Who are the High Ability Students?
Who Are High Ability Students?
National Excellence: A Case for Developing America's Talent defined gifted education. Children and youth with outstanding talent perform or show the potential for performing at remarkably high levels of accomplishment when compared with others of their age, experience, or environment. These children and youth exhibit high performance capability in intellectual, creative, and/or artistic areas, possess an unusual leadership capacity, or excel in specific academic fields. They require services or activities not ordinarily provided by the schools.Outstanding talents are present in children and youth from all cultural groups, across all economic strata, and in all areas of human endeavor (p. 3).
- general intellectual: students with high aptitude for abstract reasoning and conceptualization, who master skills and concepts quickly, and who are exceptionally alert and observant;
- specific academic: students who evidence extraordinary learning ability in one or more specific disciplines;
- visual and performing arts: students who are consistently superior in the development of a product or performance in any visual and performing arts;
- leadership: students who emerge as leaders, and who demonstrate high ability to accomplish group goals by working through and with others;
- creative, critical, and productive thinking: students who are highly insightful, imaginative, and who consistently assimilate and synthesize seemingly unrelated information to create new and novel solutions for conventional tasks.
Why are High Ability Programs needed?
Dr. Barbara Clark identified in her book, Growing up Gifted: Developing the potential of children at home and at school, several reasons for the development of high ability programs.
| Perspective | Rationale |
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Right to Learn |
"Giftedness" is a label used to indicate a high level of intelligence; it has a dynamic quality that can be furthered only by participation in learning experiences that challenge and extend the child's level of intelligence, ability, and interest (p.6). |
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Equal Opportunity |
The school, as an extension of society's principle of equality, purports to provide an equal educational opportunity for all children so they can develop their intellect and talents to the fullest potential. Because all children must, therefore, be educated at their level of development, it is against the principles of a just society to refuse gifted and talented children the right to educational experiences appropriate to their developed level of ability (p.7). |
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Individual Cost |
When human beings are limited and restricted in their development, we run the risk of creating both physical and psychological dysfunction (p.7). |
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Talent Development |
Society gains from the greatest advancement of all the abilities and from the highest development of all the talents of all its members, whatever their areas of strength (p.7). |
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Individual Differences |
Gifted youngsters often think differently and have different interests than their age-mates. They usually enter school having already developed many basic skills, sometimes to high levels. They have areas of interest that have developed into advanced areas of knowledge (p.8). |
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Individual Growth |
When the needs of the gifted and talented students are recognized and the education program is designed to meet their needs, these students make significant gains in achievement, and their sense of competence is enhanced (p.8). |
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Societal Benefit |
Contributions to society in all areas of human endeavor come in over weighed proportion from gifted individuals (p.8). |
