Is your child gifted?

Dr Kerry Hodge

Parents are more adept at identifying their child as gifted than teachers, according to a longitudinal PhD study conducted by Dr Kerry Hodge in the Macquarie University Special Education Centre.

Hodge’s study examined 11 pre-school children who were considered to be gifted in a part-time, year-long program. These children, plus five more recruited later, were observed in the program, tested and followed into their schools for up to three years. Parents and teachers completed questionnaires about the children and their educational experiences, and they were tested and interviewed each year.

“Gifted children tend to be sensitive, perfectionist and intense,” says Hodge. “Since they often prefer the company of older people, they may appear to have poor social skills with those their own age. They are good thinkers. Many have advanced language and maths skills, excellent memories, and an interest in learning. Girls in my sample preferred pencil-and-paper tasks and imaginative games, while the boys enjoyed building and problem solving.”

Scores on ability and achievement tests showed that parents were quite accurate in identifying their child as gifted, while teachers scored only a 57 per cent success rate in identifying a gifted child. Parents perceived that schools regarded them as pushy if advocating for their child, and found schools not very responsive to helping able children.

“There seemed to be a suspicion of parents and a tendency to keep them at a distance,” says Hodge. “But if the special needs of gifted children can be identified early in their education, negative attitudes to school and perhaps behavioural problems can be identified. If gifted children get an education that meets their needs, that will also benefit the rest of us.”

One of the immediate benefits of the program was that Hodge was able to advise parents how to select suitable schools and the timing of entry. The youngest child in the group, a three-year-old, was found to be academically beyond all the others, even the five-year-olds. She entered a small independent school when just four years old. By age five, she was four years in advance of her peers in reading, spelling and maths. She later moved to a large state school with a high academic focus and has just started high school.

One of the boys, by contrast, took longer to bloom. At the beginning he was very quick at complex puzzles such as giant jigsaws, but his reading and maths skills were the same as his age group. In his first year of school his skills were still average, and he was thought ‘quite naughty’. In Year One, his reading suddenly took off, as did his maths in Year Two. Given some schools’ reluctance to use norm-referenced tests of achievement, his abilities could easily have remained undetected.

“These children can be quite vulnerable,” Hodge says.

Hodge recommended that parents be invited to tell teachers about their children’s learning needs and interests. The children themselves should be asked how easy or difficult they find their work, and how much challenge they would like.

“And we need an enriching curriculum that encourages children to show what they can do and what interests them,” she adds.

When she was working with the children in her sample, Hodge, an early childhood teacher by training, introduced simple scientific experiments, challenged them to build a sounds sculpture, and brought in a Chinese calligrapher for demonstration and participation.

She is now writing articles and giving conference presentations about her research.

Hodge would love to collaborate more with teachers, to evolve even better ways of identifying and nurturing the skills and talents of gifted children.

For more information contact Dr Kerry Hodge at kerry.hodge@speced.sed.mq.edu.au to hear more about her work, and for more information visit http://www.aces.mq.edu.au/musec_home.asp

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