Effective learning and teaching are based on fundamental principles of behavioral and social development, and these principles are in the areas of human development, cognition, motivation, social interaction, and communication. Psychological science has a lot to offer the world of education, including that of gifted and talented children, by providing insights into how students think and learn, what motivates them, and how social interaction is important to learning.
The field of Psychology has also made studies into the areas of effective classroom environments, effective instruction, and appropriate use of assessments and measurements. New research continues to be conducted, and one of the pioneering forces in this effort has been a coalition of psychologists, known as the Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education, an organization supported by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education
The members of the coalition come from all walks of psychological, educational, and community practices, including developmental psychology, personal and social psychology, evaluation and measurement, the arts, educational psychology, clinical child and adolescent psychology, specialists in ethnic minority affairs, teachers, students, and families. And there are many more groups that contribute, with all professionals having expertise in the application of psychology to childhood, elementary, secondary, or special education.
The APA in general and the coalition specifically have been studying psychological principles as they apply to PreK-12 education for more than a decade. More information about their findings, including white papers and education modules for teachers, can be found on the APA website.
The coalition has continued the earlier work of the APA in the field of education, an attempt to identify “Learner-Centered Psychological Principles” in 1977. As a follow-up and continuation of that study, the coalition has published a “Top 20 Principles from Psychology for PreK-12 Creative, Talented, and Gifted Students’ Teaching and Learning.”
And although the coalition has found it difficult to establish a uniform definition for identifying gifted learners, because it varies widely from one school district to another, the group has expanded its research and findings to the population generally described as gifted.
Here, we take a look at the areas of research conducted by the coalition, along with some of its major findings and suggestions.
How Students Think and Learn
The coalition devoted eight of its 20 principles to the subject of student thinking and learning. Its first finding was that students’ beliefs about intelligence and ability affect their cognitive functioning and learning. If students believe intelligence is adaptive and not fixed, they will have a growth mindset about intelligence. They focus on ability.
Those who believe intelligence is a fixed trait will focus on performance goals, and feel they have to continually prove their intelligence. Gifted learners typically attribute their failure(s) to not working hard enough, rather than lack of ability. They succeed when they can access learning strategies, and then apply what they have learned to new tasks and problems. Their learning is adaptive, not fixed.
Another finding was that high-ability students, gifted students, have more elaborately organized knowledge-bases, can process information more quickly, and do not benefit from “over-learning.” Being presented repeatedly with the information they already know leads gifted students to have negative responses like boredom and disengagement.
All students have stages of development. But student reasoning is not matched to those stages. Cognitive development is independent of stage of development. That’s why infants and young children have been found to have early competencies in certain domains. And gifted children learn at all different ages and different stages of development.
The coalition found that learning is based on context. Gifted students use what they know more efficiently and see connections between what they know and what they don’t know better than their peers. They can apply what they know spontaneously to unfamiliar contexts. But non-gifted students need support and facilitation in learning new contexts. Transfer of knowledge and skills to new material is not as spontaneous for them.
Student Motivation, Engagement, and Achievement
To put it simply, students learn when they enjoy it. Intrinsic motivation, i.e. doing something for its own sake, is stronger than extrinsic motivation (grades, praises, etc.). Students do better when they feel competent and autonomous (“I can do it for myself”), and the find the work enjoyable.
These students pay more attention, get more engaged, organize information more effectively, and relate better to new information. Those learners who depend only on extrinsic motivation learn superficially. Gifted learners are found to be intrinsically motivated. However, researchers found that extrinsic motivation is also important when properly administered.
And in a particularly interesting finding, the coalition saw that the expectations of teachers became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Teachers hold expectations about the abilities and academic achievements of their students, and this affects how they deliver instruction. It also affects how students actually achieve. These expectations are sometimes false. If faulty expectations are delivered to students, they start to perform in ways that confirm the teacher’s expectations.
If a teacher doesn’t expect a student to do well, a good student may not do well, thus confirming the teacher’s expectations. This can be true of gifted students as well. Not recognized as gifted, the student may underperform. Some gifted students, however, will take this as a challenge to prove the teacher wrong.
Importance of Classroom Social Environment
Students do not learn in a vacuum. They may do badly on a test because an uncle just passed away. They may do well because it is their birthday. Students live in a world with multiple social contexts. In addition to classrooms, gifted students are part of families, peer groups, neighborhoods, cultural groups, communities, and society. The interaction of any or all of these can affect student performance and learning. In looking for explanations of student differences, educators are now looking, not just at the learner, but at all the social and cultural contexts that surround the learner.
Classrooms are social by nature. They involve a teacher-student relationship and peer relationships with other students. In this environment, students learn more than traditional class subjects. They also learn social skills, communication, respect for others, and creating and maintaining healthy relationships with peers and adults. They learn how to communicate thoughts and feelings through verbal and nonverbal behavior.
Gifted students can suffer from being the target of peer comparisons. Students who are outperformed may feel negative about themselves and their abilities. The social adjustment and status of gifted learners tends to be low in secondary schools, where the learners prefer to work alone rather than with peers. They are vulnerable to peer rejection. They often adjust more slowly. Teachers need to foster a classroom environment that supports an appreciation for diversity and encourages cooperation over competition.
While psychology researchers have contributed much to our understanding of how and why students learn the best, and how we can better teach them, there is much more to be done in terms of translating the research into consistent programs in the classroom.
