Advocacy

Within the past 20 years or more, defining a differentiated curriculum was related to determining the absence and/or presence of curricular elements that were responsive to the real and perceived needs, interests, and abilities of gifted students in the core, rudimentary, basic, or regular curriculum. Years have been spent in analyzing and arguing the curricular elements that have been omitted, minimized, or stated in an obscure manner that could and should be integrated into a curriculum that was appropriately differentiated for the gifted. The curricular elements such as critical and creative thinking skills, problem solving, interdisciplinary learning, and application to real-world problems have been identified and integrated into a differentiated curriculum. The curricular elements that differ a basic from a differentiated curriculum have been articulated, implemented, and researched. Curriculum developers, professional development consultants, teachers, and parents are aware of these elements and they have become the basis for advocating, planning, and implementing differentiated curriculum for the gifted.

Today, the 21st Century Skills and Common Core Standards have reexamined the educational goals for all students and have included within these goals some of the exact curricular elements that traditionally have been essential to the differentiated curriculum for gifted students. Analyze, prove with evidence, argue, reason, solve problems, critique, and design are skills inherent within the standards of these two documents. These skills relate to the areas of critical and creative thinking and problem solving. The introduction to universal concepts and big ideas are stated clearly as elements of focus within the standards. A survey of these new standards makes it apparent in both verbiage and task analyses that the concept of rigor is inclusive of interdisciplinary studies and application to the real work. Rigor is to become the norm for all students, and the curriculum elements to attain this end reflect similarly the ends of the traditionally differentiated curriculum for the gifted.

How will the current emphasis on the same curricular elements for both the basic or regular curriculum for general education and the differentiated curriculum for gifted students coexist?

What are the implications for gifted education and the design and implementation of a differentiated curriculum when it shares common features with the basic or regular curriculum developed for general education?

Some would respond to these questions by stating that general and gifted education always has shared common curricular elements and that a differentiated curriculum simply affords gifted students the opportunities to learn these elements sooner in their educational career, to learn and apply them in a more sophisticated manner and to a higher level of expertise. Others would say that the shared curriculum elements as the foci of both the regular and differentiated curriculum affords educators the opportunities to work together to affect a better education for all students. And, still there are some that would say this is a time to initiate the task of redefining the meaning of a differentiated curriculum.

If it is time to respond to the question of what constitutes a differentiated curriculum in today’s society, then it also is the time to address simultaneously another question: What attributes define the 21st-century gifted student, and how can these be met in a contemporary concept of a differentiated curriculum?

It is possible that we have aligned the concepts of a differentiated curriculum to outdated attributes of gifted students. When we say that gifted students have a wide variety of interests, are we clear about what these interests are with regard to the contemporary culture? When we discuss the abstract thinking of gifted students, are we certain as to what abstract means with respect to the students’ orientation to video gaming and new trends in science fiction? When we refer to a gifted student’s curiosity, are we clear about the implications of curiosity in an environment where there is ready and easy access to all forms of information to satisfy one’s curiosity? When we define giftedness with respect to a long attention span, have we discussed the implications of selective attention with respect to use of technology versus listening to a discussion in a classroom? Until we consider a reexamination of the characteristics of giftedness, the elements believed to be vital to a differentiated curriculum may be outdated and even irrelevant.

It is possible that differentiation is only a prerequisite to an individualized curriculum. This means designing curriculum that is individualized beyond allowing a student to conduct an independent study. An individualized curriculum would be conceived on the ideas that it is totally reflective of the student’s academic, personal, and social needs for both the present and the future in order to articulate a pathway for a personalized intellectual journey. Perhaps an individualized curriculum for gifted students would enable each student to selectively study the standards that are appropriately concurrent with the individual’s perceptions of self as a contemporary and future scholar.

“New considerations of what differentiation is and what differentiation is not will be needed when the new standards are fully implemented.”

It is possible that differentiation could be redefined to be inclusive of the salient characteristics of intellectualism—a conceptual framework that includes pursuits of areas such as philosophy, aesthetics, psychology, and rationalism integral to differentiate the curriculum across all grades and age groups.

Regardless of what form differentiation takes in the future, new considerations of what differentiation is and what differentiation is not will be needed when the new standards are fully implemented. Advocacy will not only rely on what we need to do to support gifted education; it also will depend on educators of the gifted to be ready and erudite to explain differentiation in a new context—a context that shares the same curricular elements as those that we once believed belonged “only” to gifted education.