found academic vocabulary challenging. Students then examined and analyzed several Rube Goldberg contraptions, watched and discussed a video, and read designated sections from a text. This multimodal approach ensured that everyone had a solid baseline of experience with concepts they would then explore.

Following a formative assessment on the topic, students worked on one of two tasks. Students who needed additional reinforcement of 7

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

how simple machines worked went on a guided tour of the school and speculated which simple machines were involved in mechanisms they came across in their tour, such as an elevator. Later, they used print and web sources to confirm or revise their projections. Students who had already demonstrated solid mastery of the topic worked in teams to identify a problem at school or in their lives that three or more simple machines working together could solve; they also used web and text sources to confirm or revise their projections.

6. Create flexible classroom routines and procedures that attend to learner needs. Teachers who teach up realize that only classrooms that operate flexibly enough to make room for a range of student needs can effectively address the differences that are inevitable in any group of learners. They see that such flexibility is also a prerequisite for complex student thinking and student application of content (Darling-Hammond, Bransford, LePage, & Hammerness, 2007). Teachers who teach up carefully select times when the class works as a whole, when students work independently, and when students work in groups. They teach their students when and how to help one another as well as how to guide their own work effectively. This kind of flexibility is commonly found in kindergarten classrooms—a strong indication that it’s within reach of all grade levels.

An elementary math teacher in one such classroom regularly used formative assessment to chart students’ progress. On the basis of what she learned, she built into her instructional plans opportunities for small-group instruction in which she could teach in new ways concepts that some students found difficult, extend the thinking of students who had mastered the concepts, and help students connect what they were learning to various interest areas. Occasionally, she modified the daily schedule so she could work with a portion of the class more intensively.

In those instances, some students might work on writing assignments or with longer-term projects in the morning while the teacher met with a given group on a math topic and guided their work. In the afternoon, students would reverse assignments so that she could work with the morning’s writers on math. She found that working with the small groups at key times in the learning cycle significantly increased the achievement of virtually all the students in the class.

In the same vein, a team of high school teachers took turns hosting a study room after school on Monday through Thursday. They expected students who hadn’t completed their homework to attend. They also invited students who were having difficulty with course requirements and encouraged all students to come if they wanted additional support.

Many students did. The sessions, which were less formal than class, also promoted sound relationships between the teachers and their students and among the students themselves.

7. Be an analytical practitioner. Teachers who teach up consistently reflect on classroom procedures, practices, and pedagogies for evidence that they are working for each student—and modify them when they’re not. They are the students of their students. They are vigilant about noticing when students “do right,” and they provide positive descriptive feedback so students can successfully recall or replicate the skill, knowledge, or behaviors in question. They empower students to teach them, as teachers, what makes students most successful. They share with students their aspirations for student success. They talk with students about what is and isn’t working in the classroom, and they enlist students’ partnership in crafting a classroom that maximizes the growth of each individual and of the group as a whole.

Consider a group of primary teachers who conducted individual assessments of kindergartners’ understanding of symmetrical and 8

asymmetrical figures and then discussed what they observed. They realized that vocabulary played a large role in the success of students who mastered the concept. As a result, they were better positioned to support the growth of students who were initially less successful by adding vocabulary practice to math instruction.

Or, consider a middle school teacher who talked often with his students about his confidence that they were engineers of their own success. To reinforce that point, he carefully observed students during whole-class, small-group, and independent work. He’d make comments privately to students as he moved among them or as he stood at the door when they entered or left the room: “Josh, you provided leadership today when your group got off task. I wanted you to know it made a difference.” “Ariela, you stuck with the work today when it was tough. Good job!” “Logan, are you still on track to bring in a draft of your paper tomorrow so you’ll have a chance to polish it before it’s due next week?”

A Challenge Worth Taking In her provocative book, Wounded by School, Kirsten Olson (2009) concludes that perhaps the deepest wounds schools inflict on students are wounds of underestimation. We underestimate students when they come to us with skills and experiences that differ from the ones we expected and we conclude they’re incapable of complex work. We underestimate students when they fall short of expectations because they don’t understand the school game and we determine that they lack motivation. We underestimate them when we allow them to shrink silently into the background of the action in the classroom. We underestimate them, too, when we assume they’re doing well in school because they earn high grades, and we praise them for reaching a performance level that required no risk or struggle.

Classrooms that teach up function from the premise that student potential is like an iceberg—most of it is obscured from view—and that high trust, high expectations, and a high-support environment will reveal in time what’s hidden.

Martin Luther King Jr. (1965) reminded us that human beings are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

That truth has never been more evident than it is today. Schools have the still-untapped possibility of helping all kinds of learners become what they ought to be by developing the skill— and will—to proliferate classrooms in which equal access to excellence is a reality for all learners.

Carol Ann Tomlinson is William Clay Parrish Jr. Professor at the Curry School of Education, University of Virginia. Her work with differentiated instruction focuses on developing classrooms that provide equity of access to high-quality learning opportunities for all students; cat3y@virginia.edu.

Edwin Lou Javius was founder of EDEquity, an organization that works to help educators develop an equity mind-set as a means of eliminating the achievement gap. Edwin passed away in March 2020.

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Cubism Musical Instrument - by Dhinara, Year 2, Our Lady of the Way, Kingsbury.

Emergence of Being - by Hannah, Year 11, Ganazzano FCJ College, Kew.

BECOME A MEMBER www.vagtc.org.au Membership Includes: School $137.50

2 Editions of VISION

Individual or Family $66

Resource Book

Student $49.50 Add $33 to any membership for annual AAEGT Journal subscription

Select Seminars Advocacy Resources Consultation at Reduced Rates 9

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Keynote Resource

Making Friends in Mixed Ability Relationships Jennifer Riedl Cross, PhD & Tracy L. Cross, PhD RESEARCH IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES ABOUT THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF PSYCHOSOCIAL WELLBEING HAS FLOURISHED OVER THE PAST 25 YEARS (CROSS & CROSS, 2021). This includes recent research focusing on interactions among students in classrooms as well as among teachers and students (e.g., Farmer et al., 2019). More specifically, research on the formation of friendships among students includes studies emerging from previous research on the lived experience of students with gifts and talents (SWGT; Coleman et al., 2015). These recent research foci have set the stage for considering more specific aspects of factors affecting psychosocial wellbeing or thriving. Applying research from both the general population of students as well as those considered high ability is showing promise for enabling professionals who want to help SWGT develop psychosocially in a healthy manner.

Peer relationships are critical to thriving. Decades of psychological research confirm the need humans have for positive, caring relationships with others (Baumeister & Leary, 1993; Ryan & Deci, 2000). In general, SWGT do not have more difficulty than peers in forming positive peer relationships (Lee et al., 2012). There are, however, unique aspects of the experience of SWGT that can create challenges to the development of friendships that other students will not face. To support SWGT in a mixed-ability classroom, it is important to recognize the uniqueness they bring to their peer relationships. In this article, we synthesize research derived from two theories in a model that clarifies the process of friendship development among high-ability students and their peers.

In 1985, Coleman proposed that giftedness is a stigmatizing characteristic. Once others learn of their exceptional abilities, a SWGT will be treated differently. In order to have the interactions they desire, they learn to manage the information others have about them. Studies

10

with hundreds of SWGT support this paradigm. When asked how they would respond in a situation that exposed their giftedness, many students would avoid being “outed” by dodging a direct question or even lying about their academic success (T. Cross et al., 1991). In a crosscultural study of the social experience of giftedness (J. Cross et al., 2019), SWGT in all five countries described the visibility of their abilities and the negative effects it sometimes had on their peer relationships.

They carefully avoided bragging about high grades and made efforts to help students when they knew the material. Peer rejection is not uncommon among SWGT (J. Cross, Bugaj et al., 2016; J. Cross, Vaughn et al., 2019), making it all the more important for us to better understand why rejection happens and how to combat it.

All of us engage in social comparison (Festinger, 1954). We do downward comparisons when we see someone performs (in any domain) more poorly than we do and that makes us feel good about ourselves. When someone performs better than us, the upward comparison we engage in finds us lacking and that will usually make us feel bad about ourselves.

This is where the situation of SWGT is at odds with the mountains of social comparison research. When they regularly outperform others, those SWGT who are socially aware will recognize that others are doing upward comparisons with them as the target. Instead of making them feel good about themselves, it may lead to anxiety about how their peers feel. Exline and Lobel (1999) labeled this sensitivity about being the target of a threatening upward comparison. Many SWGT exhibit this sensitivity and have learned to take action to avoid the threat of being exposed (e.g., avoiding bragging, helping). This research foundation on the stigma of giftedness and social comparison sets the stage for a model of friendship development among SWGT, which is especially relevant to mixed-ability friendships.

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Fig. 1 Process of High-Ability Students’ Friendship Development

A Process Model Figure 1 depicts the process that begins with the meeting of two people, Person A and Person B, and ends at Point D, no friendship, or Point E, friendship (T. Cross & Cross, 2022). Many things go into the determination of fit (Point A) between Person A and Person B. How socially skilled they are, what kind of things they enjoy doing, their personalities, myriad characteristics that have little or nothing to do with intellectual ability will apply to the decision that two people will like each other. If Person A and Person B are not a good fit (Point A), they will not likely become friends (Point D), regardless of how well matched they are in intellectual ability. Just sharing high ability does not make two people compatible. If, however, Person A and Person B find they are a good fit, differences in ability come into play (Point B). Is the other person’s ability evident? Is there some way Person A can tell the level of Person B’s abilities (in any domain that matters to them) and vice versa? If the answer is “No”, there is a good possibility they can become friends (Point E), because they have already passed the compatibility test at Point A. If it is possible to determine ability level, that will likely be due to its visibility (Point C). Abilities are evident in actual performances, such as a competition-winning essay or the use of a word others do not know. Competence in a subject area will be obvious when Person A or B regularly knows the answer to questions or completes assignments more quickly than others. Teachers may make ability visible by pointing out Person A or B’s success, even holding them up as examples to classmates. The environment, itself, can make abilities visible. Students with the gifted label are readily recognized when they leave class for a pull-out program or attend an honors class. There are many ways ones’ abilities can be exposed.

There are three possibilities once abilities have been exposed. First, Person A’s and Person B’s abilities may be the same. If this is the case, friendship (Point E) is likely, because they have already determined they are a good fit. Perhaps one person in the dyad has less ability than the other. If they want the relationship to be successful, the outperformer can take steps to show they care about the person who may now be

engaging in negative upward comparison. Strategies that have been found to work in this situation are 1) lowering oneself by downplaying their success, hiding their superior performance, even underperforming; 2) elevating the outperformed person by complimenting and encouraging them, pointing out their strengths, giving advice or offering help; and 3) strengthening the relationship by engaging in prosocial behaviors, such as being nice, doing favors, giving gifts, and helping (Zell et al., 2020). If the higher performer does these things in an effort to support the relationship, it is likely to result in friendship (Point E). If not, no friendship (Point D) is the likely outcome.

In the case where one person has higher abilities, the other can strive to improve their own abilities through practice, studying, and making other efforts that can help them perform at the same level, in which case friendship (Point E) will be likely. In a mixed-ability classroom, there will be students who can improve their abilities to the level of some SWGT and this will increase the likelihood of friendship (Point E).

Such improvement will not be possible in all cases. Profoundly gifted abilities, for example, will be unattainable for most. When this is the case, it is up to the person with higher abilities to take steps to show they care about the relationship with this person who is otherwise a good fit. The strategies mentioned above of lowering oneself, elevating the outperformed person, and strengthening the relationship (Zell et al., 2020) will be key to friendship. If steps are taken to show they care, chances are good for a friendship (Point E) to develop. If not, chances are good that there will not be one (Point D).

Fostering Friendships The process described in Figure 1 offers clear opportunities for adult support. The chance of obtaining a good fit (Point A) can be enhanced by teaching students social skills (e.g., communications, perspective taking) directly. Allowing students to pursue their interests will offer opportunities to find common ground. Adults may play a role in whether ability level can be determined (Points B & C). Competitions can be quite threatening to budding mixed-ability relationships, especially if the stakes are high (Exline & Lobel, 1999). Friendly competitions with 11

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

low stakes are less likely to cause hurt feelings and allow high-ability students to lower themselves (e.g., downplaying success, conforming their language to the level of peers) without fear of losing out and lowerability students to not feel bad about being outperformed.

Critical to the success of a mixed-ability friendship is a knowledge of strategies to elevate the outperformed and to strengthen the relationship.

Adults can model these strategies and teach students to recognize when they are needed. Lowering oneself may be helpful, as well, to reduce the impact of the outperformance. It could be detrimental, however, for high-ability students to constantly need to downplay their performance.

This is an excellent reason to provide opportunities for SWGT to be together at times, even when mixed-ability classes are the norm. The path to friendship is simplest when there is a good fit and 1) abilities are not apparent or 2) abilities are the same.

This diagram of the development of friendships is an important tool for enabling those of us who are committed to assisting SWGT as they live their lives in school situations wherein they often outperform the other students in their classes. The model builds on a sound research footing regarding the potential for a stigma of giftedness to affect the lives of these students. Social comparison research clarifying the possible effects of outperforming others on the overall classroom climate and the individual students involved provides the missing link to students’ lived experiences. More fully understanding the unique interactions of SWGT in school settings provides us additional tools for creating classroom communities that are supportive of all students. These classrooms offer fertile grounds for encouraging and supporting friendships. A better understanding of the friendship development process also bodes well for our ability to assist students in avoiding many of the hampering effects of school environments that allow a stigma associated with giftedness to flourish.

Jennifer Riedl Cross, Ph.D. is Director of Research at the William & Mary Center for Gifted Education. She is the incoming Editor of the National Association for Gifted Children’s research journal, the Gifted Child Quarterly. She co-edited, with Tracy L. Cross, of the Handbook for Counselors Serving Students with Gifts and Talents, now in its second edition. Her research in the field emphasizes social and psychological aspects of gifted education.

Tracy L. Cross, Ph.D., holds an endowed chair at William & Mary, the Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Psychology and Gifted Education, and is executive director of the W&M Center for Gifted Education and the Institute for Research on the Suicide of Gifted Students. He has published more than 150 articles, book chapters, and columns; made hundreds of presentations at conferences; and published numerous books. He is past editor of numerous journals, including Gifted Child Quarterly, Roeper Review, and the Journal for the Education of the Gifted and is founder of the new SENG Journal: Exploring the Psychology of Giftedness. He recently served a second term as president of The Association for the Gifted (TAG) and is president emeritus of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC).

Student Voice

Differentiation in the classroom Andee Tham THROUGHOUT MY SCHOOL LIFE, I HAVE EXPERIENCED TWO FORMS OF DIFFERENTIATION IN THE CLASSROOM. Both were greatly beneficial to my learning, as each catered to a different element of my learning style.

In Middle School, I found myself with a large capacity for extension.

During this time, differentiation came in the form of various options for assessment tasks. The ‘matrix’ was a grid that presented tasks catering to unique talents and interests, as determined by Gardiner’s Multiple Intelligences. It paired these with the different levels of learning in Bloom’s Taxonomy. Students were allowed to choose what suited them best, whether that be a musical performance or a video presentation. In accordance with my strengths at the time, I chose to work on a pair of extended essays. To this day, they are some of my best work. Not only did this form of differentiation lead to brilliant outcomes for me, but the entire class also produced work that was of high quality and showed off their unique capabilities.

Just this year came my second experience with differentiation. In the 12

second semester, the course of action is to split the year 10 Maths class into two groups. The accelerated ‘10A’ course is designed to prepare students who intend to take VCE Mathematical Methods by covering concepts in advance. As a result, concepts are taught and assessed much more quickly than in a regular class.

One of the main things that gifted students find issue with is learning at a faster pace than is offered by their classes. As a result, they experience frustration, boredom, and feel as though they are wasting time. Compared to regular classes — particularly Maths — I’ve found that the accelerated pace of the 10A class has suited me better. I am able to learn more efficiently and make use of the capacity within me.

Ultimately, that sentiment is why I think differentiation is so important.

The time and capacity of able students are being wasted by capping them at the standard of their peers. The fact of the matter is, every student learns differently and has a different capacity to learn. Restricting those with a need for extension is just as damaging as neglecting those in need of assistance.

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Keynote Resource

Raising the bar for student engagement: From doing school to driving learning Dr Amy Berry STUDENT ENGAGEMENT HAS BEEN REPEATEDLY CONNECTED TO VALUED STUDENT OUTCOMES SUCH AS ACHIEVEMENT, ACADEMIC SUCCESS, AND WELLBEING. Conversely, when students are disengaged, they are at risk of depression, dropping out of school, and engaging in behaviours that put their physical and mental wellbeing at risk. For this reason, improving the engagement of students in classroom learning is a high priority for many schools and teachers. There is often an assumption that high achieving students are highly engaged students, that while students are succeeding at school they are protected from the negative outcomes that come from being disengaged. However, it is possible for a high-ability student to be succeeding academically AND feeling highly disengaged and disconnected from learning at school.

Disengaged but Doing School A study of students attending high-performing schools reported that, despite their success academically at school, less than one-third of the students reported regular full engagement in their schoolwork (Connor & Pope, 2013). That is, the majority of students were busy doing the assigned work at school but did not enjoy it or find it valuable and meaningful, leading the authors to conclude that “simply working hard, achieving, and getting high grades is not enough for students to thrive” (Connor & Pope, 2013, p. 1438). Others have reported that mainstream, mixed-ability classrooms often undermine rather than support gifted students to flourish and thrive at school, with many students reporting high levels of boredom, stress, and mental health issues (Fredricks et al., 2010). Unfortunately, schools often do little to foster enjoyment and excitement about learning. For high-ability students, the situation may

be further compounded by lessons that fail to provide a sufficient level of challenge to facilitate learning.

What do we mean by student engagement?

Despite decades of research, we appear no closer to improving the engagement levels in our classrooms. While existing frameworks for student engagement are well developed and widely used in research, how well they reflect the real-world classroom experiences of teachers and how useful they are for teachers who are interested in improving student engagement remains in question. To date, there has been limited research into how teachers think about student engagement in classroom learning experiences. In 2016, I began investigating teacher perspectives of student engagement and developed a continuum of engagement to represent the six different forms of engagement/ disengagement described by the teachers (see Figure 1). As it turns out, teachers mean lots of different things when they use the term engagement. They described engagement as ranging from passively Participating in planned learning activities to more active forms of Investing in learning and proactively Driving progress in learning. Similarly, they described disengagement as ranging from passively Withdrawing from learning activities to more active forms of Avoiding work and Disrupting the learning environment (Berry, 2020). The continuum has since been included in The Distance Learning Playbook (Fisher, Frey, & Hattie, 2020), with many teachers finding it a useful frame of reference for thinking about student engagement in their lessons.

One of the potential roadblocks to improving student engagement is the

Figure 1. Continuum of student engagement.

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

PASSIVE

DISRUPTING

AVOIDING

WITHDRAWING

PARTICIPATING

INVESTING

DRIVING

Disrupting the learning environment

Looking for ways to avoid work

“Flying under the radar”

Doing the work

Asking questions about what they are learning

Setting goals for their learning

Refusing to participate

Being off-task

Physically separating from others

Being on-task

Valuing what they are learning

Seeking feedback to guide improvement

Arguing with the teacher or peers

Being unprepared

Being distracted

Paying attention

Showing interest or curiosity in learning

Seeking out challenges

Trying to distract others

Looking for reasons to leave the room or move around the room

Putting in limited effort

Responding to questions

Enjoying learning

Monitoring and evaluating progress

Off-task talking with others

Following instructions Sharing ideas and thinking with peers

DISENGAGEMENT

ENGAGEMENT

Collaborating with others towards a shared goal (adapted from Berry, 2020)

13

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

lack of clarity about what it means to be engaged in learning in the classroom. The term student engagement is so ubiquitous in schools that it is assumed everyone is in agreement about what it means. It is only when you listen to teachers describe what they mean by student engagement that you begin to question the adequacy and utility of the term. Engagement is used to describe both passive compliance in lessons (e.g., paying attention) and self-directed learning (e.g., setting goals and pursuing them). Disengagement can mean the student is passively “tuned out” or it can mean they are actively disrupting the lesson. Having a richer and more nuanced language for engagement is necessary if we are to have more meaningful and productive conversations about improving student engagement in the classroom.

Expanding our expectations for student engagement A second potential roadblock to improving student engagement is the persistently low expectations for engagement in classroom learning experiences. The expectation for engagement in many classrooms is for students to pay attention, follow instructions, stay on task, and complete their work on time. In other words, the bar is set low at passive Participating. For many high-ability students, this can be achieved with limited effort, meaning they can succeed in achieving these expectations while passively disengaging and Withdrawing from learning. As one student put it, “I could sleep through class and still do well because it was geared so below me” (Fredricks et al., 2010, p. 25). The continuum of engagement illuminates the low level of those expectations and what it might look like if we were to raise those expectations to more active forms of engaging in learning. It also provides a rich but simple language for communicating how students are expected to engage in learning during the lesson by describing specific behaviours that are characteristic of each form of engagement. If the goal is set for Driving, both students and teachers need to agree on what successful Driving will look like in that learning experience or lesson.

Supporting student agency and autonomy in learning Raising the expectation for student engagement requires teachers to evaluate their existing practices and their effectiveness in supporting students to become Invested in learning and successfully Drive their learning forward. Shifting the goalposts for engagement has consequences for both students and teachers, requiring a new language for engagement, new skills, and new strategies for reaching higher levels of engagement. For example, students (even high-ability students) may need to develop their capacity to set good goals for learning, their skills in collaborating and strategies for learning, their ability to evaluate progress and respond to feedback, and their strategies for managing setbacks during learning. Likewise, teachers may need to learn new strategies for taking thinking to higher levels and supporting students to become self-directed, highly engaged learners.

Unfortunately, student engagement is often seen as something that teachers do to students rather than with them. Instead of being engagement partners, students are often portrayed as passive pawns that need to be pushed or pulled by the teacher in the direction that the teacher wants them to go – which can lead to a battle over engagement.

As teachers, we often receive messages that it is our responsibility to direct and manage student engagement, including “getting them engaged”, “hooking them in”, and “re-engaging them”. This might make sense if the ultimate goal is passive Participating, but not if the goal is Driving. To get to the highest levels of engagement, students need to share the responsibility for engagement and become active partners in the quest to improve it. Students come to school rich with inner motivational resources that they can choose to invest in learning 14

or elsewhere. Our role as teachers is to help them recognise these inner resources and work with them to energise that motivation rather than try to control it. Instead of trying to force students to engage, we aim to help them want to choose to invest their effort and motivation in learning. Is this a more challenging pathway? Yes, but it is also more effective in the long run.

To thrive in the classroom, students need to feel valued and connected to others, competent and capable of taking on and mastering challenges in learning, and able to make choices and have a say about what they learn and how they learn it (Reeve, 2012). When we attempt to control student engagement and frustrate rather than support these basic psychological needs, this can backfire and lead to increases in both active and passive forms of disengagement (Earl et al., 2017). Unfortunately, these controlling practices are quite common in classrooms, contributing to increased levels of boredom, frustration, anxiety, disengagement, and lower levels of confidence in tackling challenges during learning (Assor et al., 2005; Earl et al., 2017; Skinner et al., 2008).

So, how can teachers raise the bar on student engagement in their classrooms? To begin, they can collaborate with students to establish a partnership for engagement and a new set of expectations for engagement.

• Introduce the continuum as the language of engagement

you will use in your partnership. Seek student input into the different forms of engagement and disengagement to expand the descriptions and reflect the experiences of your students.

For example: What do they think, feel, and do when they are Withdrawing from learning activities? What differences do they see between Participating, Investing, and Driving learning? What are the most common ways that they Avoid doing work?

• Ask students to set intentions for their engagement at the start

of a learning activity. Will they aim for Participating, Investing, or Driving? Get them to use the descriptions of each form of engagement to make a plan for how they will engage in learning.

• Help students to reflect on and evaluate their engagement at

different points during learning. Are they on track to meet the intentions they set for themselves? What evidence do they have to support this judgment? If they are not on track, what can they do about it?

• Develop a culture of moving beyond Participating and look for

opportunities to ‘up the ante’ on thinking and engagement.

Work with students to make plans to take engagement further – getting more Invested in learning and taking on the challenge of Driving progress and improvement.

• Make a habit of seeking student feedback on engagement and

ideas for making learning more engaging. What are you doing that helps them to feel more motivated and get more engaged?

What are you doing that gets in the way of that? How could things be adapted to improve motivation and engagement?

Show that you are not only willing to listen, but also flexible and responsive to their input.

• Help students to develop strategies for getting more motivated to

learn. Teach them strategies for becoming more curious, taking thinking to a deeper level, thinking about things from a different perspective, and interacting with others to energise motivation and interest in learning. Ask students to share their strategies for getting more motivated and engaged. What do they do that helps them to want to get more engaged? What do they do when they find themselves disengaging from learning?

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Challenges to consider This approach is intended for all students, regardless of their ability level.

In a mixed-ability classroom, all students are encouraged to develop their skills as Drivers in learning and their capacity to actively contribute to the engagement partnership. While the specific goals for learning might look different for different students, the expectation that students will be actively engaged in learning remains the same for all. For highability students, this means an expectation that they are stretching themselves and demonstrating improvement, something that may put them in unfamiliar territory. While this approach has the potential to benefit the learning and wellbeing of high-ability students, it is not without its challenges. Some students will welcome the opportunity to take on bigger challenges and get more actively engaged in learning, but others will not.

• Students who are used to winning at the old game of school may

resist a change to the rules of engagement. We are asking them to put more effort in and take more responsibility for their own engagement, which requires the motivation to want to invest in learning and the willingness to risk failure as they take on greater challenges. Students may become frustrated and demand a return to Participating - “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

• Students who are used to easy success and being celebrated

for always getting things right may have a negative view of mistakes, seeing them as a threat rather than a natural part of learning. This can present a barrier to taking on the increased challenge required for higher levels of engagement. Be patient

and support these students to develop a more positive view of challenge and struggle, as well as strategies for seeking help should the challenge become too great.

• We should not assume that high-ability students have all of the

skills they will need to get to the Driving level of engagement. Be prepared to teach students how to set realistic goals for learning, how to reflect on and evaluate their progress and engagement during learning, how to problem solve during learning, how to collaborate with others to support learning, and how to use feedback to improve.

Changing the culture of engagement in the classroom will take time and patience as both teacher and students master the skills needed to establish a culture of high engagement in the classroom. Be on the lookout for improvements and discoveries along the way and celebrate these with your students when they happen, they are the fruit of your collective efforts and commitment to improving engagement in your classroom.

Dr Amy Berry is an Honorary Fellow with the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Her research interests include student engagement in learning, curriculum and pedagogy, and teacher professional learning. Amy is the author of Reimagining Student Engagement to be published by Corwin Press in late 2022 (corwin.com).

Student Voice

Poem Imogen Byrne Alone No-one else Rejected and Afraid To be yourself, open About whom you are and What you are able to accomplish Stuck alone in a corner, hiding, afraid Unable to recognise your capabilities and inner strengths Your uniqueness makes you an outcast, not a leader

Until that first step, when the teacher realises that You have just not found your people yet And then you walk into that classroom The connection is instantaneous, that click People thinking just like you The conversation simply flows No cowering anymore You are Found - Imogen, Year 7, Methodist Ladies’ College

15

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Student Voice

Opportunities to do more Madison Kluchkovsky THROUGHOUT MY SCHOOLING A COMMON THEME PRESENTED ITSELF IN RELATION TO MY ACCESS TO CHALLENGING AND FULFILLING SCHOOL WORK. I found that most teachers did not cater for my learning needs as a gifted student. I was not stretched out of my comfort zone and taught new content. I was treated like everyone else in class and learnt to conform to the perspective that simply learning and functioning at the average level of the curriculum was the best for my education.

I often had setbacks in my learning as school work was commonly repetitious.

I found that most of my teachers did not invest in helping me foster my love of learning; therefore there was no opportunity for learning more within my class setting and expanding myself.

This hurt my morale and put me in a cocoon that did not allow me to experience satisfaction in my schooling performance and individual repertoire of abilities.

As a gifted and high achieving student I want to be heard, I want to be the best version of myself and most importantly, I want to be valued. I found that the major factor contributing to my lack of extension is that I am misunderstood. I believe that I am seen as overly emotional, arrogant,

distant and too intensely invested in my school work. Teachers may not want to give me more to do and extend my learning, thinking that this might push me emotionally and this could lead to a mental breakdown.

I’m often told that doing really well in my education does not matter and that I should stress less. I need teachers to understand that I love to learn; I need to be stretched. I need to be supported and I want to be encouraged to pursue my highest level of ability in my education.

I believe that to solve this issue and help me as a student be the best version of myself, teachers should offer the option of extensions so that I can challenge myself if I wish to.

Sometimes school can be overwhelming and I know that I don’t have to master everything despite misconceptions others may have of me.

I want to be presented with opportunities to extend myself and pursue aspects of school work that I enjoy and am passionate about. This will help me achieve the utmost life satisfaction and I will be equipped with lifelong skills I need to live well in society.

I, as a gifted student, just wish to be understood and have someone out there to barrack for me. I have an internal thirst to acquire more knowledge and be the best version of myself in all aspects of my life.

My Brother - by Fletcher, Year 10, St Joseph’s College, Ferntree Gully.

16

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Keynote Resource

Facilitating Gifted Students to Thrive in the classroom: Linking Research and Practice by Understanding School Context Nicole Barnett EFFECTIVELY DIFFERENTIATING INSTRUCTION TO FACILITATE LEARNING AND ENGAGEMENT FOR GIFTED STUDENTS WITHIN THE CLASSROOM IS COMPLEX. Although teachers often hold positive views (VanTassel-

2. Categorising the list into a pyramid format that outlines the scope, levels and intensiveness of intervention present at the school, as can be seen below.

Baska, 2019) and recognise the importance of differentiating instruction for these students according to their academic readiness (Santangelo & Tomlinson, 2012), most are underutilizing the instructional practices outlined in the literature (VanTassel-Baska, Hubbard, Fischer, & Robbin, 2020), and using them in ways that are limited and ineffective (Tomlinson et.al, 2003).

One factor often used to explain the gap between the literature and teacher practice is the lack of professional development about effective differentiated instruction for gifted students that is provided to teachers (VanTassel-Baska & Stambaugh, 2005). However, studies have demonstrated mixed results in the improvement in teacher practice following professional development (Johnsen, Fearon-Drake & Wisely, 2020), with one Australian study finding that even higher levels of professional development made minimal gains in differentiated instruction in the classroom (Peters & Jolly, 2018). Therefore, teachers’ ability to modify instruction in a way that more fully aligns with gifted students’ need for greater academic challenge appears to be linked to contextual factors greater than just access to professional development.

In this article I will describe the findings of a school level investigation that I conducted, within the primary department of my school. The investigation aimed to gain a clearer understanding of the specific contextual factors that were affecting teachers’ ability to differentiate instruction for gifted learners in their mixed ability classrooms and then to subsequently develop context specific plans for further improvement in this area. Processes of the investigation will also be outlined in order to provide educators and school leadership teams with examples on how to conduct similar investigations within their own school contexts.

3. Evaluating the list. The following question stems were used to guide evaluations: • How much is offered with the classroom compared to outside

the classroom?

• How frequently do gifted learners access this provision? (daily,

weekly, only if nominated).

• How consistent are practices across classes, grades and from

year to year?

• What from the list is built in and permanent at the school?

• What provisions are reliant on interest and availability of staff?

Would that program or provision continue if that staff member left?

Developing a Contextual Snap Shot

• What are the strengths of the current provisions?

The field of gifted education is broad and involves many elements. At times, it can be difficult to determine where to start and what to focus on in facilitating gifted students’ learning. Before investing time in specific investigations, it is important to develop an understanding of what is currently provided for gifted students at your school. With this in mind, I started by conducting an assessment of the current provisions for gifted learners at our school. This was a suggested activity as part of a post graduate subject that I was completing and involved 3 steps:-

• Are there any gaps or areas in need of improvement?

1. Listing everything that is provided to gifted learners in various domains across the school. The list can include identification methods, classroom provisions, extra-curricular activities, competitions, withdrawal groups, acceleration practices, individual education plans, counselling services, mentoring opportunities, staff training and many more.

Within my context, this exercise revealed that the school had strength areas in their identification methods for gifted learners, a successful withdrawal enrichment program K-6, and the use of subject and gradebased acceleration procedures for highly gifted students. However, these strength areas also created additional challenges such as increased pressure on withdrawal groups and an inability to effectively reach all students identified in the Enrichment Pool. Additionally, a message was being sent that gifted learner needs were best met outside the regular classroom. Although, differentiation for gifted learners was listed as a classroom practice, it was also acknowledged that consistency varied across classrooms. As a result, daily challenge and engagement through differentiated instruction within the classroom was identified as a key focus area for improvement at our school.

17

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Zooming In: Collecting Data to Investigate.

Once a focus area is identified, an appropriate method of data collection needs to be chosen that will best investigate the issue. There are many options available to collect data, including program and lesson observations, surveys, questionnaires, and interviews. The method of data collection chosen will depend on the focus area, need, time, and resources that are available in your school context. Each method has advantages and disadvantages in its validity and reliability, which should be considered in the decision-making process.

Within my context, we needed to find out from teachers what was happening in their classrooms and what they perceived was making it difficult to facilitate gifted student learning and engagement. Therefore, the decision was made to interview a cross section of teachers from the K-6 department. It was important that teachers knew that the purpose of the interview was not to judge their teaching ability but to develop an open dialogue about their thoughts and experiences in the classroom, in order to better support them as teachers. To facilitate this, questions took an indirect, open-ended format and were descriptive and opinion based in nature.

Collating Findings The following section outlines a summary of challenges that were identified by the classroom teachers that participated in interviews.

Although most of these findings echoed challenge factors in gifted education literature, the voices and experiences of known teachers in a known context, allows for more timely improvement planning.

1. School organisation and structures: Current organisational structures presented immediate challenges for teachers when differentiating for gifted learners in their classes. This was particularly evident in comments made by all teachers about class make up and the increasingly larger spread of academic abilities within their mixed ability classes. This often forced teachers to have to choose to prioritise the needs of struggling learners over gifted learners. Additionally, programming and reporting structures and protocols utilised by the school were identified as a structural challenge. Teachers felt that programming practices generally focused on middle and lower ability students, and that the pressure to prove that all students have achieved the specific core assessment indicators written into reports, limited the time and flexibility they had to explore curriculum content in depth or breadth. Other organisational structures that affected Differentiated Instruction included various timetable constraints such as Relief from Face-to-Face timetables, Physical Education space allocations, and the Enrichment teacher’s timetable and availability. In most cases these structural constraints had a direct relationship to the creation of further challenges related to teacher access to appropriate support and a teacher’s ability to deliver quality instruction and learning experiences to gifted learners.

2. Access to supports: Responses from teachers indicated that they felt there was a lack of appropriate supports available to help them effectively differentiate instruction, often making them feel unsure about their abilities. Within the classroom, during lessons, teachers indicated that they felt they needed the increased presence of a Learning Support Officer or another teacher to help to manage the variety of activities and instruction that can be required for the different ability groups in their class. Support challenges also included lack of knowledge about gifted student needs and a need for specific professional development about suitable strategies. However, they also acknowledged that professional learning needed to be coupled with time to collaborate and pre-plan 18

activities with the Enrichment Specialist teacher and other colleagues.

Observations, team teaching, workshops and mentoring options were listed as potential and desired supports.

3. Explicit Teaching Tensions: All teachers in the study expressed concern about not being able to provide quality explicit, teacherdirected, instruction to the gifted learners in their class. They felt that often they had to just assign independent learning activities to these students while they explicitly taught the rest of the class. Many teachers were concerned that these activities were just busywork activities, that lacked meaningfulness, and enough challenge to extend students’ understanding further. It was clear teachers had a desire for gifted learners to engage in learning experiences that progressed their achievement.

However, it appeared that there was a perception that the only way this could properly occur was if they as teachers were directing and explicitly instructing gifted learners. This attitude reflected the impact of recent professional learning about improving reading and numeracy levels and also indicated that there may be an overfocus on content differentiation, as well as a lack of understanding about preferred learning processes for gifted learners such as student lead, teacher facilitated, inquiry-based, and self-directed learning opportunities (Maker and Scheiver, 2010). It also suggested that teachers may need support in how to incorporate differentiated options for gifted learners that encourage depth and complexity within core lessons rather than something separate or extra.

4. Gifted Learner Characteristics: Finally, teachers felt that the unique characteristics of gifted students created additional challenges in their ability to plan and implement Differentiated Instruction. They reported that it was often difficult to ascertain the level of giftedness and academic readiness of gifted students in their classes. The asynchronous skill development of a gifted student was also a challenge for teachers. This included the difference between a student’s advanced cognitive development compared to their work habits or age, as well as the different academic strengths across and within subjects areas that one student may have. Differing interests, learning preferences, and motivation levels among gifted learners were also mentioned as challenge factors. These comments highlighted that within and amongst the gifted students in a class, there is often a need to further differentiate instruction in order to effectively facilitate learning and engagement.

Responding to Data and Planning for Improvement The benefit of understanding the context specific challenges of a school is that it is helpful in providing leadership with direction for future advocacy. It also narrows the focus of priority improvement areas and provides the scope to link research based best practice when brainstorming practical solutions to the identified problems. Below is a list of both short-term and long-term, more strategic research based options that our school has begun planning and implementing based on the data gathered from our interviews with teachers: The gifted and talented enrichment teacher has begun team teaching one lesson a week with teachers who teach the top mathematics class in each grade rather than running mathematics withdrawal lessons. This is allowing greater collaboration and modelling of effective differentiation strategies.

The gifted and high potential enrichment teacher has also begun creating and collating a shared bank of resources for teachers to use or adapt in their classrooms for the gifted students.

Plans for staff differentiation workshops in specific subject areas, as well as grade program differentiation planning with the gifted and high potential enrichment teacher are being discussed.

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

A need for strategic thinking around class compositions in mixed ability classes has been raised including the consideration of better use of clustering. This would aim to minimise the extremes in ability levels that can currently exist in a given class.

boundaries of your context. One change or improvement is better than changing nothing at all and in the majority of cases will open doors for further improvements that facilitate gifted students’ learning and engagement in your school.

In acknowledgement of the differing learning profiles, readiness, interests and needs that exist among gifted learners, as well as the difference in effective research based instructional strategies between gifted and nongifted learners, long term the school is investigating the development of a full time gifted and high potential class for Year 5 and 6.

Nicole Barnett has been a primary school teacher for 10 years across a variety of grades and is currently employed as the Gifted and Talented Enrichment Teacher at Toongabbie Christian College, NSW. In 2021 she completed a Masters of Education specialising in gifted education with UNSW and has presented her project findings at the Ignite the Spark conference in September 2021. Nicole has a strong interest in program and curriculum development for gifted learners and enjoys collaborating with and developing staff in their classroom practice for gifted learners.

Final Thoughts Changes in a school do not occur overnight and do not always need to be nor can they always be dramatic in nature. When planning for improvement, it is important to set realistic expectations about including research based best practice into a school. You are not going to be able to tick every box all the time. Conducting school level investigations like the one that has been outlined in this article allow schools to apply research and literature that is most relevant and applicable within the

News

Funding Continues for Department Schools

THE CENTRE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION STUDIES (CHES) IS A NEW

FUNDING TO EXTEND THE STUDENT EXCELLENCE PROGRAM, INCLUDING THE VICTORIAN HIGH A BILITY PROGRAM, FOR A FURTHER THREE YEARS HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED. This will allow Victorian government schools

Opening in term one 2023, CHES will provide accelerated programs for senior students from government secondary schools.

to further develop their skills and capacity to cater for gifted and high ability students, with designated High Ability Practice Leaders (HAPLs) in every school.

CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE DESIGNED TO FURTHER IMPROVE EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES FOR HIGH-ACHIEVING AND HIGH-ABILITY STUDENTS ACROSS

VICTORIA.

We offer specialised programs on-site and online through a $27.5 million state-of-the-art facility in South Yarra.

Our innovative virtual learning environment will enable our students to study at CHES from anywhere in Victoria.

Centre for Higher Education Studies (CHES) Launches in 2023!

As a co-educational centre of excellence in senior secondary education, we’re committed to:

“High ability students are the next generation of leaders, problem solvers and innovators. Society as a whole will benefit from these students being given every opportunity to reach their full potential” – Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Gifted and Talented Education.

This includes:

• providing enrichment and extension opportunities to stretch and

challenge students; • expanding access to first-year university studies (Higher

Education Studies) for high-ability and high-achieving government school students.

• students in metropolitan, rural, regional, and remote areas • students with disadvantaged backgrounds • strengthening teacher capacity across Victoria to meet the needs

of high-ability and high-achieving students.

The first student intake will be in January 2023.

For more information and to register, visit: https://ches.vic.edu.au/

19

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Keynote Resource

Facilitating gifted students’ thriving in mixed ability classrooms - A reflection Bernadette Sheedy IN TODAY’S CLASSROOMS, TEACHERS NEED TO BE FLEXIBLE AND HAVE THE SKILLS TO ADAPT THEIR PEDAGOGY TO CATER FOR A DIVERSE ARRAY OF STUDENTS, EACH WITH THEIR OWN UNIQUE NEEDS. Some of these

needs stem from the gaps in learning and the social emotional impacts of the learning disruptions caused by pandemic lockdowns. While much emphasis has been placed on providing accommodations for students with learning difficulties, it is imperative that the needs of our gifted students are not overlooked. The following are my reflections in response to the question: how do we help our gifted students to thrive in a mixed ability classroom?

Gifted students are special needs students The first step to helping gifted students thrive within a mixed ability classroom is for teachers to acknowledge they have special needs. No two classes are identical, and the same can be said for the students within them.This is one of the joys, and the challenges, of being a teacher. Each child has their own strengths and weaknesses, but some have needs that impact profoundly on their ability to learn. For over twenty years, I have worked as a teacher in Victoria and I have had the privilege of working with educational support faculties that have done an incredible job supporting students with a range of learning difficulties.

Perhaps it is because legislation dictates that schools must address the needs of these students that schools are so mindful of putting measures in place to cater for this cohort of students. However, when I think about students with special needs, I also think of gifted and talented students.

They are wonderfully neurodiverse and they have so much to contribute to our classrooms, and to the world.

Empower teachers Another step that will contribute to gifted students thriving in a mixed ability classroom is to empower their teachers with the knowledge to be able to identify who these students are and the ways their needs can be met. There are so many misconceptions surrounding these issues which lead to teachers thinking that gifted students are the ones who always achieve perfect results on tests, or believing that gifted programs only exist when students are withdrawn from mainstream classes.

Reflecting on my time at university when I was completing my teacher training, I recall that I did not have to complete any units about gifted and talented education, and I think that most teachers would say the same. It was not until I completed the Certificate of Gifted Education through GERRIC that I truly began to understand these unique young people and how I could be responding to their needs. According to the 2018-2019 State of the States in Gifted Education document published by the NAGC (2020), ‘thirty five out of 46 states” in America require teachers to obtain an endorsement or certification in order to work with gifted and talented students. Similarly, it is a requirement that teachers in Victoria attend professional development in order to meet descriptor 1.6 of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) in relation to strategies for supporting the full participation of learners 20

with disability. Given that descriptor 1.5 of the APST states teachers must be able to s, does it not then follow that teachers in Victoria should also be required to participate in professional development to improve their ability to meet the needs of gifted and talented students?

Understand differentiation Another step towards ensuring gifted students thrive in a mixed ability classroom is for teachers to understand that there is more to differentiation than simply a collection of strategies. Differentiation is about an overall approach to teaching which informs our thinking from the moment we begin planning to the moment we evaluate what we have done. Tomlinson’s (2017) model of Differentiation refers to incorporating ‘respectful tasks’ as part of the differentiation process and I think this is a key element. Whether you are responding to the needs of high ability learners or those with learning difficulties, every student has the right to learn something new every day and respectful tasks facilitate this happening because they take into consideration what the student can already do and what they already know. The misconception is that in order to differentiate, a teacher needs to prepare individual lesson plans for every student in their class. If this were true, teachers would be leaving the profession in even greater numbers than they already are.

We need to debunk these myths and show teachers that there are ways differentiation can happen that do not require extensive amounts of time to plan or execute.

(See Figure 1.)

Utilising Technology We have spent the better part of the last two years working in digital environments due to the pandemic lockdowns. One silver lining is that resources have been developed to facilitate this mode of learning and we can utilise these types of resources to support our gifted students in mixed ability classrooms. Hyperdocs can be used to create materials for students which include links to other websites or digital resources.

These resources can include extension materials which will challenge and extend the learning of our gifted students. We can offer students the opportunity to complete webquests or interactive activities online to enhance their learning or they can create these types of resources themselves and build their digital skills. We can use different apps which can engage students by asking them to complete digital tasks requiring higher order thinking skills. Digital platforms can also be used to encourage collaboration through the use of blogs or apps such as Padlet or Flipgrid. Research demonstrates the substantial academic gains which can occur through grouping gifted students to complete collaborative tasks (Kulik & Kulik 1987; Vaughn 1990). Students can use technology to connect with mentors in their areas of interest or with high ability students at other schools. Depending on the level of differentiation required, gifted students could also access courses designed to meet their needs by organisations such as the Johns Hopkins Centre for

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

es

How pupils learn • problem solving and critical thinking • engage pupils in investigation or advanced work • provide more open-ended tasks and creative thinking • allow pupils to go deeper into their work • adjust to differing styles of learning • encourage freedom of choice

t en

nm ro

Pr od uc

t

s

vi En

Attitudes and perceptions in the classroom • student centred • open • tolerant • negotiating • celebrating learning

oc Pr

What pupils learn • broaden current curriculum level • engage pupils in more abstract concepts • replace content with more complex, advanced material • introduce pupils to more advanced research skills

Co nt en t

Figure 1. Maker’s (1982) model of differentiated curriculum for highly able students

Talented Youth or the Northwestern University’s Centre for Talent Development. Another form of extension can be provided by giving students access to virtual museums or art tours, or allowing them to tune into live broadcasts or lectures from around the world.

Bernadette - MEdLead, BA, DipEd, GCertEdRes, COGE, Deakin University Doctoral student - was the Coordinator of Gifted and Talented Education at St Monica’s College, Epping, for eight years, and is currently the Gifted and Talented Coordinator at Mount Scopus Memorial College. She

How pupils demonstrate their learning • engage pupils in solving real life problems to show application of their learning • provide authentic feedback on pupils’ products • encourage pupils to create original ideas and products

completed her Master of Educational Leadership at the Australian Catholic University in 2014 and the Certificate of Gifted Education (COGE) through the University of New South Wales in 2011. Bernadette has presented at conferences for VAGTC, the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English and the Victorian Commercial Teachers Association.

She has facilitated professional learning teams at her school and delivered presentations to Faculty groups on the topic of Curriculum Differentiation for Highly Able Learners. She is currently completing a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), with a focus on gifted education, at Deakin University.

C O N S U L T A N C Y The VAGTC offers expert advice to educators and parents in the areas of gifted and talented education and advocacy.

Consultancy is available on the wellbeing and education of gifted and high ability children.

A free initial consultation service is available to parents and families by emailing consult@vagtc.org.au. Ongoing support in response to specific needs can be arranged for families and schools at an hourly rate. Membership discounts apply.

e: consult@vagtc.org.au

For further information about support offered by the VAGTC Consult Team through parent and educator seminars, visit: vagtc.org.au/seminars/ vagtc.org.au/book-an-educator-seminar/

21

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

THE VICTORIAN ASSOCIATION FOR GIFTED AND TALENTED CHILDREN (VAGTC) FUNDED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VICTORIA (DET) PRESENT:

FREE PARENT SEMINAR SERIES Semester Two 2022 For parents of gifted children www.vagtc.org.au/seminars

Online seminar program.

Thursday July 28, 7:30 - 8:30pm Q&A with the writing team

Thursday August 11, 7:30 - 8:30pm + Q&A Q&A Panel - Types of Schooling for Gifted and High Ability Children Thursday August 23, 7:30 - 9:00pm Parent Support Nights Wednesday August 31, 7:30 - 8:30pm Monday October 24, 7.30-8.30pm Executive Functions: What are they and strategies to develop them Tuesday September 6, 7:30 - 8:30pm + Q&A Thriving Through Transitions Thursday October 13, 7:30 - 8:30pm + Q&A Social and Emotional Wellbeing and Support - Ask a Psychologist Tuesday November 15, 7:30 - 9:00pm

WWW.VAGTC.ORG.AU/SEMINARS

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Keynote Resource

Providing for Bright Students through Curriculum Differentiation Ralph Pirozzo The author has kindly provided a range of materials in support of the strategies he has recommended in this article. Please find these resources ‘Why add Pre-Knowing to Bloom’s Taxonomy’, 56-Grid Matrix, and Sample ILPs on the VAGTC website: www.vagtc.org.au

THE LITERATURE IS BURSTING WITH IDEAS, SUGGESTIONS AND PROGRAMS ON THE BEST WAY TO PROVIDE FOR BRIGHT CHILDREN. Some of these provisions include, among others: enrichment and extension activities; curriculum compaction; acceleration or grade skipping; mentor programs (eg manned by community volunteers); cluster programs; selfpacing units; vertical timetabling; G&T classes; special schools for G&T students.

As one would have expected, each provision mentioned above has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, mentor programs have undeniably shown to have an enormous capacity to enhance and maximise the learning potential of bright students. However, classroom teachers are very concerned about who will be responsible for considerations such as recruiting, selecting and supervising the mentors; ensuring the mentors’ suitability and reliability; and preventing possible issues relating to bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment

and teaching strategies, then we went looking for a framework that would enable classroom teachers to implement these strategies effectively and efficiently. At all times, we kept reminding ourselves that classroom teachers do not have a great deal of time to spare. In fact, some days they have none!

Our search revealed that we could use: 1. The Matrix and 2. The Learning and Teaching Wheel Here is a brief summary relating to the development of The Matrix and the Learning and Teaching Wheel:

1. The Matrix

Whilst all these concerns are valid, the one that is often cited by classroom teachers is the fact that, in the main, only one or two children in a class are ever likely to be involved in a mentor program. Inevitably, this means that the majority of students will not gain a great deal from mentoring at all. To some extent, the same could be said about acceleration, curriculum compaction, gifted classes and so on.

In 1997, teachers were using Bloom’s Taxonomy and Multiple Intelligences separately. This did not make any sense to me whatsoever.

Why spend time nurturing children’s thinking skills and then devote the same amount of time to engaging children through their preferred learning styles? What a total waste of time! So, I decided to integrate Bloom’s Taxonomy and Multiple Intelligences by creating a most innovative planning framework, The Matrix, which contains a minimum of 48 cells.

In 2011, working with thousands of teachers in Australia, China, New Zealand, Singapore and the UK, we went searching for possible ways to provide for bright children in mixed-ability classrooms. The challenge was to ensure that whatever we implemented would benefit all students.

In 2014, the outcome of three years of experimentation in thousands of primary and secondary classrooms, led to the publication of my book, Differentiating the Curriculum: Supporting teachers to thrive in mixedability classrooms (Pirozzo, 2014).

In this way, teachers would be able to enter their classrooms with a minimum of 48 different activities thus nurturing their children’s thinking skills whilst simultaneously engaging their students through their preferred learning styles. Then, in 2004 The Matrix was updated to a 56-grid in order to incorporate a new sub-level to Bloom’s Taxonomy called ‘Pre-Knowing’. This level was added specifically to cater for the needs of children with learning difficulties, such as EAL/D students, very young children, migrant and refugee learners.

The main idea promoted in this book is that differentiation can take place by implementing a minimum of six effective learning and teaching strategies:

2. The Learning and Teaching Wheel

• Ability groups for short period of time (e.g. numeracy and literacy

groups) • Cooperative learning teams • Learning contracts • Learning centres • Multi-age groups • Individual Learning Plans (ILPs)

Once there was ample agreement regarding these six effective learning

The Learning and Teaching Wheel is based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. As we all know, Bloom’s Taxonomy is traditionally presented in a linear fashion with Evaluating at the top and Knowing at the bottom of the ladder. When looking at this ladder, one gets the impression that all learners commence their journey at the Knowing level and then slowly move to the Evaluating level. But, we all have seen very bright students starting at the Creating level, whereas other students struggle to even complete activities at the Applying level. Others have severe difficulties in commencing their journey in the Knowing level unless we support them at the Pre-Knowing level.

23

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

We decided to present Bloom’s Taxonomy in a circular fashion as shown in The Learning and Teaching Wheel [Figure 1] thus providing teachers with:

Figure 1.

• 7 levels of thinking • 92 critical verbs • 91 choices

Now the critical question is: How do we ensure that all children’s learning, including bright students, is enhanced and maximised? The good news is that by drawing a straight line in the middle of The Learning and Teaching Wheel we end up with two equal yet very different halves: • Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTs) comprising

of Pre-Knowing, Knowing, Understanding and Applying at the top and • Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTs) comprising

of Applying, Creating and Evaluating at the bottom The challenge now is deciding what percentage of time bright students should devote in working with LOTs and HOTs. I have always maintained gifted students should spend more than 30% on LOTs and never less than 70% on HOTs. It goes without saying that the percentage of time indicated in the attached table [Figure 2] should be used as a guide only and will change dramatically depending on the ability and readiness of the students.

Out of all the differentiated strategies listed above, generating Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) would have to be the most time consuming task of them all. It is not uncommon to see teachers devoting hours and hours in devising one ILP for a group of students (eg, students with learning difficulties). Then, they will repeat this process in devising ILPs for their average learners and their bright children. In my teaching career, both in Australia and Canada, I have yet to see many teachers who can do this and remain sane!

Figure 2.

Promoting Learning International (Ralph Pirozzo, 2012) The Learning & Teaching Wheel can be used to differentiate the curriculum for three groups of students:

Level of Thinking

Children with Learning Difficulties

Average Learners

Gifted & Talented Students

LOTs

70%

50%

30%

30%

50%

70%

(Lower Order Thinking Skills)

HOTs (Higher Order Thinking Skills)

Promoting Learning International UÊÜÜÜ°« °V °>ÕÊUÊÀ> « J« °V °>Õ TM

24

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Surely, there must be a better way!

So, now we are going to visit my Year 9 Science classroom where my students are completing a unit titled Marketing Your Boat.This is a completely mixed-ability class, thus to stay true to our original goal, that is to provide for bright students whilst catering for the needs of all the other students, we will need to generate an ILP for each of the following groups of students: • Students with learning difficulties, EAL/D and disadvantaged

students • ‘Average’ learners • G&T students • Students who display behavioural issues

At this stage, my teachers and I are going to work smarter rather than harder by generating only one matrix for the average learner and then simply making the necessary adjustment for students with learning difficulties, G&T students and students displaying behavioural issues.

We have repeated this process thousands of times in both primary and secondary classrooms world-wide and we can now say with confidence that if the original unit is done well then adjusting it for the other groups of students mentioned should take no more than 20 minutes for each group. Over and over again, we have witnessed teachers generating a total of three ILPs in about an hour by tweaking the original one that was devised for the average learner. In our view, this is practical, doable, sustainable and totally sane.

To get a real feel of how this actually works, my suggestion is to print these four ILPs (from the VAGTC website) and spread them on the floor vertically, in this order: 1.

Students with learning difficulties, EAL/D and disadvantaged students

2.

Average learners

3.

G&T students

4.

Students who display behavioural issues (for example, Pat’s ILP)

Reflections • The ILP for students with learning difficulties, EAL/D and

disadvantaged students is the only one where activities have been added to the Pre-Knowing Level and a significant number of HOTs activities have been deleted. These students should be devoting 70% LOTs – 30% HOTs. • The ILP for average students doesn’t have any activities in the

Pre-Knowing area as it was felt that these students have already mastered these skills. These students should be devoting 50% LOTs – 50% HOTs. • The ILP for G&T students doesn’t have any activities in the

Pre-Knowing and Knowing areas as these students should be devoting 30% LOTs – 70% HOTs. • ‘Pat’, the student presenting challenging behaviour, was almost

‘out-of-control’. I gave him a copy of the ILP for the average learner and a red pen and asked him to circle the activities that he would like to complete. This took Pat by surprise and he asked whether or not I would allow him to complete the activities chosen. Five minutes later, I asked Pat to join me at the front of the room where my laptop computer was located and in no time we had an ILP for Pat because I shaded the activities chosen rather than starting from scratch. Now, he is engaged with the activities that he has chosen and he is no longer disturbing the other students.

• Overall, with the exception of very talented underachieving G&T

students, we have found that children overwhelmingly gravitate to the ILP that suits them. This is usually not the case with very talented underachieving G&T students who will do everything possible to hide their gifts. They know that if they show that they can achieve at the HOTs level, we are going to demand more of them. This is the last thing they want, which is why they are underachieving scholastically. For more insights into gifted underachievers, see Pirozzo (1982).

• The number next to each activity represents the way that the

teacher believes that these activities should be completed by the students, in other words, it represents their scope and sequence.

A good deal of negotiation would have taken place to arrive at this scope and sequence.

• The Real Assessment Task (RAT) titled: Create a model/ collage/

report/ video/ website/ computer program titled ‘Marketing Your Boat’ is the same for all students. As indicated the RAT and the relevant rubric have been modified for students with learning difficulties, EAL/D and disadvantaged students.

• In the IPLs you will notice that, on the top left corner, we have

indicated that this ILP is for the average student and so on.

Obviously, this has been done for the benefit of teachers and not for students, so exercise caution with student access to those ‘labels’.

The last question we need to ask is, do we have all the answers in relation to differentiation? The answer is obviously not, as we continue to constantly improve how to best implement our six effective learning and teaching strategies and explore other ways to differentiate the curriculum. My position on differentiation is best summarised thus: “[I do] not pretend to know all the answers, but … provide[s] a wellstructured, well-argued and well-researched framework for all teachers grappling with the best way to differentiate the curriculum” (Pirozzo, 2014).

Ralph Pirozzo is the founder and coordinator of the Peninsula Enrichment Program for needy bright children in the greater Redcliffe Peninsula including Deception Bay and Morayfield (Queensland). For his work with disadvantaged children, he was awarded the Paul Harris Fellow by the Kippa Ring Rotary Club. He is a Citizen Ambassador Delegate for People to People International (China), visiting schools for bright students in Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai. He received a CRA Fellowship to visit schools/colleges/universities in Ohio, Michigan and Ontario that were implementing mentor programs for their G&T students. He has devised, implemented and coordinated cluster and regional gifted and talented programs from around Queensland. Ralph works as an independent education consultant, and has provided professional development programs in various curriculum areas including Gifted Education, Differentiation and STEM, that have been attended by 45,000 primary and secondary teachers across Australia, China, New Zealand, Singapore and UK. He is the founder of Promoting Learning International https://www. pli.com.au/.

25

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Parent Reflection

The voices of gifted students in mixed ability classes Victoria Poulos I IMAGINE I’M NOT ALONE IN RECALLING THAT BEWILDERED FEELING AFTER FINALLY DISCOVERING EFFECTIVE PARENTING STRATEGIES FOR THE FIRST CHILD, ONLY TO DISCOVER NONE OF THESE WORKED FOR THE SECOND CHILD!

This exemplifies that despite such similar circumstances, no two children have the same instruction manual! Now try putting 28 children together from different backgrounds and this begins to paint a picture of the challenge it is for teachers to cater effectively for the learning differences in the classroom.

Like all students, gifted students have a range of learning needs, strengths and weaknesses and it’s our job as educators to figure out what works for them in the mixed ability class, what doesn’t, and implement accordingly.

Our instruction, assessment, and facilitation of positive learning experiences will be unique to every class, representing the diversity of learning profiles, personality, interests, and environmental factors of the students. However, we need to remember we are only human and sometimes our best laid plans go haywire! As a teacher, my perspective of what constitutes a fabulous lesson may be distinctly different to the perception of the students. I often note students’ highest praise comes from the classes that go off script, pear-shaped, and look like spaghetti from my end, but have enabled valuable learning experiences, independent thoughts, and deeper processing from the students’ point of view. So, let’s be gracious with ourselves as we continue to grow and learn ourselves.

In my experience, the most successful way to cater for gifted students in a mixed ability class is through differentiation. This is the foundation of intentionally teaching to support every student in their learning, and will enable gifted students to be challenged and bring value to their school experience. We all agree that every student has the ‘right to learn’ and yet gifted students are at risk of being denied this. Research shows that while all students should be given a year’s worth of learning annually, because gifted students can spend countless hours every day in classes where they have already mastered material, they learn far less over a year period. Gifted students need to be given a curriculum that is challenging and purposeful. What is taught (content), how it’s delivered (process), and the outcomes (product) all need to be modified for every gifted student in every unit. If unattended, gifted students can rightly wonder what the point of their attendance is.

One way I use differentiation effectively after pre-assessment (to understand where gifted students need to begin), is to set different groups around the room. The furniture in my classroom is set in groups of 6 students, which is a great size. I begin with whole class instruction then plan group tasks to be mostly self-explanatory, except for one or two who will get more of my attention on that task. As a secondary Japanese teacher, I might have one group writing out new vocab words in Japanese, another group trying to write the whole alphabet from memory, another completing grammar sentences, another investigating a cultural aspect and my gifted group working together to write their own short paragraphs or sentences. All these tasks have a collaborative element which students enjoy, the focus being the learning rather than a grade. Other times I might use the same task for the whole class, such as a character recognition game, but each group has different pace or complexity according to where 26

their learning is at. Lastly, I try to add depth into the gifted students’ curriculum by adding cultural discrepancies and facilitating students to discover how culture affects language. For example, there are very few emotion words that exist in the Japanese language and that is because showing emotions is not culturally appropriate. Gifted students thrive on understanding relationships and making connections with the world around them. Differentiating curriculum is a tool to facilitate this.

To support gifted students in a mixed ability class, let’s ‘connect before content’. Research suggests that students learn best when they are invested and motivated, and teachers have the primary role to facilitate this. Gifted students can often feel overlooked, or dismissed and need to know they are valued, and that we want to support and champion them on as they grow into amazing young men and women. This creates an inviting student-centred learning environment which is paramount to effective learning in a mixed ability class. Flexibility as well as predictability is also key in providing a student-focused classroom enabling students to work well collaboratively and individually.

I recently surveyed my Year 8 students in our gifted program, asking them what works for them in mixed ability classes and more importantly, what they wanted us as their teachers to know. Students communicated that the mixed ability class provided an opportunity for them to revise, do independent study, have an easy workload, and they could sometimes learn to see things in a different way from students at a different stage.

However, my concern with this feedback is that gifted students in a mixed ability class should not feel that the benefit is to enjoy an easier workload or work independently because the teacher hasn’t prepared an appropriate curriculum that matches their learning needs. Some students articulated that if they approach teachers asking for greater extension, they are just given more work to do, not necessarily greater depth or challenge. This is an area that still requires further attention in the professional development of staff.

Interestingly, feedback was unanimous in that, while gifted students at my school didn’t mind some independent study time, group work with likeminded peers was hailed as the most successful tool in catering for them in a mixed ability class. They felt they could challenge one another, help and be helped by one another, found that teachers gave appropriate level work once grouped together, and learning was intrinsically more fun. I find at times that group work is fabulous and sometimes it can be incredibly difficult. But the students are clearly appreciating more cluster grouping opportunities in the mixed ability class environment, so this spurs me on to keep trying!

Differentiation underpins our success in supporting gifted students in mixed ability classes. How we do this and what this looks like in each of our classes will differ, but if we listen to the voices of our students, we will see our gifted students thrive in the learning environment we create.

Victoria Poulos is mum to two gifted adults and is the Gifted and Talented Coordinator at Hillcrest Christian College, Melbourne.

She is also currently engaged in postgraduate study in gifted education at GERRIC, NSW.

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

References: Pg 6: Teach Up for Excellence - All students deserve equitable access to an engaging and rigorous curriculum.

Carbonaro, W., & Gamoran, A. (2003). The production of achievement inequality in high school English. American Educational Research Journal, 39(4), 801–827.

Center for Public Education. (2007). The United States of education: The changing demographics of the United States and their schools. Alexandria, VA: Author.

Cohen, E. (1994). Designing groupwork: Strategies for the heterogeneous classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Interview with Linda Darling-Hammond. PBS Nightly Business Report. Retrieved from www.pbs.org/nbr/site/features/special/ WIP_hammond1 Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). The flat world and education: How America’s commitment to equity will determine our future. New York: Teachers College Press.

Darling-Hammond, L., Bransford, J., LePage, P., & Hammerness, K. (2007). Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do.

San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Dweck, C. (2007). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Ballantine.

Educational Research Service. (1992). Academic challenge for the children of poverty: The summary report (ERS Item #171). Arlington, VA: Author.

Fullan, M. (2001). The new meaning of educational change (3rd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.

Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research and practice. New York: Teachers College Press.

Gardner, J. (1961). Excellence: Can we be equal and excellent too? New York: Harper and Row. Gibbons, P. (2002). Scaffolding language and scaffolding learning: Teaching second language learners in mainstream classrooms. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Good, T. L. (1987). Two decades of research on teacher expectations: Findings and future directions. Journal of Teacher Education, 38(4), 32–47.

Gray, T., & Fleischman, (2004/2005). Successful strategies for English language learners. Educational Leadership, 62(4), 84–85.

King, M. L., Jr. (1965). Commencement address for Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.

Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of the nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York: Crown.

National Research Council. (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind, school, and experience. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Olson, K. (2009) Wounded by school. New York: Teachers College Press.

Pg 10: Making Friends in Mixed Ability Relationships Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.

Coleman, L. J. (1985). Schooling the gifted. Addison Wesley.

Coleman, L. J., Micko, K. J., & Cross, T.L. (2015). Twenty-five years of research on the lived experience of being gifted in school: Capturing the students’ voices.

Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 38, 358-376.

Cross, J. R., Bugaj, S. J., & Mammadov, S. (2016). Accepting a scholarly identity: Gifted students, academic crowd membership, and identification with school.

Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 39, 23-48. DOI: 10.1177/0162353215624162 Cross, J. R., Vaughn, C. T., Mammadov, S., Cross, T. L., Kim, M., O’Reilly, C., Spielhagen, F., Pereira Da Costa, M., & Hymer, B. (2019). A cross-cultural study of the social experience of giftedness. Roeper Review, 41, 224-242.

Cross, T. L., Coleman, L., & Terhaar-Yonkers, M. (1991). The social cognition of gifted adolescents in schools: Managing the stigma of giftedness. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 15, 44–55.

Cross, T. L., & Cross, J. R. (Eds.). (2021). Handbook for Counselors Serving Students with Gifts and Talents, 2nd ed. Prufrock Press.

Cross, T. L., & Cross, J. R. (2022). From managing stigma to forming friendships: Introducing a model of friendship development. Gifted Child Today, 45(1), 58-61.

DOI: 10.1177/10762175211050697.

Farmer, T. W., Hamm, J. V., Dawes, M., Barko-Alva, K., & Cross, J. R. (2019). Promoting inclusive communities in diverse classrooms: Teacher attunement and social dynamics management. Educational Psychologist, 54 (4), 286-305. DOI: 10.1080/00461520.2019.1635020 Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117–140.

Lee, S.-Y., Olszewski-Kubilius, P., & Thomson, D. T. (2012). Academically gifted students’ perceived interpersonal competence and peer relationships. Gifted Child Quarterly, 56, 90–104.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68–78.

Exline, J. J., & Lobel, M. (1999). The perils of outperformance: Sensitivity about being the target of a threatening upward comparison. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 307–337.

Zell, A., Exline, J. J., & Lobel, M. (2020). Navigating the perils of outperforming others. In J. Suls, R. L. Collins, & L. Wheeler (Eds.), Social comparison, judgment, and behavior (pp. 280-308). Oxford University Press.

Pg 13: Raising the bar for student engagement: From doing school to driving learning Assor, A., Kaplan, H., Kanat-Maymon, Y., & Roth, G. (2005). Directly controlling teacher behaviors as predictors of poor motivation and engagement in girls and boys: The role of anger and anxiety. Learning and Instruction, 15(5), 397-413.

Berry, A. (2020) Disrupting to Driving: exploring upper primary teachers’ perspectives on student engagement. Teachers and Teaching, 26(2), 145-165.

Conner, J. O., & Pope, D. C. (2013). Not Just Robo-Students: Why Full Engagement Matters and How Schools Can Promote It. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42(9), 1426–1442.

Earl, S. R., Taylor, I. M., Meijen, C., & Passfield, L. (2017). Autonomy and competence frustration in young adolescent classrooms: Different associations with active and passive disengagement. Learning and Instruction, 49, 32–40.

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Hattie, J. (2020). The distance learning playbook, grades K-12: Teaching for engagement and impact in any setting. Corwin Press.

Fredricks, J. A., Alfeld, C., & Eccles, J. (2010). Developing and fostering passion in academic and nonacademic domains. Gifted Child Quarterly, 54, 18–30.

27

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

Reeve, J. (2012). A self-determination theory perspective on student engagement. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 149–172). New York: Springer Science.

Skinner, E., Furrer, C., Marchand, G., & Kindermann, T. (2008). Engagement and disaffection in the classroom: Part of a larger motivational dynamic? Journal of Educational Psychology, 100(4), 765–781.

Pg 17: Facilitating Gifted Students to Thrive in the classroom: Linking Research and Practice by Understanding School Context Johnsen, S.K., Fearon-Drake, D. & Wisely, L.W. (2020). A formative evaluation of differentiation practices in elementary cluster classrooms. Roeper Review, 42:3, 206-218, DOI: 10.1080/02783193.2020.1765921 Maker, C.J., & Schiever, S.W. (2010). Curriculum development and teaching strategies for gifted learners (3rd Ed.) Pro-Ed. Peters, S. J., & Jolly, J. L. (2018). The influence of professional development in gifted education on the frequency of instructional practices. Australian Educational Researcher, 45(4), 473–491. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-018-0260-4 Santangelo, T. & Tomlinson, C. A. (2012). Teacher educators’ perceptions and use of differentiated instruction practices: An exploratory investigation. Action in Teacher Education, 34(4), 309–327. https://doi.org/10.1080/01626620.2012.717032 Tomlinson, C. A., Brighton, C., Hertberg, H., Callahan, C. M., Moon, T. R., Brimijoin, K., Conover, L. A., & Reynolds, T. (2003). Differentiating instruction in response to student readiness, interest, and learning profile in academically diverse classrooms: A review of literature. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 27(23), 119–145. https://doi.org/10.1177/016235320302700203 VanTassel-Baska, J., Fischer Hubbard, G. & Robbins, J.I. (2020). Differentiation of instruction for gifted learners: collated evaluative studies of teacher classroom practices. Roeper Review, 42:3, 153-164, DOI: 10.1080/02783193.2020.1765919 VanTassel-Baska, J. (2019). Are we differentiating effectively for the gifted or not? A commentary on differentiated curriculum use in schools. Gifted Child Today Magazine, 42(3), 165–167. https://doi.org/10.1177/1076217519842626 VanTassel-Baska, J. & Stambaugh, T. (2005). Challenges and possibilities for serving gifted learners in the regular classroom. Theory Into Practice, 44:3, 211-217, DOI: 10.1207/s15430421tip4403_5

Pg 20: Facilitating gifted students’ thriving in mixed ability classrooms - A reflection Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2011). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, AITSL, Melbourne Kulik, J. A., & Kulik, C.-L. C. (1987). Effects of ability grouping on student achievement. Equity and Excellence, 23, 22-30.

Maker, J. (1982). Teaching models in education of the gifted. Aspen Systems Corp. Teaching Models in Education of the Gifted - C. June Maker - Google Books NAGC. (2020). 2018-2019 State of the States in Gifted Education: Executive Summary. National Association for Gifted Children Tomlinson, C. (2017). How to differentiate instruction in academically diverse classrooms Alexandria, Va Ascd. Differentiation: An Overview (ascd.org) Vaughan, V. L. (1990). Meta-analysis of pull-out programs in gifted education. Paper at the annual convention of the National Association for Gifted Children, Little Rock, AR.

Pg 23: Providing for Bright Students through Curriculum Differentiation Pirozzo, R. (1982). Gifted underachievers. Roeper Review, 4(4), 18-21.

Pirozzo, R. (2014). Differentiating the Curriculum: Supporting teachers to thrive in mixed-ability classrooms. Hawker Brownlow Education, Moorabbin, Vic. Australia.

28

VISION, Volume 33 No. 1 2022

29

To advocate for gifted learners as they explore and develop their talents

vagtc.org.au