Teaching in the context of enriched gifted education program – evaluation research of a pilot project

Paper

Research studies conducted during the last few decades have demonstrated both the need for and the benefits of gifted education programs regarding gifted students’ academic achievement and socioemotional development (Renzulli, 2012; Ogurlu, 2020). Recently, a pilot project focused on the identification and development of potentially gifted fifth-grade elementary school students as well as on empowering the professional development of their teachers was conducted in Rijeka.
Within a broader evaluation of the effects of the extracurricular enrichment program based on the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM, Renzulli, 1977; Renzulli & Reis, 2014) implemented in the pilot project, this study focused on the identification and analysis of important determinants of teachers' successful gifted program implementation. Specifically, the study aimed to explore potential differences in teachers’ teaching practice during their regular classroom work and the work they conducted during the enrichment program workshops. The second goal was to qualitatively examine teachers’ instructional workshops design and self-reflection on their experiences in designing and implementing enriched education programs in four domains (sciences, humanities and social sciences, arts, and technology).
An online survey methodology was employed involving a sample of all the teachers who participated in the program (N = 17). Teachers separately completed two surveys comprising the same scales that were contextualized for their teaching in the regular classroom and in the gifted education program. Teachers’ personal beliefs about learning and teaching, including the goal orientations which they encourage in students and their approaches to teaching, were assessed along with their perceived classroom climate and perceived students’ engagement and motivation. Additionally, self-reported measures of teaching cognitive and metacognitive strategies and teaching practices regarding the encouraged learning activities and fostered students’ skills and abilities were collected. Teachers’ self-efficacy in developing students’ creativity and beliefs regarding the assessment of creativity were also assessed. For each of the 11 workshop teachers completed self-reflection protocols providing data on the constructive alignment as a design for workshop teaching and their reflections on the implemented workshops based on several open-ended questions.
The results of the quantitative analysis showed that the main difference of the teachers’ practice in their regular schoolwork compared to work within the enriched programs was in orientating less on remembering facts when teaching gifted children than they did when they taught in a regular classroom. During enrichment programs, they more often used methods focused on experimenting with new ways of teaching and learning, and discovery learning methods. Based on the qualitative analysis of the collected teachers’ reflections data, the most used teaching methods were discovery learning methods, demonstrations, and verbal methods, regardless of the domains of giftedness. They were all mainly used to accomplish learning outcomes from the higher levels of the taxonomy.
During the presentation, more detailed information will be discussed considering the methods used in concrete giftedness domains, along with the recommendations for planning and implementing enriched gifted education programs drawn from the study results regarding the experiences and self-assessments of teachers involved in the pilot project.