When we talk about intellectually gifted children, the debate tends to focus on one of two questions: how we detect this characteristic, and why it doesn’t always translate into higher marks at school. While these are important questions, they overlook another equally important one: what can schools do once they know a student has to learn in a different way to other others?
Even when gifted students are identified, educators tend to offer an uninspiring response. They set more work, or more of the same kind of exercises, as if learning were a simple question of doing more. This is a very common mistake. Instead of increasing students’ burdens, we should be adjusting the level of the challenge itself.
Enriched learning
Educators’ responses to gifted children are typically found at two extremes: inaction or overload. But properly adapted education doesn’t mean giving a child ten exercises where others do five. This only serves to make education repetitive and unstimulating.
If a student has already covered some of the planned content, teachers can reorganise their learning pathway and avoid unnecessary repetition. This frees up time in the school day that, instead of being filled with more of the same kinds of tasks, should be used for enrichment activities and a broader curriculum.
In practice, this means activities such as open problems, research projects, exploring links between disciplines, working on tasks with multiple solutions, critically analysing information, and creating their own outputs.
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Javier Tourón, an internationally recognised Spanish expert in this field, points out that enrichment can take various forms: flexible groupings within the classroom, temporary breaks for specific activities, resource rooms, or complementary programmes. But these should always be based on pupils’ actual needs, not as a one-size-fits-all measure.
Don’t overburden, adapt
The question is not whether these pupils need special activities, but rather which curricular and methodological decisions enable them to learn in a meaningful way. This forces us to consider a number of issues:
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Objectives: not all students need to progress through the curriculum at the same pace. In a language class where, for example, the class is working on the structure of a narrative text, a gifted student could be given a more challenging objective. This could be experimenting with different narrators, playing with the story’s timeline, or analysing how the meaning of a text changes depending on the point of view.
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Tasks: limited, repetitive tasks may be useful at times, but they cannot be the only way of teaching. Gifted students need real intellectual challenges. For example, instead of ten identical calculations, they could be asked to design a problem themselves.
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Assessment: it is useful to know what a student already knows. Initial assessments and tests can avoid students repeating what they have already learnt, and free up time for more complex projects.
In maths, for instance, the final result may only be one part of the assessment. Teachers could also assess how the student reaches the answer, their ability to explain their method, and their comparison of different methods.
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Organising learning: effective curriculum adaptation does not always mean taking pupils out of the classroom or creating a completely separate programme. It can often be achieved within the main classroom, provided the school has the flexibility to group pupils, diversify, enrich and personalise the learning experience.
For example, in language or social studies, while the class is exploring a common topic, gifted students may take on a different role, such as identifying links with other topics, coming up with higher-level questions, comparing sources, or preparing a short presentation for the group.
A need, not a privilege
These measures are often seen as a privilege, but that is not what they are. They are a way of meeting a student’s specific educational needs.
Inclusion is not just about helping those with difficulties. It also means recognising that diversity takes many different forms and that a school cannot give the same response to all those who learn differently. Ignoring the needs of gifted pupils also leads to exclusion and, in the long term, can cause boredom, disengagement and demotivation.
A universal design
The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework is particularly relevant for gifted pupils because it is based on a central tenet of inclusive education: that not all students learn in the same way, nor do they all need the same conditions to participate, progress and fulfil their potential. This would be akin to assuming that every person wears the same size of clothes.
UDL enables teachers to diversify forms of engagement, meaning the ways that students connect with the learning process. This can mean, for instance, offering different project options based on a student’s interests, or challenges of varying complexity.
UDL also covers means of representation (for example, presenting the same content through text, visual diagrams, videos or oral explanations), and of action and expression (for example, giving student the option of demonstrating what they have learnt through an oral presentation, a written text, an infographic, a model or a research project).
As some authors argue, inclusive education is not a question of adapting students to a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching, but of transforming educational design to reduce barriers and expand learning opportunities for all.
This approach benefits not only those with the most obvious difficulties, but also those who need greater intellectual stimulation, flexibility, and opportunities for personal development in order to fully realise their potential.
The whole classroom benefits
The good news is that transforming teaching in this way doesn’t just benefit certain pupils. When a school adapts, stops overburdening students, and presents them with more open-ended challenges, it improves the whole class’s educational experience.
Why, then, do we continue to uphold such a homogeneous approach to teaching in the classroom when we know that diversity is the norm? Giftedness forces us to confront this uncomfortable question.
Catering for the needs of gifted children means improving the way we design the classroom experience. But this is no easy task. It calls for greater investment in training across the entire educational sector, and an open-minded approach that embraces diversity as an inherent part of being human.
