​
WISCONSIN ASSOCIATION FOR TALENTED & GIFTED

Wisconsin Association For Talented & Gifted

  • Get Involved
    • Membership
    • News
    • Partnerships
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Meet The Board
    • Gifted Listserv
  • Resources
    • Resources
    • Advanced and Accelerated Learning in WI
    • WATG Blogs >
      • News from the Board
      • Noticias de las Mesa Directiva
      • Gifted in Perspective
      • Dotados en Perspectiva
      • Ask the Doctor
      • Gifted @ Home
      • Student Voices
      • Guest Blogs
      • Tools to Use Today
      • From the Bookshelf
      • GT Meanderings
      • Advocacy Blog
      • Justice for All
    • Podcasts
    • Parenting
    • History + Pioneer Profiles
    • Awards & Scholarships
    • Past Newsletters
  • Equity
  • Advocacy
    • Advocacy Resources
    • Advocacy Blog
  • Annual Conference
    • 2023 Annual Conference
    • 2023 Keynote Speakers
    • Exhibitors/Sponsors
    • Parent Conference
    • Teen Conference
    • Logo Contest
    • Past Conferences
  • Contact Us
  • Get Involved
    • Membership
    • News
    • Partnerships
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Meet The Board
    • Gifted Listserv
  • Resources
    • Resources
    • Advanced and Accelerated Learning in WI
    • WATG Blogs >
      • News from the Board
      • Noticias de las Mesa Directiva
      • Gifted in Perspective
      • Dotados en Perspectiva
      • Ask the Doctor
      • Gifted @ Home
      • Student Voices
      • Guest Blogs
      • Tools to Use Today
      • From the Bookshelf
      • GT Meanderings
      • Advocacy Blog
      • Justice for All
    • Podcasts
    • Parenting
    • History + Pioneer Profiles
    • Awards & Scholarships
    • Past Newsletters
  • Equity
  • Advocacy
    • Advocacy Resources
    • Advocacy Blog
  • Annual Conference
    • 2023 Annual Conference
    • 2023 Keynote Speakers
    • Exhibitors/Sponsors
    • Parent Conference
    • Teen Conference
    • Logo Contest
    • Past Conferences
  • Contact Us

Nurturing Giftedness Early and Inclusively: Insights from Neuroscience Research*

3/1/2022

0 Comments

 
One of our biggest challenges in gifted education is to find and nurture giftedness among students who are traditionally underrepresented in advanced programming, and to do so meaningfully and early. Wisconsin, like many states, mandates that identification and services for gifted students begin in kindergarten, partly as a way of preventing later achievement gaps.  Even so, we know that children from impoverished backgrounds often enter school on day one already substantially behind their more advantaged peers in a variety of skills. How can recent research on neuroscience and the young brain help us expand the size and diversity of the pool of kindergarten children who might be considered for advanced programming and services?

The field of "educational neuroscience" (aka mind, brain, and education, or MBE) has boomed over the last decade. Neuropsychologists have come out of their laboratories and entered the world of schools and children’s thinking. Their work shows clear evidence of the malleability of young children’s thinking skills: malleability, or plasticity, refers to the ability of the brain to adapt and improve. We all have malleable brains and we can all get “smarter,” but young children's brains are particularly malleable. There is research evidence that we could teach and nurture young students in ways that might raise the skills and performance of many more of them to “gifted” levels.

When neuroscientists talk about trying to improve thinking skills in young children, which specific skills are they addressing and measuring, and why those skills?  Most of the research in this area has been conducted on “executive functions.”  These include such skills as "selective attention" (focusing on appropriate input), "cognitive flexibility" (adapting to change), "inhibitory control" (resisting habits as needed), and "working memory" (remembering the current rule or task). They are important for school success because they allow young children to pay attention to appropriate and relevant stimuli, ignore distractors, and process appropriately complex tasks. From both laboratory and school-based research, we know in general that young children’s executive functions (EFs) can be improved with training. We also have evidence that such training, when appropriately challenging for the individual students, can transfer to a variety of other academic and social-emotional outcomes that are important for school success. The importance of appropriate challenges cannot be overestimated: there is an abundance of research that shows that new neural connections are best made when the brain has to put forth effort. Repeating already-learned skills is not optimal for brain development. Those of us who advocate for policy and legislation that supports gifted education are making sure that policymakers hear about the importance of appropriate challenges!

How can the gifted coordinator or teacher use this research?  The evidence for malleability argues for a talent development model: for instance, offering in kindergarten (or even earlier, in cooperation with 4K, Head Start, and private preschools) high-level, open-ended thinking skill programming and activities in order to see what developmental levels all children can reach, rather than just trying to identify children who already have skills that are advanced for their age.  It is not necessary to start from scratch with new programs and services; the busy coordinator can work within existing structures such as differentiated instruction, RtI (Response to Intervention) and Equitable MLSS (Multi-Level Systems of Support), and the Wisconsin Model Early Learning Standards to make sure that young children’s thinking skills are appropriately challenged, and that underrepresented children are given the opportunity to better develop their executive functions for critical school success. 

*This article was adapted from Dr. Clinkenbeard’s chapter in the book “Malleable Minds: Translating Insights from Psychology and Neuroscience to Gifted Education,” published by the National Association for Gifted Children. An earlier version of this article appeared in the newsletter WATG Insights, September 2011.

Pamela R. Clinkenbeard, Ph.D. 
Professor Emeritus, UW-Whitewater
WI Association for Talented and Gifted Board Member

0 Comments

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Picture
WATG Privacy Statement

Get Involved

Advocacy
News
The Board

Resources

​Blogs
Awards & Scholarships
Pioneer Profiles
G/T Groups

Equity

Conference

Contact Us
Keynote Speakers
Logo Contest
Teen Conference
Past Conferences