Raising Achievement In Science (g&t)

In order to raise the achievement of gifted students in the field of Physics, it is important to first accept and appreciate the fact that some students are gifted and to understand what it means to be gifted.

There are several myths around gifted students being that all students are gifted or that students that are gifted would do fine in a class of mixed abilities. Most people feel that classifying gifted students is elitist and that all children are gifted. Other myths will be discussed later in this paper.

Giftedness can be defined in several ways however I will take the definition as given by the Department for Education and Skills in Great Britain (DfES): Gifted: the top 5-10% of pupils per school as measured by actual or potential achievement in English, Maths, Science, History, Geography, Modern Foreign Languages, RE, ICT or Design and Technology. The points to note from this definition is that it only includes 5-10% of pupils per school, also that it is as measured by their achievement.

We have to note here that the percentage of gifted students will vary from school to school; they will also vary from one class to the next. It is therefore important that schools do not stick to this number when identifying or classifying their gifted students. It is therefore important that schools do not exclude any gifted students due to quota restrictions.

Gifted students may not always show up in the general assessments for various reasons such as cultural, environmental, linguistic or social factors, and I will discuss further as to the best ways of identifying gifted students.

Identification of gifted students

Most people will try to pick an easy way out in identifying gifted students, generally by selecting the students with the highest grades in a class or getting students to carry out IQ tests, or getting teachers to go through checklists. These unfortunately may lead to gaps in the identification and are generally too vague as per Winstanley (2004)

The aforementioned can however be used as a starting point for the identification of gifted students but not as the only way.

Some of the ways in which to identify gifted students apart from the obvious are as follows:

Parental reports: Louis and Lewis(1962) identified that Parents are correct 61% of the time when identifying that their child is gifted, hence it is important to discuss with Parents and listen to their concerns and opinions.

Peers reports: Most children are aware of the abilities of their peers and are therefore able to nominate students who they believe to have abilities beyond their own, they notice when some students are able to complete their work quickly or assist others with tasks.

Self reporting: Older students are able to identify their own abilities in certain fields and are hence well suited to fill out questionnaires to inform teachers of their interests and abilities.

Training: It is important that teachers are trained to identify gifted students as part of staff development. NAGTY (National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth) 'Nutshell' series of e-learning is a good way of training teachers.

Information Transfer: It is important that discussions take place amongst teachers in schools regarding students, records also need to be kept of students scores such as SAT results and that this information is constantly updated and possibly shared between schools. Advice should be taken from all school staff as they can provide both a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the students depending on their role. Schools should also inform parents if their children have been put on the register of gifted students as it increases the parents involvement and helps monitor the child's progress.

A school needs to identify its own set of indicators and the size of a gifted cohort that it can manage within its available resources. Once a system has been formed for identifying gifted students it should constantly be reviewed in order to improve it and it should be well documented.

As part of the identification process, it is important to include students from all sorts of backgrounds.

Issues related to underachievement

It has been observed that certain gifted students may be underachieving due to various reasons. It is important to identify these and try to mitigate the circumstances. This also assists to identify gifted students, as well as a reason for trying to raise the achievement of gifted students.

Underachievement is the inability to perform in par with one's potential. It is therefore quite difficult to identify underachievement and measure the potential of students.

The easiest way to identify underachievement is to compare the results of several tests such as CATs SATS and IQ tests. Another way may be to use a teachers judgment. Montgomery (1996) proposes several indicators to identify underachievement in students.

The following factors are most common in underachieving students:

Emotional such as low expectations, low self-esteem or emotional difficulties, some of which may arise from family issues.

Cultural and religious backgrounds can also affect achievement, for example where females from a certain ethnic minority may not be encouraged or motivated to take up science subjects such as physics, as a career, even though they may be gifted. This is something I have particularly observed during my placement, whereby both Gender and Ethnicity affected the achievement of students.

With the rise in immigration in the UK, English as a second language is also a factor whereby gifted students underachieve due to the language barrier. It is therefore very important to tutor these students to ensure that their English language skills are improved as soon as possible so that it does not deter them from achieving their potential.

The teaching and learning methods may also affect achievement as discussed by McClelland, YewChuk and Mulcahy (1993) whereby some students may not perform too well in tests or in particular skills such as reading or writing, some may not work well in a group, whilst some may have trouble setting realistic goals.

Learning disabilities most certainly affect achievement if not handled in the right manner.

Methods of raising achievement of gifted students

Several methods have been tried and tested in the classroom over the past few years. I shall discuss some of these in detail.

Curriculum differentiation is the most popular method whereby a teacher plans a lesson with gifted students in mind, the lesson can then be presented in a watered down format that applies to most students, the teacher then has further advanced learning activities for gifted students as advised by (Kulik and Kulik, 1997). The additional activities should of course be linked to the curriculum and have educational value.

(Van Tassel-Baska and Brown, 2007) critiqued eleven curricular models and concluded that grouping gifted students by subject area and presenting them with an advanced curriculum was the best way forward. (Van Tassel-Baska and Stambaugh, 2005) in their research found several barriers to applying differentiation in a classroom. Some of these are discussed as follows:

Teachers sometimes have a lack of advanced subject knowledge as they come in prepared with the standard curriculum, when faced with gifted students who have advanced knowledge in certain subjects they are left with nothing extra to provide.

Some teachers also fail to appreciate the fact that gifted students learn faster than others and have different needs and therefore fail to provide for them.

Teachers do not always have the adequate training and resources such as planning time and administrative support available to manage a class effectively and apply differentiation, they also may not be willing to develop and work harder to modify the curriculum for the gifted students.

It is important therefore that teachers be provided enough advise and support in order to assist them to differentiate in their classrooms.

In my experience during my placement, I tried my best to differentiate in all my classes, in my lesson planning, preparing advanced material and bringing in new ideas due to my subject knowledge in Physics, this helped to keep attentive, gifted students who were interested in the field of physics. I engaged students by extending the curriculum with some advanced and more in depth knowledge into my field. However due to insufficient experience and training, I was not always able to differentiate in my class. I also had the chance to discuss with my peers as to the curriculum content available to differentiate for the gifted and suggested ideas whereby the school could have a standard curriculum that supported differentiation.

Enrichment is another method used whereby learning activities are formulated that is above and beyond the core curriculum. This is where a broader knowledgebase exists and is part of the planning for a lesson. It can be implemented through dividing a classroom into groups and having students work on activities that supplement the core curriculum, another way is to get students to go on school trips that are related to their curriculum but whereby they get to see a more advanced level of implementation after which they can write reports of their experience, this would expand their knowledge on a particular subject such as visiting the national space centre and learning about applied physics. The DfES offers advice on enrichment in 'Excellence in Cities: Further guidance on gifted and talented strand'.

Extension is where students are allowed to accelerate their learning and hence move faster than other students. This I feel works best where gifted students are grouped together in a separate class so that the curriculum can be compressed and worked at, at a faster rate. In this method a teacher can apply knowledge from a more advanced class or other subjects in the national curriculum and students can also be set to work with higher age groups.

Enrichment and Extension require that the curriculum be flexible and planned for both the general and gifted student populations. Both of these can be used in a mixed class however by giving the gifted students additional or advanced activities. In practice it is very difficult to apply these, especially in classes that have behaviour issues.

In my opinion it is not always helpful to give gifted students additional work always as they feel that being gifted is a burden and hence become less interested in the work, it is important therefore to engage them in things they find interesting and give them intellectually challenging tasks that motivates and interests them as long as it is within the scope of the curriculum. Gifted students can be provided with additional classes however again these should not feel like a punishment or additional workload.

During my experience through teaching I utilized formative assessment to gain an idea of where the students are and to ensure that the extended learning for the gifted students has not led them astray from the national curriculum, this was to ensure that they would still achieve their expected grades in their GCSE's. One of the methods that I applied most was peer marking and sometimes marks schemes.

Acceleration is a hotly debated subject; this is where students are allowed to go into advanced classes with elder students due to their ability to progress faster. This has both pros and cons. The Pros being that the student is not held back and bored in a class that is progressing slowly for his standard, while the Cons being that he is in a different peer group and may not develop in other areas due to the fast paced learning.

A lot of points need to be taken into account before a student is allowed to go through the acceleration process, such as them being comfortable with students that are older, being able to cope with increasing work loads and lots of support both from teachers and parents. It is also important to note that children who have been put on such a program should be constantly monitored and not just left alone as their performance may degrade over time if they are not comfortable with their new environment. I personally feel that acceleration can be a good idea if handled correctly.

Mentoring is an important aspect in the advancement of gifted students. This is especially important where a gifted student may be underachieving due to external factors; the advice and guidance from a mentor can be very helpful in mitigating social circumstances. It is also nice for a student to get motivation from a mentor who specializes in the subject that the child is interested in, in my case it was a great experience to mentor a group of students who had a keen interest in astrophysics and being able to discuss with them at length and advise them on my experiences assisted them greatly.

In my experience I applied a lot of research-based tasks allowing the gifted students to grow and broaden their horizons. I also allowed them select activities and topics that they felt would interest them and this was especially helpful with older students who liked to take ownership of their education.

Using ICT is also a very useful method as it is flexible and can make learning interesting. Gifted students will enjoy going home and working on websites that allow them to learn more about a particular subject in a fun and exciting way. ICT helps in personalized learning through e-learning courses.

Competitions are also a great way of getting gifted students motivated and an opportunity for them to stand out from the crowd, rewards can also help increase their motivation. There are several competitions that exist for gifted students within particular classes and subjects for gifted students, whereby a student can pick a particular topic, research on it and present it to the public, this helps in enhancing the students knowledge in a subject that they may find interesting

Having examined some of the major methods of raising achievement in science for gifted students it is important to note that a school requires to have set policies in dealing with gifted students, setting goals, constantly monitoring the students and making changes to improve their current systems.

The national agenda for G&T's is promising and it is great to see the initiatives taken to raise achievement for example the governments Excellence In Cities program assists schools to implement and achieve a plan for raising achievement of G&T students, and the national academy for gifted and talented youth.

In science subjects especially Physics, the methods of teaching have a big influence in the achievement of students. Physics being a mostly theoretical subject in terms of the curriculum has many practical applications, it is therefore important that it is taught in a practical way that relates to the real world, this makes it an exciting subject and hence one that will appeal to gifted students. The approach of teaching should be to involve students, encourage discussions, research, and attentive listening in class by having dialogue through question and answer sessions.

Variety is also an important aspect of making Science (Physics) interesting to students; this involves using a variety of sources, equipment, tasks and activities. It also requires variety in terms of assessment. As part of the assessment feedback is also an important aspect both to correct and to motivate.

In conclusion, We have discussed the need to realize that gifted students exist, and that they require special attention in order to raise achievement, we also realize that some gifted students may not easily show up in results and that thorough identification is of gifted students is necessary. We have also discussed that due to various external factors the identification of gifted students and their provision is difficult.

The approach towards raising achievement cannot be done by a single individual, it needs to be driven by firstly the whole country, then the local councils and schools as well as everyone involved from parents to teachers. This is done through policies and resources as well as support to encourage this process. As part of this teacher training is vital.

Several methods for raising achievement have been discussed, however not all of them can be applied at all times, it is important to treat all scenarios individually and tailor a solution based on the needs and circumstances.

It is also important to note that the theoretical research papers are not always exactly linked to classroom practices, as the classroom environment is constantly changing and hence the teachers' judgment plays a large role in the implementation of strategies to raise achievement. Hence a mixture of methods is applied within a classroom environment.

I feel that if we all strive to raise the achievement of gifted students in Physics, it will breed the next generation of top Physicists in this country, which will help enhance all our lives through their research and contribution in the field.