The education of high ability learners

This MESHGuide provides an overview of key issues in education for those learners deemed to have advanced abilities in one or more domains of the school curriculum and/or demonstrate high ability in areas beyond the normal school curriculum. The Guide provides insights from research and practice into:

The Guide takes as axiomatic the existence of such learners in all cultural and socio-economic groups and that within that group there is heterogeneity in development and in learning needs and the extent to which potential is realised. The education system should allow all young people to achieve to the best of their ability, including those with high learning potential. These young people need to realise their potential both for personal fulfilment and because they represent a considerable social and economic asset. We know however that there are still too many highly able pupils who face substantial barriers to the achievement of which they are capable (Sutton Trust, 2015; Potential Plus, 2020; House of Commons Library Briefing Paper, 2020).

The field of research on giftedness and gifted education (the terms mostly used in the literature) is lacking in coherence and stringency. ‘Gifted studies’ are a loosely organized field of research rather than a discipline, with researchers coming from different  backgrounds, with  different  theoretical  and  practical  interests. Consequently, truly evidence-based policy and practice are scarce.

From a survey of 1,234 empirical studies on giftedness, gifted education, and creativity during 1998 –2010 (Dai et al 2018) four main research topics emerged: creativity/creatively gifted, achievement/underachievement, identification, and talent development. The authors identified several prominent trends, including the emergent qualitative studies (accounting for a quarter of the total studies) and the dominance of descriptive (comparative and correlational) research. They concluded however that whilst ‘rich and broad conceptual spaces linking these four categories to their psychological underpinnings and educational implications have been explored by this body of research, … the conceptual spaces are still too loosely organized to be seen as paradigmatic ’ and that  ‘although most psychosocial studies are conducted in  the  context  of  gifted  education,  there  still  seems  to  be  a  gap  between  theory  and  practice,  between  psychological understanding  of  gifted  development  and  promoting  such  development  through  education.  More systematic, sustainable programmes of research and more coordination among researchers are warranted to move the field forward (p.136).’

The survey authors also concluded that: ‘the field needs more research  that  is  use-inspired, based on current understandings of the nature and development  of  giftedness,  developing  innovative  theories of practice through programming and intervention research situated in practical settings (p.137).’

The relatively few studies undertaken in the UK (e.g. NFER, 2003; NAGTY, 2005, EPPI, 2008;) either draw similar conclusions about the paucity of an evidence base or whilst purporting to look at ‘what works in gifted education’ rarely interrogate specific pedagogical approaches or school wide provision beyond the usual suspects of enrichment, acceleration and mentoring.  Even when ‘differentiation’ as a principle of practice for very able learners is a research focus there is scant evidence about the substance of approaches taken or their impact.

‘A principal conclusion from the review is that research into gifted and talented education has focused on structures and organisational arrangements and largely ignored the well- established field of teacher effectiveness, which is more directly related to pedagogy. There is a small number of robustly conducted studies which can be used to inform policy.’ (NAGTY, 2005)

The most recent UK review of ‘gifted and talented’ research (CREE, 2018) concluded:

• Most research is not sufficiently rigorous for the purposes of drawing policy conclusions regarding the characteristics of successful gifted education programmes…we were not able to unearth a single rigorous study of the effectiveness or otherwise of specific strategies focused on helping talented pupils in practical areas, such as music.
• The rigorous evidence that does exist tends to find that neither gifted education programmes, nor streaming, as currently carried out, on average make much difference in terms of generating higher performance among gifted children.
• A couple of rigorous studies suggest that enrichment programmes, combined with self-directed/targeted instruction, have positive effects. This is supported by cognitive research, which suggests that already high performing individuals perform better using discovery-based pedagogy. Research also suggests gifted children tend to have the characteristics required to benefit from such pedagogy.
• This is an important contrast to the situation for most non-gifted children, among whom structured curriculum and pedagogy have strong positive effects in most settings. In that there is little rigorous evidence that these methods are superior for very able children, there appears little contradiction between these findings.
• Enrichment models predicated on self-directed/ individualised instruction thus appear most promising for realising the performance of gifted children. Accordingly, specific countries that have implemented models including these characteristics, such as Singapore, may be worth investigating in future research.

In 2018 The Sutton Trust provided teachers with guidance on identification and support for highly able students drawing on the existing literature and case studies. They too however recognised that further work was still needed in this area of research.

Maximising the potential of highly able young people poses three main challenges in schools: identifying the right students, offering them the right programmes and interventions, and managing the process organisationally in a sustainable way. While highly able students from certain backgrounds, in certain parts of the country, and attending certain types of schools face substantial barriers, what schools actually do for such students can be crucial for success.

There is currently little evidence on how best to support highly able students, and even less on how to support students capable of high attainment who are from disadvantaged backgrounds.

(Research brief: Missing Talent  The Sutton Trust, June 2015)

The National Association for Able Children in Education (NACE*) undertook in 2020 a small scale research project into successful approaches to learning for the more able in its Challenge Award** schools.  The aim of the project was to look beyond identification, intervention and additional support programmes for more able learners and to identify aspects of practice which enrich and deepen learning for very able young people, focussing on what it termed ‘cognitive challenge’. The ensuing publication (NACE, 2021***) reported the findings of that project through examples of strong practice in cognitive challenge and through drawing together related common themes and conceptual frameworks.

This MESHGuide has noted the following caveats in interrogating the relevant literature regarding high ability and the education of highly able learners and evaluating contributions to our understanding of that field:

• Curriculum models and concepts of appropriate provision for the highly able differ widely between countries and education systems; a lack of consistency and clarity therefore clouds the research base
• The focus of educational ‘provision’ and by extension the research reflect conceptions of ability, ‘giftedness’ and intelligence in different cultures
• There is an inconsistency of terminology across the literature and amongst researchers
• There is a paucity of research documenting and evaluating programmes, interventions and pedagogy for highly able learners
• Research into ‘challenge’, ‘expertise development’ goes beyond the field of ‘gifted and talented/more able’ into wider pedagogical domains and even multi-disciplinary investigations (eg Renzulli, 1993, 2005 ; Reis, 2010; Hattie, 2009; Willingham, 2010; Bjork, 2017; Ripley, 2013)
• The research base is international, with an emphasis on the US, Far East and Australasia

The MESHGuide therefore draws on a diverse, multi-perspective and comprehensive literature base in attempting to give a coherent account of evidence and best practice in key areas pertaining to high ability and the education of high ability learners.

References

As we pointed out in the beginning of this article, gifted studies are a loosely organized field of research rather than a discipline,  with  researchers  coming  from  different  backgrounds,  with  different  theoretical  and  practical  interests. The  most  stringent  definition  of  research  “paradigm” includes a set of canonical research topics as well as conceptual tools, methodological procedures, and criteria agreed on by a research community as  the standard  or norm  for conducting  research  in  the  field  (Kuhn,  1962).  The  field  of research on giftedness and gifted education simply does not have such  coherence  and stringency.

*NACE is an independent UK organisation which has worked for over 35 years in the field of education for high ability learners

** The Challenge Award is a ‘quality mark’ given in recognition of high quality provision for more able learners in primary and secondary settings

*** Making Space for Able Learners, NACE,  2020

Centre for Education Economics (UK) What works in gifted education? A literature review. Heller-Sahlgren, Gabriel  2018

Gifted Child Quarterly 55(2) 126 –138 2011 National Association for Gifted Children State of Research on Giftedness and Gifted Education: A Survey of Empirical Studies Published During 1998–2010 David Yun Dai, Joan Ann Swanson, and Hongyu Cheng

A Baseline Review of the Literature on Effective Pedagogies for Gifted and Talented Students. (NAGTY, Occasional Paper 5).  Hewston et al 2005

Research brief: Missing Talent   The Sutton Trust, June 2015

Research brief: Potential for Success The Sutton Trust, 2018

A Literature Review on the Policy Approaches and Initiatives for the Inclusion of Gifted Students in OECD Countries  2020

House of Commons Library Briefing Paper  Support for more able and talented children in schools (UK) 2020