Meeting the needs of gifted science learners…

One of my publications is the paper:

Extended abstract

This paper discusses a project (ASCEND) that was designed to provide science curriculum enrichment for students in publicly maintained secondary schools in an English city. The context of the project was (a) England’s National Curriculum, and comprehensive school system, which set out a ‘one model fits all’ approach to school science; in conjunction with (b) national policies on meeting the needs of ‘gifted and talented’ students, requiring schools to provide suitable provision for their highest attaining pupils. This context reflects a long-standing tension in English education between, on the one hand, offering equality of opportunity, and considering Education as a means of facilitating social mobility, whilst, at the same time, meeting the needs of different groups of students through offering parents a sense of being able to choose between schools with different strengths and qualities. The ASCEND project responded to this set of circumstances by developing learning activities organised around three key features: a focus on the nature of science (NOS); an emphasis on self-regulation of learning; and a context of small-group work.

The focus on NOS reflected an area of ongoing developments in the English curriculum, and an area of science teaching where it was widely recognised school provision was commonly weak. More importantly, by its nature, this aspect of science learning offers potential contexts that are well suited to challenging the most able students. The focus on developing metacognition reflected both the value to all learners of being able to self-regulate their own learning, and the particular value to gifted learners – who may find limited challenge in many school science activities – of being able to develop as autodidacts. Finally, the choice of adopting group work activities was informed by an awareness that many gifted learners may lack classroom peers able to challenge their thinking at an optimum level, and the opportunity of bringing together selected students from different schools offered the possibility of students meeting and working with like‑minded peers from other schools. Group work not only offered opportunities for peer scaffolding of learning, and to negotiate and organise team responses to challenges, but also to practice the kind of dialogic argumentation that is central to scientific work.

It was found that students generally enjoyed taking part in the ASCEND programme, and found the degree of control they were given over their work quite novel. The project highlighted a mismatch between students’ typical experiences of school science in England and the type of learning activities likely to support the intellectual development of the most able students. The students told us they were used to school science activities that were highly structured and supported by close monitoring by teachers, and they found the more open-ended ASCEND activities – where they were asked to monitor and evaluate their own progress through an extended task – quite different to the demands of school science. It is argued that the ASCEND strategy was broadly successful, and offers an example of how provision for gifted learners can be designed to fit local circumstances. The project also provided resources for adoption and adaption by others offering science enrichment programmes for gifted students.

Keywords:

• gifted learners
• comprehensive system
• curriculum enrichment
• nature of science
• metacognition
• ASCEND project

Extended Abstract & keywords (in Japanese)

Find the paper at J-STAGE. (J-STAGE is an electronic journal platform for science and technology information in Japan, developed and managed by the Japan Science and Technology Agency)

Download the full article here.