Gifted Learners and Lev Vygotsky's ZPD

Lev Vygotsky was a pioneering Russian psychologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries whose interest in the fields of developmental psychology, education and culture led to his being known as “the father of cultural-historical psychology”. A prolific author who researched relationships between thought, language, speech and play, Vygotsky studied the development of cognitive skills in children and developed a concept known as the “zone of proximal development” (ZPD). He described it as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers” .

Arguing against the use of tests to examine a child’s progress, Vygotsky said that what should be measured is a child’s ability to problem-solve independently, rather than with assistance. Real learning takes place in the ZPD, according to Vygotsky and the later psychologists who developed his idea further. This ZPD is the area of growth which is just beyond the current ability of the learner but not so far as to be impossible or demoralising. If the level is set so low that the child has already mastered the task, or so high that the student cannot achieve it without considerable assistance, effective learning will not take place. The ZPD is the zone where the student, aided by a teacher or expert, can stretch to the point just beyond their current capabilities. This is where learning is internalised and previous skills can be built upon, according to Vygotsky.

Later psychologists and educationalists elaborated on Vygotsky’s idea of the ZPD by introducing the concept of scaffolding. Scaffolding is the provision of sufficient support to learners that they are able to reach their ZPD. The support offered is only enough to allow the student to build on prior knowledge and skills and is gradually reduced and removed as the learner enters his or her ZPD. Examples of instructional scaffolding are resource materials, visual aids, templates, guidelines and verbal or written demonstration.

The concepts of ZPD and instructional scaffolding are now applied wider than Vygotsky’s original context of problem-solving to a range of educational domains such as reading, reciprocal teaching and problem-based learning. Many researchers now believe that young children learn their native language while in their zone of proximal development, with scaffolding provided by their parents as the child’s skills develop.

The ZPD has particular resonance for highly able learners. In many classrooms the material regularly presented to them would be within their current ability level and therefore would not bring them into their zone of promixal development. All students need to be required to work in their ZPD on a regular basis, including gifted learners. Where most students experience this level of challenge daily, highly able children for whom the regular curriculum holds less challenge may not. In order to internalize the learning process, to experience the stretching of their capability beyond what is easily achievable we must find a way to ensure that gifted pupils enter their ZPD. Effective differentiation can go some way to this goal.

In a paper entitled “Different Differentiation” Paul and Sharon Ginnis outline eight different strategies which teachers can use to ensure that every pupil works in their ZPD. They recommend setting the parameters by planning the task between the outcome projected for their most able and their least able learners. The ZPD of the class is within this. The two factors of the challenge of the task and the skill of the individual learner will determine the outcome. If the gap between these two factors is either too big or too small, outcomes will be less successful. Interestingly, they point out that in both cases (too little challenge or too much) the likely result is the same, that of disengagement and underachievement.

The strategies they describe cover a range of teaching approaches, from a higher level of teacher control to a more student-controlled task. From setting a task above and below the core task expected of the majority of the class, through peer-coaching and ability grouping, all the way to what they label “self-service” there is a menu of styles. Each of them have at their centre the goal of having each student work in their ZPD. For exceptionally able children, opportunities to work in the types of learning environments described would allow them to learn how to synthesize their learning and how it feels to be challenged to reach a goal. These are not usual outcomes for highly able children in Irish classrooms who often find themselves with little or no challenge for long periods of time. We need fresh approaches and an increased awareness that opportunity of challenge is essential for all learners and that gifted pupils need this as much as any other. It is not exclusive or elitist or selfish, it is only fair.

Link to the paper on “Different Differentiation” is here

More on Lev Vygotsky can be found here

Introduction to Twitter. Part 3

Twitter Chats

Have you ever tried to take part in a twitter chat and been completely lost? If it's a lively one, it can move very fast. By the time you have written what you want to say, the conversation has moved on. In your panic, you forget to add the hashtag and your tweet doesn't even show up. Every time you look up there are 101 new tweets waiting for you to refresh the page...you know what I mean? Well, there is a solution.....Tweetchat. (There are a couple of solutions, but this is the one I like.)

The way a chat works is that everyone adds a particular hashtag to their tweets. Then when you do a search for that tag, every tweet containing it will come up in your stream. Most of them have a specified day and time when people sign in together and chat live. There are loads of chats on twitter, but if you want to explore gifted issues, the two to look for are #gtchat at 5pm and midnight GMT on Fridays and #gtie at 9pm GMT on Sundays.

Tweetchat, described below, has been a lifesaver for many a twitter chatter but it looks like it's about to disappear due to changes with Twitter. For the moment, it is working intermittently. if anyone knows of a good substitute, let us know!

Step 1: Go to tweetchat.com and click "sign in":

Step 3: Allow tweetchat to access your account:

Fill in your username and twitter password and click "Allow".

Step 3: Find your chat.

Enter the name of the chat you are looking for in the box at the top and click "Go". I have entered gtie this time.

Step 4: Get set, go.

1. This chat refreshes itself automatically, but is set to do so every 10 seconds. If you click on "refresh speed" you can slide this down to 5 seconds. (if you ever find yourself at a particularly lively chat and have trouble keeping up, just increase the refresh speed!)

2. If you click on this symbol opposite a tweet, it sets you up to reply to that person by making their name appear in the box at the top for you. 

3. Clicking this symbol opposite a tweet will retweet it by making the text appear in the box at the top, all ready to go.

One other big advantage to tweetchat is that it automatically adds the hashtag to the end of each tweet. So you just need to write your message and click "Update". 

With all these things done for you, you can now sit back and enjoy chatting! 

Introduction to Twitter. Part 2

Now you have an account, but it is rather bare and you are feeling a bit lost and lonely. There are a few more things you need to do:

Step 1: Click "Upload a profile picture".

Step 2:  Bear in mind that you can come back and change any of these details as often as you like, so don't worry about being perfect!

Picture: Click "Choose file" to select/open a photo or picture which you already have saved on your computer. It's nicer that remaining as an egg! The name of the file will appear but the picture itself won't show until you save everything at the end of this page.

Name: Leave this unless you wish to change it.

Location: You can fill this in or leave it blank.

Web: You can enter the URL of your blog or website here if you have one. You can also get the code here for embedding a twitter widget on your site.

Bio: It is a good idea to write something here to show who you are or what your interests are.

Now click "SAVE".

Step 3: Click "Home".

Step 4: Find people to follow:

You can enter the names of people you know into the box to the right and click "search".

Or, if you are Irish, type #gtie into the box at the top and click on the little magnifying glass to find other people with an interest in gifted in Ireland. Searching for #gtchat will find you gifted advocates from all over the world.

You can save your searches so that you can find them again easily.

Once you have spotted someone who looks interesting, just click on their name and their profile will come up to the right. If you still like what you see,   click on the "follow" below their name. Now each time that person tweets, it will show up on your page or stream, as it's called.

To begin with, I would suggest following just a few people till you get the hang of it...which will happen very quickly!! May I suggest Frazzlld and Dazzlld? (Beware the odd spelling. When we were signing up, the proper spelling version had already been taken) You can just watch for a day or two until you see what goes on. 

Now you're ready to dive in...

You will find that quite a few people whom you follow will follow you back.

Everyone is referred to with @ directly before their name. eg @Frazzlld is me.

Try breaking the ice by typing something like "Hello, I'm new to twitter" into the "What's happening?" box and clicking "Tweet".

Tweeting directly at someone: If you want to direct a comment at someone in particular, type @TheirUsername into the "What's happening" box followed by your comment. If you do this, only that person and people who follow you both will see it appear. Or, if you hover over a tweet, the option to "reply" will show up below it.

Retweeting: If you see a tweet that you want to pass onto your followers, you can retweet it. There are two options: Click "retweet" below the tweet and a window will appear asking you to confirm or cancel the retweet. Or, you can type RT into the "What's happening?" box and then cut and past the text in after it. This gives you the option of editing the tweet before it goes out. Make sure that you include the name of the original tweeter, though eg RT @Frazzlld........

You will be surprised how quickly you will become familiar with twitter. You just need to take the plunge now. Go on..I dare you!

Introduction to Twitter. Part 1

Twitter is a fantastic way of connecting with other people in the gifted world in order to share experiences and to learn. Just this week, a new forum was launched to bring together teachers and parents with an interest in gifted education in Ireland. At 9pm on Sunday evenings we can all meet up on twitter and "chat".  You can watch these chats without having a twitter account here, but to participate, you will need an account.

This is a very basic guide to help even the most nervous person to get started. After this you will have no excuse!!

Step 1: Go to http://twitter.com/ and click the yellow "Sign Up" box:

Step 2: Fill in your details:

Enter your first and last name:

You can make up a name or leave this blank if you wish. However, If you are planning on connecting with other people, I suggest that you give your real name so that people know you are real and who they are talking to.

Username: 

This can be anything you like provided it has not been chosen by someone else already. Once you begin to interact with people, this is the name by which you will be addressed, so choose carefully! Either use your real name, a version of it, or something that reflects your interests or personality. It can be no more than 15 characters long. You are only allowed 140 characters per tweet and your username is part of this allowance. The longer your name, the less you can say. 

Password: 

As for any account you set up.

Email: 

You must enter an email address. An email will be sent out for you to confirm/activate your account. 

"Let others find me by my email address": At the next stage, you will be asked if you would like to find other people whom you may know on twitter, by allowing twitter to search your email contacts list for people with twitter accounts. If you have left this box ticked, it means that anyone else who has your address in their contacts list will be able to find you on twitter in this way. You may wish to allow this. Personally, I have all sorts of people in my email contacts and I don't really want them all finding me on twitter, so I removed the tick from this box when I signed up. It's up to you.

Once you have carefully read the terms of service, as I'm sure you always do, click "create account".

Step 3: Type in the wiggly words to prove that you're not a computer and click "finish" to get to the next step.

Step 4: Find people to follow or just confirm your account: (if you follow someone on twitter, it means that whatever they tweet will show up in your account. It's like friending on facebook)

You can now search for people to follow by selecting interests or looking for specific people. Or you can ignore this step and click "Next Step: Friends" in the blue box at the bottom. 

              

Here you have the option of finding friends via other services which you may use, such as gmail, yahoo or hotmail. Again, you can choose to "Skip import" and move on.

At this point, as it says at the top of the twitter page, you must go to your email inbox and confirm your email address in the email they have sent you.

Now you're ready to roll.

Part 2 will show you how to add the finishing touches to your account and begin tweeting.

Widening the Reach of Irish Gifted Advocacy

There is an ongoing discussion between Irish and global advocates for gifted education on Facebook at the moment which has reminded me that we still have a long way to go to reach our intended audience. Our blog’s goal is to raise awareness among teachers and parents in Ireland about the needs of gifted learners. We make no secret of the fact that our scope is limited and neither of us have teaching qualifications or experience, but our lofty ambition is to open some dialogue between teachers themselves. As we have learned, there is little if any formal support for teachers who have a gifted pupil in their classroom. For parents, on the other hand, there are quite a considerable amount of online resources and support available, both in an Irish context and internationally. The challenges of parenting gifted children can be shared globally via online discussion groups, Twitter, Facebook and support websites. Teaching gifted children however, is often more specific to the education system in place in a given country. It can depend on what legislation is in place to support gifted learners (if any!), how the progress of pupils is measured, whether teacher-training includes gifted education, or what time or resources an individual teacher has available.

Over the past few years we have been involved, through Twitter’s #gtchat and Facebook groups among others, in advocacy online in Ireland. There has been a strong and constant Irish presence for some time now and the circle is growing wider. There are many parents and teachers of gifted children in Ireland who do not “tweet”, who are not on Facebook, who don’t partake in online discussions. However, their children and pupils do or certainly will in the future! If we do not at least try to keep up with this next generation of digital native, we ourselves, our message, our experience and our wisdom will get left behind. It is up to those of us who are learning the value of using social media to coax, cajole or encourage as many advocates as we can to join us. There are others who are making a difference on the ground, in their schools and communities....but how much better would it be if they had a platform to share their experience and ideas with all of us?

If our knowledge can be pooled for the good of all our gifted learners we all benefit. If a teacher in Laois or Donegal has an insight which helped a pupil but has no way to share it with a wider audience of fellow teachers or parents, that valuable resource may be lost.  Those  who do make a difference in the classrooms of Ireland should be at the forefront of the Irish voice of gifted awareness. We need to find a way for this group to share their work so others can benefit. The bigger the group, the more resources are shared and the louder the voice will be in raising awareness of gifted education. Doing this through Twitter or Facebook or other online resources makes perfect sense for Ireland. Currently we are without a national organisation for gifted issues so using social media allows everyone to participate. There are no committee meetings to which people have to travel long distances and every voice can be heard equally from the comfort of their own home, school or local library. It is a democratic and powerful outlet, and inclusive of those who would not necessarily seek out gifted information but who nonetheless may be a positive force in the school life of a gifted learner.

Taking part in online Twitter chats is a commitment, to time, to research, to putting your opinion out there. It can be intimidating at the beginning, but it is not difficult. If you can send an e-mail, you can master Twitter! The most important thing to tell potential “tweeps” is that #gtchat and the new Irish #gtie are welcoming and warm places where every participant is valued for their contribution. (Oh, and that they may have to brew a pot of strong coffee to stay awake on Friday nights!) Perhaps some people will never feel comfortable with it and will decline to take part. That does not invalidate the work they do for gifted children, long may they continue it. But those who are trying to create an online presence to include as many advocates as possible should be lauded and encouraged to continue this valuable work. If  some brave teachers and parents are willing to speak up, maybe, just maybe, that will be the catalyst for others to do likewise. We may be a handful now, but for all our gifted learners we should strive to be a powerhouse. It’s all about the children.......