The role of the teacher within the identification of gifted students

Lola Prieto, Joaquín Parra, Carmen Ferrándiz and Cristina Sánchez
University of Murcia, Spain

One of the needs that classrooms teachers have is to know the characteristics of the precocious and gifted students. One of the procedures to determine the gifted child process is to collect information on his/her behaviour and delivery through checklist. It is convenient to make some precisions: the first, although every extremely gifted student is unique, many share the same characteristics. Second, the studies show that, when the teachers use checklist, the opportunities of identifying successfully the extremely gifted students are very big. Third, no child has all the qualities of the list, that we will explained as follows, but it is true that many of the skills in the list remind us the typical behaviours the children are capable of.

The aim is to make an screening with the purpose of selecting the children that show theses high skills, in order to do that , we use a teachers checklist for knowing the most relevant characteristics, that according to the experts’ judgement (Renzulli, 1977, Sternberg and Lubart, 1997) some precocious and gifted students show.

Our checklist is based in the model of the Renzulli´s et al.(1977) three rings. in a likert-scale kind (from 1 to 4) it is made of 28 items: a) 10 items measure the characteristics referred to intrinsic motivation (for example: he/she get involves in what is interesting to him/her); b) 10 items value the general delivery (for example: understand concepts and advanced-to-his/her-age figure relations; having a rich vocabulary); and c) 8 items oriented to evaluate the creativity skills as: fluency, flexibility, elaboration and originality (for example: great idea generation, unusual problem solving through different procedures).

In this study 467 schools have taken part (public and private schools), all of them from the autonomous Region of Murcia (Spain), and 63.399 students of public schools and 22.981 students belong to private schools, whose ages range goes from 5 to 12 years old.

The research has been done in three stages: the first one, we proceed to the design and adaptation of the checklist for which we used the judges system, extremely gifted children experts.

The second stage: the teachers, using the checklist, selected the students that were standing out for their delivery, creativity and intrinsic motivation, characteristics that, in opinion of Renzulli and Sternberg, are those of extremely gifted students.

Third stage: once the checklists were completed we proceeded to the statistical analysis and result interpretation.

Finally, we will continue studying the distinguishable characteristics of these children with the aim of designing strategies to adequate them to their diversity.

The results show that the checklist has the psychometrics characteristics required for this kind of instrument (Cronbach.90). From the initial sample of participants 156 students have been identified, that fit into the requirement previously set: to get, at least, a percentile equal or higher to 75 equally in the delivery scale as well as the creativity scale too. The characteristics of these children, according to the teachers are: using and maximizing the knowledge efficiently, propose ingenious solutions and unusual problems; they are persistent especially when the targets are interesting, original and complex.

As a final conclusion we can say that the checklist is a very useful tool for the teacher to identify extremely gifted children.

Actually, we studying some differential characteristics as well as the cognitive configuration of these 155 children: a) general intelligence for the study of it itself we use an IQ test (BAD&G, General and Differential Aptitude Battery), this test will enable us to, establish cognitive profiles; b) TTC (Torrance test of creative thinking).

We know that the term extremely gifted and talent are concepts that, sometimes, enclose certain confusion, because the word, extremely gifted person is reserved to children with high intellectual abilities in all fields, while we use the term talent for defining the children that show high abilities in certain fields or areas such as art, music, sports and theatre. But, often, both concepts are used in a very different way when we talk about school children that stand out at school environment. The resulting data from different studies highlight that approximately between 3 and 3.5 per cent of the children in school age have been identified as extremely gifted. Joseph Renzulli (1978) has developed a model widely used for defining extremely gifted; such model is made of 3 superimposed circles representing 3 differential characteristics of the extremely gifted children, which are:

The teachers are a very rich source of information as they have had the opportunity to get to know many students with different characteristics. For considering the teacher as a valuable source of information, the researchers of extremely gifted children have constructed instruments as checklist, whose aim is to provide the teacher with a scale to value the extremely gifted children’s capacities. For example, Quatrrochi (1984) demonstrated in his works that the teacher could value the characteristics referred to the creativity of the extremely gifted children. Some other researchers (Roedell, Jackson and Robinson, 1980; Hoeksema, 1982; Wolfle, 1989) have also demonstrated that the teacher is a very important source of information for valuing the capacities of the children during the teaching – learning processes.

Despite the teacher having a privileged position for informing about the extremely gifted children’s characteristics, however, the teacher, in general terms, tends to value the diligent child as intelligent child, obedient as calm, forgetting the restless child, that usually put complex and embarrassing questions, that cause problems to the teacher for being creative and puzzle because of their original and unusual answers, being some of them some of the characteristics of the extremely gifted children. In this sense. Genovard says (1982) that the teachers don’t value creativity, originality and curiosity of a superior intelligence. This lack of knowledge of the extremely gifted children’s world obstructs its identification.

Fundamentally, from the eighties the scales for teachers, parents and schoolmates Nomination have been designed for identifying the extremely gifted and talented children within the school context. We are referring to the Teacher’s Nominations (Teacher’s Checklist)

The designed scales for teachers are made of a series of questions that have as an aim the observation and valuing of a series of typical extremely gifted child characteristics.

Renzulli (1977), expert in the field of the extremely gifted, designed a scale for the teachers to identify extremely gifted or precocious children (4-12 years old). The scale pretends the valuation of the following characteristics: a) capacity to learn, we collect all the abilities referred to the control of vocabulary, processing of information, reading competence, and so on; b) motivation, the items of this scale are making reference to the personal involvement in their work, to the independent way of doing their tasks, the ability to organize and structure activities, and so on; c) creativity, within this section we include the curiosity, ideas generation, originality in solving problems, and so on; d) leadership, we have items referred to the involvement of the student in the social and school activities, cooperation, responsibility to accomplish what promised, and so on; e) precise communication, in this section we collect the characteristics referred to verbal and written fluency, ability to express messages clearly and precisely, easiness to describe anything with the suitable terms, and so on; f) communication and expressiveness, the items of this subscale collect abilities referred to the information transmission through non verbal language, easiness to narrate stories in a very interesting way and ability to use analogies and tongue twist, and so on; g) planning capacity, includes items referred to the easiness to organize and structure their own work, selecting information efficiently or the necessary resources to complete any task, and the ability to use the different alternative methods to achieve the task, and so on. This scale was translated, adapted valued and widespread in our country (Spain) by Castelló (1986).

At the end of the seventies, Johnson (1979) designs a scale for teachers for them to identify the distinctive characteristics of the extremely gifted children. The scale is made of 24 items that are making reference to the following areas: academic, creative, intelligence, and leadership, artistic, psychomotor and mechanic. The goodness of the scale is that allows the obtaining of the classroom as well as the individual schoolchild profile, in this sense, the teacher can observe the differences between the precocious, the extremely gifted and talented with respect to the rest of the students within the classroom.

Later on, Hoeksema (1982) proposes a group of instruments for identifying the extremely gifted children of the different instructional levels. Within the instruments he includes a checklist for the teacher. It is made of 46 items that are making reference to characteristics that the author considers typical of precocious children. The 46 items are included within 3 big categories: the first one is called "superior general ability", within this category he establishes a distinction between the items referred to the intellectual aspect and those that are making reference to the emotional, social and moral aspects; the second is called "completion and involvement in the tasks" and the third one is called "superior level of creativity". The presentation of the checklist is made of an answer sheet in which the teacher notes for each of the items of the checklist the frequency on which the child shows such a conduct.

Within the first category, called "superior intellectual ability" is included items referred to the easiness for learning new things and understand new concepts, to the ability that some schoolchildren show in the handling of the language and reading and their high delivery in school work. Within the social, emotional and moral aspects are included the abilities of the extremely gifted in organizing or leading groups, or the understanding of abstract concepts (the death, the injustice in the world, the sadness and the lies, and so on).

Within the category "completion and involvement", the items included make reference to the working habits, concentration capacity, working independence, organizing and structuring the tasks or high motivation for learning and involving themselves within the activities that are interesting, all of them are schoolchild extremely gifted characteristics.

Within the category known as "superior level of creativity", the items that are included have characteristics referred to the ideas fluency, to the originality in solving problems, to the flexibility to change the pattern of thinking, to the imagination and inventiveness.

Within this instrument the teacher is asked about the wide variety of characteristics of his/her students in the classroom; this instrument allows the giving of a wide and precise valuation of the school children and especially those that are extremely gifted. It demands dedication of the teacher and knowledge of the exceptional students’ characteristics (extremely gifted, precocious and/or talented).

Other scale is the one designed by Mc Millan and it is known as the Teacher Summary (The Halton Board of Education, 1987), it is an oriented to value in a global way the capacities of the students in relation to the reading, written and verbal language, mathematics and development within the environment. Besides it collects characteristics referred to creativity (fluidity, flexibility, originality, curiosity, elaboration, imagination, knowledge and completion of tasks). The teacher can reflect the frequency and intensity of the different characters corresponding to these 5 abilities and value the skills of the extremely gifted children in these areas.

It is also known and used the scale for teachers designed by J.Wolfle (1989), that contains 20 characteristics that define the extremely gifted student and make reference to the different aspects of their own personal development (handling and use of the language, abstract problems resolutions, sensitivity to the problems of the others, creativity, and so on).

The research team of "High Abilities" of Murcia University conducted by Professor Prieto, designs a checklist, based in the works previously mentioned and mainly around Renzulli (Prieto, 1997). This scale contains 24 items, whose aim is valuing motivation, creativity and delivery of the precocious/extremely gifted child. The results from the different studies have demonstrated that it has a high reliability as well as an easy handling and use for teachers.

In few words, these instruments Checklist serve the teacher for identifying the characteristics of the students with high abilities in a very significant way, because they can be very effective in the identifying of the capacities of the students better gifted. An advantage of this system is that, once a teacher recognizes the capacity, usually gets interested in designing adequate measures for the diversity of the extremely gifted (educative provisions). The identification and educative provision have been always seen very close to each other: the good provision allows the capacity to surface, while a good identification leads to an adequate provision.

Summing up, we can say that it is essential the help from the teacher for the identification of the extremely gifted students for several reasons, among these are the following:

- They are the ones that know the students better within the learning process.

- They spend a lot of time with the students.

- They know their weak and strong points for learning.

- They are, also, great learning easers. This easing or intercession can be reflected in the following aspects:

For ending up, we will like to highlight that the teacher is the key figure and it is in real terms the one that makes the difference. It is on him to introduce the measures and procedures for benefiting the extremely gifted. The role of the teacher recognized by the different authors can be summarized in the following way: His/her personality, ability and experience are key factors for the teaching-learning process of any child, but they are critics in the case of the extremely gifted. The capacity for proposing a stimulating dialogue depends on the degree of intuition within the area.

In 1998 Castelló and Batlle proposed a identification protocol that is extracted from two instruments of measuring already elaborated, that are the Battery of Aptitudes Differential and General (BAD&G) and Torrance’s Creative Thinking Test, that allow the differentiation of the different ways in which high ability appears: extremely gifted, academic, artistic-figurative, verbal, mathematical spatial and creative talent. This proposal tries to cover the two main problems related to identification in the extremely gifted and talent that are: on one hand the low congruence among the theory criteria and the identification on the other hand, the frequent word confusion in the concepts referred to high ability extremely gifted, talent, precocious etc). As Castelló and Batlle established (1998), with this proposal we can obtain a reliable valuation of a section of the resources potentially involved in particular areas (verbal, numeric, logic, and so on).

The cognitive configuration of extremely gifted characterised by a high level of resources in all the intellectual aptitudes. The evolution of extremely gifted is slow and complex, being difficult the appearing of the most sophisticated processes and interactions before the end of the adolescence. In spite of this, the basic aptitudes, as they are measured through the intelligence test, can be evaluated from 12 years old. The social, motor functions and emotional they also are part of the extremely gifted. These should be evaluated with suitable test (Castelló, 2002).

This model allow us to identify extremely gifted and talented students according to the following typology: a) students that show simple talents or specific (referred to only one single variable); b) students that show multiple talents (referred to several variables together); c) students the show complex talents (referred to several variables together) within these ones we can find, academic and figurative talents; and d) students that show conglomerated talents in which we can find the combination of intellectual configuration of academic and/or figurative talents with the multiple or simple talent.

As follows we detailed the identification criteria of extremely gifted and every kind of talents.

The intellectual configuration in the case of the extremely gifted has a percentile of 75 or higher in all areas: verbal, numeric, spatial, creativity, logic memory and non-verbal reasoning.

The intellectual configuration in the case of the simple talent gets a 95 percentile or higher in only one specific aptitude (for example a verbal, mathematical spatial, creative or logical talent).

We can also find a multiple talent that shows an intellectual profile in which there are several specific aptitudes having a percentile of 95 or higher.

The complex talent is the one that is made of the combination of several specific aptitudes getting a percentile of 80. Within this category we can find: a) academic talent that comes from the combination of verbal, logic reasoning and memory; b) figurative talent that comes from the combination of logical and spatial reasoning.

In the last place, in the conglomerated talent we can find several intellectual profiles, it can be considered as conglomerated the talent that comes from the combination of an academic talent with one or several specific aptitudes, it is also the result of a figurative talent in combination with one or several specific aptitudes, or when in a profile we find a figurative talent in combination with an academic talent and several specific aptitudes.

The aim of this work is double: on one hand, to show the efficiency of the Teacher’s. Checklist in the identification of extremely gifted; in the other hand, to study the cognitive configuration and different profiles of the extremely gifted and talented children. This work has been carried out in the Region of Murcia (Spain).

In this work, there were 467 schools of the Region of Murcia, 372 public and 95 private. The school children sample was of 63.399 students (from public schools) and 22.981 (private and state assisted) all of them in the stage of enfant school of 5 years old and primary education, according to the Spanish Educative system. The ages of the students range from 5 to 12 years old.

As follows we describe the instruments used in this study.

In a Likert like scale, oriented to tutor teachers, made of 28 items:

The teachers answered the items with answers ranging from 1 to 4, representing the characteristics of variability in the following answers: 1) In complete disagreement or never happen what is part of the item, 2) In some disagreement or almost never happen what is part of the item, 3) In big agreement or almost happening what is part of the item, 4) In full agreement or always happen what is part of the item.

The results show that the checklist includes the psychometric characteristics required for this kind of instruments: of Cronbach equal to .90.

The empiric work was carried out in 3 stages.

The program used for the statistical analysis has been SPSS 12.0.

In this first moment the analysis have had descriptive character over the answers given to the Teacher’s Checklist, the BAD&G test and the TTCT test, as well as the analysis for obtaining the reliability of the scale (Alpha of Cronbach).

After the data analysis we can say the following:

First: in respect to the results of the Teacher’s Checklist, we have to highlight that the averages of the students proposed by the teachers have been very high.

So, in respect to the dimension referred to the intrinsic motivation the average mark assigned to the students has been 3.14 (Typical Deviation 0.43), that is under the teachers’ judgement the students with high abilities usually get high marks in the motivation sub scale. It is necessary to remember that the range of variability moves from 1 to 4 in all sub scales ("In Total disagreement or never happen what is part of the item" to "In full agreement or always happen what is part of the item".).

In relation to the scale that values the general delivery, the average was 3.18 (Typical Deviation 0.55), what informs us that, according to the teachers’ judgements, that happen very often behaviours that reflect that high general capacity of delivery.

And in the same way, in relation to the creativity dimension, the average mark of the students has been 3.16 (Typical Deviation 0.50), what represents that these students show high creativity, according to what the teachers say.

In second place: in respect to the gender differential analysis, according to the teachers there is a 65.1 % of boys the show high abilities (extremely gifted and/or talented) while the 34.9 % have been girls showing high abilities (extremely gifted and/or talented).

In third place: in relation to the school level, according to the teachers, it is within the first stage of Primary Education (6 to 8 years old) in which we have the highest number of students with high abilities. When we use the most conventional psychometric procedures, it is also in this stage when we find the highest number of students with high abilities (see table 1).

Table 1. Initial proposals and identified children with some exceptionality. Educative Stage Percentages.

In fourth place: The data referred to the cognitive configuration of these 155 students considered as high abilities, are distributed as follows:

Table number 2. Children identified by typology of exceptionality and school stage.

6. CONCLUSIONS

In the first place, the results show a certain coincidence between the Teachers’s Checklist and the psychometric techniques (IQ test and creativity marking). As the previously established criteria patterns are maintained: reaching or going over of 75 percentile in the intrinsic motivation and delivery capacity subscales. When these conditions are met, both procedures (checklist and psychometric trials) coincide in the identification of the 84.5 % of the students.

In second place, it seems useful to use the Teacher’s Checklist together with the psychometric trials because both procedures are complementary and help us to explain, and as a result, understand better the students with high abilities within the school context.

In third place, in the study of the general characteristics of these students we have observed their great creative capacity referred to: fluency, flexibility, elaboration and originality. Being some of these components more relevant in some students with high abilities (extremely gifted, precocious and/or talented) than others, as it is reflected in the teachers’ evaluations and in the resulting data of the creativity test (TTCT).

In fourth place, we have to insist in that these students show a great level of general intelligence. Although their cognitive profiles are different as they are showing extremely gifted or specific talents, they are students that use efficiently their intellectual resources referred to the verbal, logical-mathematical and spatial reasoning and their remembering and memory capacity.

In fifth place, we want to point out some orientation patterns for these students identified with high abilities. For example, for the students that show precocity, we would have to design action patterns oriented to provide them with complex works including quantitative concepts, numeric problems and solving problems that demand the execution of logical inferences, generalizing and applying rules to the solution of the problems. It will be also recommendable for the school to provide them with risky situations for preventing them from boringness, as they are students with high domain of information and fast pace of learning; that will invigorate socializing situations as the interest and motivations are different to the rest of their classmates, this can lead to a rejection from their classmates.

For the students with academic talent, we would have to design activities demanding from them the storing and retrieving of any kind of information that can be expressed verbally having a logical organization.

It would be convenient that for the figurative – artistic talent, the teachers include tasks and works demanding the using of the representation and/or expression abilities.

However, for the verbal talent the activities should be oriented to the access to the information that requires coding and decoding complex information.

For the mathematical talent the teachers’ intervention will be centred in providing material and activities that demand verbal comprehension of the mathematical-logical problems.

In respect to the logical talent the teacher should include tasks related to the domain of conceptual categories, graphic, verbal and numeric logical series, that would demand all of them a high level of abstraction.

Finally, the creative talent demands an especial attention from the teacher’s side; this should promote spaces, resources and moments the ease the use of their resources and broad mind.

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This document was added to the Education-line database on 17 September 2004