True intellectual giftedness is often misunderstood and is often mistaken for high academic achievement. In fact, there are many internally motivated intellectually gifted children who do not achieve for high grades. Likewise, many academically successful children are of average or moderately elevated intelligence. Ultimately, school success is a poor indicator of the need for GT services
Asynchronous Development
By definition, gifted children have a vastly different internal life than other children. From birth, they experience and understand the world and its complexities more intensely and in more detail than other individuals of the same age. This difference, known as asynchronous development, means that a gifted individual's cognitive growth will be years -- sometimes many years -- ahead of his physical age and, at times, emotional development.
Thus, just as mentally challenged individuals require differentiated curriculum and instruction for an appropriate education, intellectually gifted students will likewise need appropriate variations in the content and scope of their academics.
Screening Students for GT Testing
Because it is rare that a school will have the funds or personnel to test every student, and since gifted individuals can't be identified solely by academic achievement , it is helpful to to have pre-test screening. Parents and educators involved in the screening process need to be familiar with traits common to gifted children.
Traits of Gifted Learners
- Intense Sensitivity: A keen sensory system allows many gifted individuals to process the nuances of the world at a rapid rate. This heightened sensitivity, coined by Polish psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski as "excitabilities," however, may also cause them to more quickly reach sensory overload. Similarly, gifted children may have a keen sense of justice, compassion and emotional understanding uncommon among their age peers.
- Intensity of Interest: Gifted children, and especially Highly Gifted Children, will often develop intense areas of interest. In school they may be reluctant to transition from these interest areas.
- Rapid Learning: Gifted children will often be able to learn academic content much more quickly than their age peers.
- Advanced Vocabulary and Sense of Humor: These are the children who hear a word once and instinctively know how to use it. They may also find enjoy puns and word play from a very young age.
- Early Reading: Although many gifted students are not early readers, it is not unusual for gifted children to be self-taught readers well before school begins and to love books from infancy.
- Perfectionism: Gifted individuals often set unreasonably high goals for themselves or measure their achievements unrealistically.
Purpose of Testing
While there are a variety of IQ and achievement tests used to identify giftedness, it is important that the tests have a high ceiling. Thus, IQ tests like the WISC-IV and Woodcock-Johnson Achievement test are often used for this purpose.
Along with determining a child's intelligence quotient, testing will hint at a child's specific needs. Tests may reveal
- Specific areas of strength and weakness: Students may not be universally gifted. Testing can determine whether a child needs specific challenges in addition to on-level or remediated instruction.
- Twice Exceptional (2E) students: Administering both an achievement and an IQ test can also determine if there are differences between potential and current ability. If the difference is significant, the student may have a learning disability.
- Learning style: Gifted or not, all students learn best when instructional method meets individual learning styles.
In the end, gifted testing should be used to create individualized academic plans for students who need daily intellectual challenges in order to reach their potential.
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