Serving gifted students through inclusion.

The Story

Being in Georgia at the time of the Olympics provides an opportunity to observe and reflect upon the kind of selection and training that goes into making world class athletes ready to compete at the international level. They are usually selected at an early age and begin very rigorous training with the best coaches and the best facilities. They learn early to compete against themselves and against other highly skilled athletes. This is such a vivid contrast to the current impetus to serve academically gifted students by including them in heterogeneously grouped classes.

Consider for a moment what Gwen Torrence's training would be like if inclusion also applied to athletics. She would have to race against runners of all abilities. If her training consisted solely of such trials, how likely is it that she would be prepared for the Olympics and runners who had trained with other top-notch athletes? Is it any wonder that our students who are being trained in exclusively heterogeneous learning environments don't fare very well in international academic competitions?

By extending the analogy to team sports, we can look at the child who is placed in heterogeneous group learning situations. Can you imagine what the U. S. Olympic basketball team would be like if they were a group of very mixed abilities? How frustrating would practice and competition be for the best members of the team? For the least skilled?

In athletics we have realized the benefits of training according to talent. Why are we so reluctant to admit the benefits in academic areas? In fact, we have evidence that specialized training is beneficial in a broad range of endeavors. The studies of talent development conducted by Bloom and his associates (Bloom, 1985) have provided evidence that special learning conditions and teachers are necessary for optimal development at different levels. According to the findings of these studies of individuals with outstanding achievements in athletic, aesthetic, and intellectual fields, there are phases of talent development that progress from playful and inviting, to precise and skillful, and, finally, to expertise and innovation with instructors who are at the top in their fields. The stages appear at different times in different disciplines and for different individuals. In an academic course, students who are ready for the precision of stage 2 or the specialization of stage 3 would be frustrated to have to work with students at a lower level. With what we know about the variability of individual development, it is anachronistic to continue to group children for instruction according to chronological age! Certainly, we wouldn't insist that all children of the same age wear the same shoe size.

Proponents of inclusion insist that children's individual needs can still be met with skillful teaching. Evidence from surveys and observations conducted by the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented (Westberg, Archambault, Dobyns, & Salvin, 1993) indicate that this is not happening. Perhaps individualized planning and instruction to a broad range of abilities is just too much to ask of the teacher.

Proponents of inclusion also point out the problems with assigning children to ability groups where some children are labeled as the dummies. This is a very convincing argument. However, such stultifying practices can be avoided if grouping is: dynamic--based upon children's changing needs; situational--based upon the specific learning situation; and, periodic--interspersed with heterogeneous grouping situations.

Finally, we must examine on what basis our decisions about grouping are made. Is the primary goal of education social change or development of the individual? Although these goals are not incompatible, an honest appraisal of our priorities in education would aid in making decisions about grouping. There is evidence to indicate that there are losses in achievement test scores of students from upper level classes who are regrouped heterogeneously (Brewer, Rees, & Argys, 1995). Such evidence behooves those making decisions about using inclusion for the education of gifted students to conduct a candid costs/benefits analysis and be forthright about the possible academic costs to the brightest students of such a decision.

Serving Gifted Students Through Inclusion: A Teacher's Perspective

Lisa Benson
Middle School Teacher

The fiery debate surrounding the issue of inclusion appears to have been resolved in many school systems. Inclusive classrooms are becoming the rule as opposed to the exception. What mountain of research supports the notion that the inclusive, heterogeneous classroom best serves the needs of all students? What mountain of literature and knowledge do administrators and school boards turn to when deciding this issue? The answer is Mt. Morality, of course. The unsubstantiated, yet all too familiar, charges of elitism and unfair practices that are leveled toward the homogeneous classroom seem to have more influence on our policy-makers than the plethora of research affirming the benefits of homogeneous grouping. But my stance against inclusion is not based on formulas, means, and significant numbers, for I am not now nor have I ever been either a research scientist or a statistician. I am a teacher, and as such, I am the individual who is most aware of the realities of the everyday classroom, as well as the individual who is held personally accountable for best serving the needs of our students.

We are all aware that the actual application of a seemingly sound educational theory is oftentimes impractical for the real world classroom. Inclusion is a fine example of this statement. The reality of most teacher's lives is that they are already overworked; time is a scarce commodity of which there never seems to be an ample supply. As if attempting to meet the needs of some 20-30 individual students per class isn't enough, heterogeneous grouping only worsens the situation. A cross-section of the inclusive classroom will reveal learners of highly variable abilities, from the gifted to the average to the below average. Each of these groups and, in fact, each of these individuals has special needs. In order to best serve these students, a teacher should develop and adjust his/her expectations and strategies for the various learning styles and groups which are represented. Is it realistic to expect one teacher to be able to meet the needs of such a diverse group? The honest answer has to be no. In theory, the teacher with a heterogeneous group of students will receive support and assistance from his/her colleagues more familiar with how to best serve the needs of students who represent either end of the ability spectrum, namely those from the gifted and special education programs. In reality, at least in my experience, this support structure is nonexistent in any form but lip service and the individual teacher is left to his/her own devices for how to best handle the situation. In this scenario, I feel it is safe to state that most teachers "teach to the middle." This results in a learning situation in which the gifted students become bored and frustrated due to repetition and lack of challenge, whereas the lesser-abled students become frustrated because they are not receiving the necessary amount of extra attention and services that they need.

Advocates for the inclusion policy will argue that several teaching approaches, especially those centered around the idea of cooperative learning groups, have proven to be successful in the pursuit of academic success for all students in the heterogeneous classroom. We must teach our students to accept and appreciate differences in others as well as how to work together. Heterogeneous grouping serves to help eliminate the formation of elitist attitudes by gifted populations and offers equal opportunities to all. These ideas are often tossed about when discussing the inclusion issue. However, it has been my experience that many gifted students become quickly frustrated with the cooperative learning group approach. This is especially true for those students who exhibit a high degree of creativity. Their unhappiness within the classroom environment can lead to dissatisfaction with the entire school experience. Like it or not, the reality of life is that not all students are comfortable with group work and a classroom policy that is centered around cooperative learning may only serve to thwart and alienate certain types of learners.

In sum, the present day realities of the average classroom do not offer the ideal situation in which to implement the inclusion policy. The class sizes are too large for tailoring teaching strategies to best serve all students. The necessary resources, including a support system for the teacher, are not currently in place and would take years to establish. In addition, the establishment of an effective support system would require an enormous amount of financial expenditure. Having smaller classrooms means that we need more classrooms. Having more classrooms means that we need more teachers. Also, the regular classroom teacher is not informed enough about the special needs of his/her exceptional populations so that the gifted and special education programs would need to be greatly expanded. As we all know, school budgets are being pushed beyond their limits already.

As a teacher, I am genuinely concerned about how I can best serve all of my students. If I didn't feel that it is my personal duty and responsibility to put forth my best effort on a daffy basis then I would readily admit that I chose the wrong occupation. I did not choose the wrong occupation. It has been my experience that the heterogeneous, inclusive classroom is not the best way to meet the needs of all students. Unfortunately, theory and application do not always go hand-in-hand. The reality of inclusion is that it is oftentimes not being implemented according to its design. Until such a day comes, if it ever does, I am resolute that there are more effective ways to better serve our students--all students.

Serving Gifted Students through Inclusion: A Parent's Perspective

Charles Martin
Middle School Parent

I have a daughter in middle school and a son in elementary school. Both have been in our system s gifted program since first grade. During this time our school system has experimented with several delivery models to meet their needs. Inclusion has been one of them.

When the system first mentioned inclusion, the question I had was, "What do you mean by `Inclusion'?" I do not advocate a total pull-out program for gifted children; so I expect my children to be included in the regular classroom for the majority of the school day. Schools have socialization goals as well as academic ones. Besides, children identified for the gifted program are not "gifted" in every subject area and their academic needs can be met in many ways in the regular classroom.

However, I am concerned when inclusion means dumping gifted children into a regular classroom and expecting all their needs to be met in a highly heterogeneous setting. I also become concerned with what happens to the money allocated for gifted education in schools where total inclusion is being practiced. It's just too easy for this money to disappear and be used for basic needs such as paper and copying.

In our case, I was afraid that inclusion meant that the needs of my children would not be met. This wasn't because teachers were not caring or hardworking. I worried about teachers' lack of training in gifted education. I worried, because, although they may be talented teachers, they are not superheroes. It is not possible for a teacher in a fourth grade classroom to adequately serve children whose reading ability spans six grade levels or students whose math ability ranges from having difficulty with two digit addition to facility with algebra.

With my son, we saw the advantage of pull-out programs for addressing students special needs. Adam is a math wiz and is very creative; but he has had great difficulty in language arts. For the past 3 years, he received services for a learning disability in reading for one period a day. He also attended classes for gifted students in which he was able to study more advanced math as well as pursue advanced subject area topics, despite his reading and writing difficulties. His regular classroom teachers have told us that these classes have been a lifesaver for Adam. At the end of second grade he was virtually a nonreader. Two years later he is reading on grade level and he continues to excel in math. He is no longer afraid of school. He enjoys reading and is excited about learning. Neither his teacher nor we believe that he could have achieved this without the special classes.

In our school system, inclusion was a disaster. Teachers of the gifted did not have experience or training in coordinating curriculum with classroom teachers. Classroom teachers typically had no training in working with gifted students. To parents, it looked like a watering down of the curriculum. Our children were the "bright" kids in cooperative learning groups. This meant they worked in teams and did the reading and writing for students who had problems reading and writing. We were told that our children would develop a deeper understanding of what they studied by helping students who were having difficulty. What really happened was that our children spent a large portion of the day waiting. They waited for other students to finish work. They waited to move on to more challenging work while they helped other students. They waited while their teachers tried to get around to all the students.

Last year, the system moved to a delivery model at the middle schools where children were homogeneously grouped in advanced math and language arts classes according to performance, whether or not they were identified as gifted. This has worked much better than inclusion and has provided challenges for able students. We had first hand experience with a class that was not in the advanced track. My daughter, Emily, was not in the advanced mathematics class. In the class she was assigned, the teacher spent a significant portion of class time disciplining students. The content of the class was not challenging. After the first grading period, Emily was moved to the advanced class in which students moved at a faster pace and discipline problems were less frequent. Advocates of inclusion would point to this as an example of how tracking results in poor opportunities for children not in the advanced classes. However, what it really points to is the need to provide a challenging curriculum at all levels. It is ludicrous to argue that the answer to poor quality is to put all students, regardless of ability, in the same class.

One of the biggest problems that parents face when arguing against inclusion is that we are often portrayed as antidemocratic because we want special classes for our children. The simple fact is that students with special needs require special services. My son has experienced this in classes for both the learning disabled and for the gifted. We have seen, and teachers have acknowledged, how beneficial these services have been for him. Wanting schools to meet the needs of special students is not antidemocratic; it's quality education. As parents, we have to demand quality education for our children and fight against the current popular movements in education that are, at the moment, politically correct.

REFERENCES

Bloom, B. (Ed.). (1985). Developing talent in young people. New York: Ballantine Books.

Brewer, D. J., Rees, D. I., & Argys, L. M. (1995, November). Detracking America's schools: The reform without cost? Phi Delta Kappan, 77, 210-215.

Westberg, K. L., Archambault, F. X., Jr., Dobyns, S. M., Salvin, T. J. (1993). An observational study of instructional and curricular practices used with gifted and talented students in regular classrooms. Research Monograph of the National Research Center for the Gifted and Talented, 93104. The University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Originally published in the Roeper Review Gifted Education Supplement: Straight Talk on the Issues and Headlines, No. 2, September 1996.

Guest Editors' Comments on Serving Gifted Students Through Inclusion

This educational supplement, a since discontinued feature of the Roeper Review, presents practical and personal perspectives on inclusion of gifted students in the heterogeneously grouped classroom. A professor of education, a teacher, and a parent provide their personal perspectives on the "inclusion" issue, which has been debated for some time by researchers and practitioners.

Professor Bonnie Cramond from the University of Georgia draws an apt comparison between Olympic athletes and intellectually gifted students in international academic competitions. She states that athletes are usually selected at an early age and begin intensive training with the best coaches and the best facilities, and she argues that these athletes will probably do much better than would athletes trained in mixed ability groups. She advocates homogeneous ability grouping in academics as well. In spite of its many advantages, ability grouping may entail some problems. However, Cramond suggests that inclusion advocates think about "the possible academic costs to the brightest students" of a system in which there is no ability grouping whatever.

In the next letter, Lisa Benson, a classroom teacher, explains how inclusion can be impractical in the everyday classroom. For example, when teachers "teach to the middle" in a class with students of different abilities, a common strategy teachers use to deal with very diverse classes, the higher ability students may become bored and frustrated due to repetition and lack of challenge, and the lower ability students may become frustrated because they do not understand. Teachers usually are asked to deal with all these different needs and abilities; however, she insists that one teacher cannot meet the needs of such a diverse group.

Charles Martin presents his children's cases as examples of ability grouping and inclusion from the point of view of a parent. According to Martin, one of his children received an appropriate education through the use of flexible ability grouping, whereas his other child, who was in a total inclusion setting, did not. He describes the benefits of appropriate placement based on the student's needs and abilities.

We expect all children to receive the best education possible, and we typically expect this to happen in a mixed-ability classroom. However, it can be argued that the realities of the average heterogeneous classroom do not always provide an ideal situation for gifted students. Each of these writers provides a very thoughtful and useful perspective, and it is instructive to be able to look at the inclusion issue from various points of view, in this case, that of an academic, a teacher, and a parent.

Bonnie Cramond is an associate professor and the graduate coordinator of the educational psychology department of the University of Georgia. She is also a Torrance Research Fellow and works with the Torrance Center for Creative Studies and the gifted and creative education program doing research and teaching graduate classes. She is the mother of two gifted children, has taught at all school levels, has written several articles on gifted and creative education, and is one of the editors of Investigating Creativity in Youth: Research and Methods (Perspectives on Creativity) published in 1999. Lisa Benson earned her M.Ed. in science education from the University of Georgia in 1996. She has classroom teaching experience at the elementary, middle grades, and high school levels. Ms. Benson is currently working on her Ph.D. in Instructional Technology at the University of Georgia. Charles Martin is still the father of two gifted children, one a recent high school graduate. He is also an Associate Professor of Middle Grades Education at Georgia College & State University. He is the co-author of 9 Good Habits for All Readers, a middle grades reading comprehension series, and reading consultant for Reading and Writing for Math, an integrated language arts/math series for elementary grade students. Both series are published by Zaner-Bloser Educational Publisher.