Universal Principles of Learning Require Unique Applications for Gifted Students:

The Top 20 Principles from Psychology for Teaching Gifted and Creative Children in Schools

Rena F. Subotnik, PhD

Director, Center for Psychology in Schools and Education

American Psychological Association

The content of this presentation

Introduction to the baseline Top Twenty Principles Project

Why have a version that addresses gifted, talented, and

creative children?

What challenges did we have in developing this version

Showing examples of principles applied to gifted education

Conclusions

Where to download both the original and the gifted versions

What was the problem we were

hoping to solve?

Prioritize the most important information from psychology

that teachers need and want to know, especially new

teachers.

First surveyed 4000 teachers.

Try this thought experiment.

Who conducted the original thought

experiment and review

Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education

5 Categories of Principles:

Three illustrated today

How students think and learn

What motivates students

Why social context, interpersonal relationships, and emotional well-being are important to student learning

How the classroom can best be managed

How to assess student progress

How these principles are addressed

A brief summary of the research literature

Ideas for classroom application

Suggested readings

Translations of the original: (and in

progress: Korean, Arabic, Serbian,

Portuguese and French)

English (original) Chinese Slovenian Turkish Spanish

Question to be addressed today

Do the Top 20 Principles apply to gifted students as

well?

Substituting the research literature

Implications for teachers

Main collaborators on this project:

Matthew Makel, Paula Olszewski-Kubilius,

and Jonathan Plucker

Applications to gifted learners: Who

are they?

Biggest challenge to answering this question is the lack of a clear, agreed

upon definition of giftedness.

high general cognitive ability,

children with high general achievement,

children with both high ability and achievement,

and children with high ability or achievement within specific domains (e.g.,

mathematics, science, visual arts).

Application to gifted learners: How

should they be served? 1

Moving away from a primary focus on identification to

a greater emphasis on developing talent.

Application to gifted learners: How

should they be served? 2

As children develop, pay greater attention to domain

specific talent trajectories and psychosocial skills (e.g.,

motivation, risk-taking) that support the transition to

higher stages of talent development.

Ability/Potential

Competency

Expertise

Artistry, Scholarly Creative Productivity

Application to gifted learners: How should

they be served? 2

Beyond ability -levers for growth are opportunity, effort, practice & study and psychosocial skills

Do the Top 20 Principles apply to

gifted students as well?

Answer: Their learning hinges on general psychological

principles, however, the application of those principles in

the classroom may be different for gifted students.

What are some examples of applications unique to

gifted students?

How do students think and learn?

5: Acquiring long-term knowledge and skill is largely

dependent on practice.

8: Student creativity can be fostered.

What motivates students?

10: Students persist in the face of challenging tasks and

process information more deeply when they adopt

mastery goals rather than performance goals.

Why are social context, interpersonal

relationships, and emotional well-being

important to student learning?

15: Emotional well-being influences educational

performance, learning, and development.

Example One: Principle 5 Practice

Acquiring long-term knowledge and skill is largely dependent on practice.

The original Top 20 document differentiated between the effectiveness of rote (drill and kill) and deliberate practice.

Practice makes learning more easily retrievable.

Gifted students need challenging environments that require them to practice.

Applying practice: Automaticity

With sufficient practice, skills and knowledge become

more automatic, thus freeing up cognitive resources to

be applied to more difficult tasks.

Practiced skills can be transferred to more complex

problems and all of the above can lead to increased

motivation for learning.

Practicing practice

Practice agendas may need to be adjusted according

to interest, ability, and aspirations of each child within

particular domains.

Still under debate: The optimal contributions of practice

compared to ability and psychosocial skills for novel

and/or complicated tasks or tasks that occur under

conditions of intense competition.

PRINCIPLE 8 Student creativity can be

fostered.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that creativity is a

stable trait (you either have it or you don’t), creative

thinking can be developed and nurtured in students,

making it an important outcome of the learning process

for students and educators.

Creativity is better developed within a specific domain

such as math, science, or the arts.

Gifted students are most likely to benefit from an

emphasis on problem-identification abilities more than

working on pre-established problems.

Problem finding and solving taxonomy

Given problem using given methods to achieve given

solutions

Given problem using alternative methods to achieve

given solutions

Given problem using given methods to achieve

alternative solutions

…

Unknown problem, open methods, and open solutions

Practicing creativity

Emphasize the value of diverse perspectives as fuel for discussion, reinforcing that such perspectives are clearly valued and not penalized in the classroom.

Provide concrete feedback: novelty, usefulness, elegance

Know when it’s appropriate to seek creative solutions and when it is more efficient to learn a correct answer.

Practicing creativity

The creative process is often misconstrued as being purely spontaneous or even frivolous, yet extensive research provides evidence that creativity and innovation are the result of disciplined thinking.

Include prompts in assignments such as create, invent, discover, imagine, or predict and explicitly instructing students in what these prompts entail cognitively and productively.

Teachers are powerful models, and, as such, they should share with students their own creativity—including the use of multiple strategies to identify and solve problems across various aspects of their lives.

Principle 10. Students persist in the face of challenging

tasks and process information more deeply when

they adopt mastery goals rather than performance goals.

Performance goals are concerned with peer comparisons, and can lead to avoiding challenges.

Not everything is intrinsically interesting. (This connects with automaticity)

To be a high performer a child needs to be able to deploy appropriate motivational goals for different contexts

Clearly, outstanding achievement requires intense engagement and effort, which is difficult to exhibit without some degree of mastery orientation.

Practicing strategic use of

motivational goals

emphasizing progress over current levels of performance,

delivering feedback privately,

viewing mistakes as opportunities for growth,

and individualizing the pace of instruction

varying the groups that children work in even going to different grades.

use competition as a motivator when children are feeling sufficiently

competent.

Principle 15. Emotional well-being

influences educational performance,

learning and development.

Emotional well-being includes a strong sense of self (self-concept of self-

esteem); a feeling of control over oneself and one’s environment (self-

efficacy); general feelings of well-being that include happiness,

contentment and calm; and healthy ways of responding to stress (coping

skills, emotional regulation and resiliency).

Gifted children are generally emotionally healthy.

Problems emerge from poor placement that lead to difficulty finding

peers, dealing with expectations, and perfectionism.

Practicing Emotional Well Being

Teachers can help promote emotional well-being by giving children a

vocabulary of words to label emotions, model appropriate emotional

expression and emotional regulation.

It is critical that teachers provide a classroom climate where children feel

emotionally safe, accepted, supported and secure.

Teach mental and social skills that are needed in competitive and

boundary breaking environments.

Conclusions

The Top 20 Principles from Psychology for PreK-12 Teaching and Learning

apply to students regardless of ability and achievement level.

Optimal application of the principles may vary based on diverse student

learning needs and the context of their learning.

Differentiation applies to instruction, curricula, socioemotional supports,

and assessment.

Sharing general learning principles along with the specific ways that they

should be applied to meet the different needs of gifted students helps

teachers increase their effectiveness and student learning.

Where to find this document:

http://www.apa.org/ed/schools/teaching-learning/top-twenty-principles.aspx

Look in the middle of the page.

Download the Full Report

In English (original) (PDF, 1.54 MB).

For Creative, Talented, and Gifted Students 2017 (in English) (PDF, 578 KB).

En español (PDF, 410KB).

In Mandarin (PDF, 10.4MB).

In Slovenian (PDF, 1.4MB).