Affective Characteristics Of Gifted Students And Meeting Educational Needs - Essay Example

?Running Head: GIFTED Affective Characteristics of gifted and meeting educational needs Introduction Gifted children have the ability to not only think in a different way, they also have the characteristic to feel differently from average normal students. Intellectually gifted students are those whose general behaviour, learning and characteristics related to creativity differ from other children in many ways (Sousa, 2009). They learn to read at an early age and learn common basic skills more quickly and in a better way than other children. The intellectual complexity of gifted children in combination with their intensity on the emotional front gives them a different outlook towards the world in qualitative terms. Gifted students have greater potential to attain high achievements which is the outcome of combination of unique and complex deep thinking, and intense as well as rich emotions. They are the people who can be considered people with well above average intelligence. This peculiar characteristic of gifted students has significant impact on their life at social, psychological and emotional level as they are different from their age peers. Due to the affective characteristics of gifted students at social and emotional front, it is required on the part of teachers to treat ‘giftedness’ as normal and ensure the social as well as emotional well being of these students (Robert & Davidson, 2005). It is required that these students should be helped to find real intellectual peers so that they can behave normal without introversion and can express themselves without any fear or doubt in their mind to the world. In order to meet educational needs of these students, teachers should adopt appropriate strategies. Overview of intellectually gifted students Intellectually gifted students behave differently from their age peers in terms of learning patterns, behaviour and characteristics related to creativity. For instance, gifted students usually read quickly and widely, have large vocabularies, intense focus and attention, and have the ability to tackle the tasks and assignments given to them in a goal-oriented manner (Reis & Moon, 2004). In regards to the learning characteristics, intellectually gifted children have keen power of observation. They also take enormous pleasure in getting indulged in intellectual activities and prefer reading books and magazines that are meant for the children who are older than them. In terms of perceiving similarities, anomalies or any kind of differences, they are quick in comparison to their age peers. Considering the creative characteristics, these students are fluent thinkers and are quite able to relate ideas as well as generate possibilities. Elaborate thinking, production of new ideas, willingness to tackle complexity and good guessing power are other creative characteristics of intellectually gifted students (Dixon et al, 2012). Emotional sensitivity and intellectual playfulness set them apart from an average student of their age. They have extreme curiosity about ideas, events, objects and situations. Their intellectual complexity makes these students being out of step of the age and intellectual capability of their age peers and classmates. As analytical thinkers, they excel in critical examination of ideas and things happening in front of them. It is necessary to handle these students carefully so that they can tackle their intellectual complexity in an effective way. Affective characteristics of intellectually gifted students Intellectually gifted students have different characteristics related to cognitive characteristics, affective, physical and societal characteristics. Cognitive characteristics are related to thinking, for instance, retaining large amount of information, high level of verbal ability and development of language, high curiosity and varying interests. Affective characteristics are related to feeling in which there is presence of unusual sensitivity to the feelings of others, a high level of self-awareness, a good sense of humour, continuous feeling of being different, appropriate sense of justice, and idealism (Baldwin, 2004). Physical characteristics are related to sensation, for instance, highly developed sensory awareness, unusual imbalance between the intellectual development and the physical development. Intuitive characteristics include openness towards creativity and intuitive experiences, while societal characteristics include strong motivation, enhanced capacity of solving societal problems and interested involvement in truth, beauty and other meta-needs of the society (Baum et al, 1998). It has been a question of debate for researchers since long times regarding the question whether gifted students have characteristics that are unique in terms of affective, emotional and societal categories. It has been found out in researches that gifted students possess assets which if supported well by society, parents and teachers can lead to enhancement of their resilience to negative events of life. Moreover, it also enables them to direct their talents in such a way so as to attain their goals of life with heightened productivity and satisfaction. Whenever, there is occurrence of any trouble regarding social and emotional traits, it is due to a misfit between the intellectually gifted students and his social or academic surroundings in which he is living (Reis and Sulluvian, 2011). Intellectually gifted students face problems at emotional and social level due to their high IQ levels that lead to misfit between them and their social environment even though they constantly try to underachieve (Helt, 2008). Theory of positive disintegration given by Dabrowski in 1964 greatly applies to the case of gifted students. It is based on developmental potential and talks about five personal intensities that contribute to the growth of the individual both at personal and at the societal level. These five overexciting personal intensities are psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational and emotional. Affective characteristics of gifted students basically include advanced moral judgment, high level of sensitivity and self-awareness, creating high expectations from self as well as from others, introversion, perfectionism, sense of justice and pretty good high level of emotional intensity and depth. However, all these traits cannot be accepted as generalized traits for all gifted students as some of the above mentioned traits cannot be applied to all gifted children, but they do occur often in these students. Gifted students have more noticeable and intense response to the five over excitability characteristics mentioned by Dabrowski (Cross, 2004). There are two views regarding social and emotional adjustment of gifted students. First view is that these students are better adjusted to their social environment in comparison to their non-gifted peers in the class. Giftedness provides protection to these students from maladjustment; the reason being their enhanced cognitive capabilities and a heightened level of understanding of self and others. So they are able to cope with stress in an efficient and effective manner (Carey et al, 2009). Better emotional adjustment pertains to the flexibility at the mental level, resilience at the emotional level and the ability to think in a positive way. However, these studies show the positive side of the intellectual complexity possessed by gifted children. There is also the flip side that presents an entirely different picture of emotional and social adjustment of such students. This view suggests that intellectually gifted students are at more risk or are more vulnerable to the adjustment problems and difficulties both in society and at the emotional front. Due to the presence of heightened cognitive capacities, these students experience more sensitivity towards interpersonal conflicts along-with greater degree of stress and alienation than their age peers. Children who have high intellect are more prone to facing problems related to social and emotional adjustment. An optimum level of intelligence is in common interest of children leading to their happiness and social adjustment with mutual adjustment and relationships (Neilhart, 1999). However, beyond a certain IQ level, there is risk of stress, isolation, and problems in social and emotional adjustment due to psycho-social isolation. Those who are verbally gifted are at more risk of facing social and emotional adjustment problems than their contemporary counterparts. This is because these students’ social and emotional adjustment is closely related to their level of intellectual giftedness. There are certain gripes of giftedness. These students feel that there are very few people who understand them, they are quite different from others, and are also worried about problems of the world and feel helpless that they cannot do anything regarding these problems (Morris, 2007). Moreover, if they tell their worries and emotions to their peers, who are less gifted, the latter teases former for being smart. Students that are extremely gifted consider themselves to be more introverts, less adaptable to society, and feel more inhibition. Moreover, peers of these students see them as the less socially active and less popular, less athletic along-with lack of ability to lead the crowd. Their self-esteem is also lower because of their feeling of being different. They cannot freely express their emotions, thus feel stress and isolation in societal gatherings and adjustments (Versteynan, 2012). Myths about giftedness Many gifted children say that it is difficult for them to cope up in the normal environment when their peers or teachers fail to understand them. It is a myth regarding gifted students they do not need to put on any kind of efforts to receive honours. Due to this misconception, many gifted students’ dedication for bringing in improvement in their abilities to attain excellence is dismissed by teachers and the society. However, it is true that a gifted student will have to make fewer efforts to get high grades in average-set curriculum for the class, but he must put forth great effort when he is provided with a challenging activities and coursework. Therefore, dismissing gifted students’ dedication towards their tasks and work in name of their giftedness is not appropriate. Without support, gifted students feel discouraged, and when myths and misconceptions about giftedness affect people’s views, these students feel frustrated and angry as they found nobody who can understand their need for challenging coursework (Eggen & Kauchak 2004). Another myth is that gifted students possess enormous speed in mental operations which is not always true. Pertaining to this myth, slow gifted students are not even identified in class or rarely identified, or they are presented with more challenging tasks and additional resources. Those students who are covertly gifted are not identified easily as they have unusual patterns of abilities and skills which the surroundings fail to identify or recognize. As a result of this, people in surroundings, such as teachers, try to fix this unusual pattern which in turn leads to creation of more stress and barriers in front of these students (Sternberg and Davidson, 2005). Another myth that is related with giftedness is that these students can easily take care of themselves and they do not need much support from the environment, thus able to learn a lot on their own. Owing to this reason, most of the curriculum at school is framed keeping in mind mainstream students and the remaining resources are put to develop those who have learning disabilities. Little concern is shown on the state of mind of gifted students which ultimately pose grate challenges of affective characteristics of gifted students (Sousa, 2009). Being gifted make the students consider themselves as underachievers. This is because they have intense need of doing challenging work which is not fulfilled or taken care of in the classroom. Moreover, they feel frustrated due to this sense of under-achievement (Vialle et al, 2007). Therefore, it is necessary to understand the behaviour associated with giftedness and how can teachers fulfil the educational needs of these intellectually gifted students. Behaviour associated with giftedness and affective characteristics The behaviour of intellectually gifted students is directed by their giftedness. The self-expectation of these students is very high. They try to achieve more and more due to their intense need and curiosity of understanding ideas and situations. The self-concept of these children is also very high. As these students constantly desire to achieve more, their self expectations are very high but realistic. Giftedness can be overt or covert. This is because giftedness is masked by various external and internal factors. External factors include economic and social factors, while internal factors include uneven development at the domain of psycho emotion. For example, Albert Einstein was not considered as a gifted child. He appeared to his teachers as immature as he was not interested in formal plays and was indulged in repetitive plays. It is possible that he was a gifted individual and it was just that his peculiar behaviours masked his giftedness thus, leading to failure of recognition of his intellectual giftedness (Sternberg & Davidson, 2005). Creativity is another behaviour exhibited by these students. They engage themselves in thinking that is creative from the point of view of an average normal student. Regarding the curriculum, these students face certain issues with curricula. There is profound increase in the intensity, hyperactivity and lack of attention when these children perceive their curriculum to be dull and ineffective which is unable to satisfy their creativity needs and curiosities. Increase in these problems places such students at a higher risk of failure, which is a major issue that teachers and parents should concern on (Reis & Sullivan, 2011). Challenges associated with affective characteristics As intellectually gifted students feel themselves different from their contemporary age peers with heightened hyperactivity, intensity and problems with attention, they face certain challenges in their surroundings, mainly school where there is large number of those students who possess average intelligence and intellect. In schools, it is required on the part of students to maintain decorum in the class, remain docile and quite for extended periods, Schools want students to be neat, quiet and interested in what their teachers are teaching in the classroom(Renzulli, 2004). These general expectations from school environment are certainly at odds with what gifted students possess and how they behave. These students have consistent need of finding greater degree of stimulation from their environment in comparison to an average intellect of their age. Another challenge for gifted students is that they are put at double jeopardy by their teachers. Usually, their behaviour is misinterpreted by teachers. If a teacher has asked to solve the problem that he has written on the chalkboard, and the gifted student ran to the board and writes the answer quickly before anyone could respond, the teacher takes the behaviour of this student to be very impulsive, which is again a misinterpretation of the behaviour of that student. The challenge is that these students are at continuous need of discovering things, do something creative and master their curricula along-with the continuous need of getting them engaged in active learning process. When these needs are not fulfilled, they feel frustrated and highly impulsive. When they find school activities to be highly frustrating due to inappropriate fulfilment of their needs, they feel distracted towards the task and try to find peace and comfort elsewhere, such as day-dreaming (Baum et al, 1998). Emotional intensity of gifted students is taken as emotional immaturity. These students show intensity in emotions in various forms, such as wide range of attachmants and relationships, heightened sense of compassion, responsibility and self-examination. Instead of taking this characteristic as the form of rich inner life, it is taken as immaturity, which is again a challenge to affective characteristics of gifted students. Moreover, if gifted students cannot identify their emotional intensity to be normal, they take it as evidence for something wrong in them. Other students with normal intellect may tease or ridicule such students being so intensely reactive to an apparently normal incident, which let these students to feel odd about them. They also have heightened sensitivity towards societal injustice and other happenings in the surroundings, such as hypocrisy, that ultimately leave them to feel despair, sadness and cynicism at tender age of adolescence. This is again a challenge that these students face due to their social and emotional characteristics which if they fail to recognize as normal , make them frustrated, alone and sad (Baum et al 1998). Another critical challenge that gifted students and their teachers face due to affective characteristics of the former is the gap between the physical limitations and the advanced intellectual capability of the child. This leads to unrealistic expectations in regards to the performance of the student by both the child and his teacher and parents. The student becomes frustrated when he is not able to execute the projects that his highly intellect mind has created due to the limitations of physical capabilities. As their extremely capable intellect can frame and handle projects that can be considered as highly complex considering the age of the student, he feels frustrated and get hyperactive due to not being able to execute what he has thought. It is often seen that adults in lives of gifted students often impose high level of performance and perfectionism in all the activities they perform. As these children are quite emotionally sensitive towards others’ feelings, they feel obliged to meet the expectations of adults in their life. However, they often do it so with suppression of their self-being and their own desires and passion. This challenge has to be effectively met by teachers by formulating suitable strategies for gifted students and making them understand that perfection is not possible (Sternson & Davidson, 2005). In addition to the above-mentioned challenges, gifted students also face the challenge of being unable to fulfil their moral commitment as they feel much attached to their surroundings and happenings in the world. When they see societal problems, and the insensitivity and hypocrisy in worldly activities and their society, they want to alleviate these problems. But, when they cannot do this, they feel despair, dissatisfaction, helplessness, and so on. As they connect themselves to these social worldly problems and want to bring out solutions, they feel critical of themselves and powerless when they cannot do so. Moreover, when these students discuss their point of view with their age peers, they are usually faced with responses and reactions, such as hostility, denial, puzzlement, awkwardness, etc. it leads to a sense of anxiety, fear, frustration and helplessness among such students. Parents and teachers of gifted students have to understand all these challenges and teachers have to frame certain strategies in order to meet educational needs of these students. Strategies for meeting educational needs of gifted students Gifted students are in constant need of getting high level of stimulation from their environment. Moreover, their hyperactivity, intense emotional attachment, high moral awareness, need of remaining creative, risk-taking ability, and other affective characteristics should be handled with proper strategies and utmost care from the side of teachers and adults in their lives. Hyperactivity and extreme sensitivity towards the surrounding and the world must be seen as positive characteristics of intellectually gifted students rather than as problematic behaviour (Sword, 2001). There is dire need on the part of teachers to analyze the environment that prompts the behaviour of gifted students and then modify it so as to avoid the intrusive and ineffectual interventions. This can be done by bringing in some changes in the classroom teaches including modification in curricula and the way things are instructed to students. Strategies that can help intellectually gifted students to meet their educational needs are as follows: Observation First and foremost thing for teachers is to analyze the behaviour of such students by observing them. This includes observing the student for the environment in which he feels comfortable and do acceptable performance, and the one in which he faces difficulties; observing behaviour of student in different learning environment in order to find optimal one; observing the child throughout the day so as to find out how much appreciation he is getting for creativity and how many times he is given chance to express himself; identifying how the child responses in the talent development activities, and so on (Renzulli, 2004). It is also essential to identify which student needs just positive environmental intervention so that his creativity is accommodated, which student needs chemical intervention, such as medication so as to develop cordial social relationships without impulsiveness, and which student needs both interventions to handle hyperactivity and intensity towards social relations (Baum et al, 1998). Strategies Talent development activities and attention to one’s gifts or talents is one of the most effective strategies to meet the educational needs of gifted students. It acts as an important intervention to ensure academic success of these students by properly identifying and developing their abilities and interests. When teachers modify curriculum, and alter their instructional strategies and pace, it leads to an increased attention and interest of gifted students in the class and they develop self-regulatory behaviour (Broody, 2004). As these students have need to continuously engage in high level of learning activities, when given opportunities to show their creativity, face high level of challenges and problems, it results in wilful engagement of these students in learning activities and leads to sustained interest. When students are allowed to explore their environments, they better get engaged in learning activities. When they are allowed to learn in a meaningful content, they acquire knowledge with interest, which is very important in case of gifted students as they cannot handle their giftedness with ease not properly guided (Pfeiffer, 2012). For the social and emotional well-being of such gifted students, it is necessary for these students to have such teachers in their life who can make them understand that they are normal and it is natural for them to feel intense and deep emotions. As a strategy, teachers should not interpret their hypersensitivity as over-reaction or any kind of emotional immaturity. Teachers should take time to listen to them and also tell parents to do the same along-with appreciating their sensitivities, passions and heightened intensities. Also, these students must be made realized that high level of sensitivity is not a weakness, so they need not to be overprotected or guard the consequences of their actions. In this way, these students will feel free and remain at ease. Teachers should help them to accept their inner rich experience and intellect as their strength so that they can enjoy it with joy and confidence (Robbinson et al, 2007). In order to address the challenge of attaining perfectionism in their acts, these students must be told that it is not possible and time and resources are not unlimited. Teacjhers should make them understand that learning process is important, not just the outcome. Skills demand experience as they are not innate. Once children will understand this, they will start exploring the process of learning. Their mistakes should be presented to them as learning experience and it must be made understood to them how to prioritize things (Sword, 2001). Regarding their challenge of heightened moral awareness and social commitment, educators and teachers of these students should develop curricula that include social problems and political scenarios. Subjects, such as Philosophy and social studies, where answers to these problems can be explored, must be taught to them. In order to alleviate the sense of powerlessness and helplessness in tackling world problems, these children should be indulged in social service activities and should undertake community projects and services. This will help in satisfying their moral commitment towards society (Robbinson et al, 2007). In this way, gifted students can meet their educational needs by proper support of their teachers so that they can express their feelings without hesitation and get a platform to build on their talents and abilities. Conclusion Intellectually gifted students are hypersensitive, highly creative, risk-taking, and have moral awareness and a sense of responsibility towards their environment. They have accelerated learning pace, need challenging as well as stimulating content, and always try to get indulged in activities that are based on their interest. They are very sensitive towards others and feel moral commitment towards society. The affective characteristics of these students on social and emotional front made these students feel themselves different from others and they start placing themselves at odd in comparison to their age-peers. It results in anger, frustration and helplessness, aloofness, despair, etc. as they cannot share their feeling with others with the fear of being teased or being considered awkward. Teachers need to formulate certain strategies so that gifted students can feel at ease and use their giftedness/talents in positive way rather than considering them to be odd and awkward. These strategies include- modification in curricula, indulging these students into highly creative activities and social/community service, along-with counselling that things that they conmsider abnormal is actually normal for them. References Baldwin, A.Y. 2004. Culturally Diverse and Underserved Populations of Gifted Students. Corwin Press. Baum, S.M., Olenchak, F.R. & Owen, S.V. (1998). Gifted Students with Attention Deficits: Fact and/or Fiction?Or, Can We See the Forest for the Trees. Gifted Child Quarterly, 12(2). Broody, L.E. (2004). Grouping and Acceleration Practices in Gifted Education. Corwin Press. Carey, W.B., Crocker A.C, Coleman, W.L. et al. (2009). Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics. Elsevier Health Sciences. Cross, T.L. (2004). 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