Start Date
5-8-2013 2:45 PM
End Date
5-8-2013 4:00 PM
Abstract
Concurrent Session Block 2
Recommended Citation
Munro, J. K. (2013, August 05). High ability learning and brain processes: how neuroscience can help us understand how gifted and talented students learn and the implications for teaching [Paper presentation]. 2013 - How the Brain Learns: What lessons are there for teaching?. https://research.acer.edu.au/research_conference/RC2013/5august/18
Aug 5th, 2:45 PM
Aug 5th, 4:00 PM
High ability learning and brain processes: how neuroscience can help us understand how gifted and talented students learn and the implications for teaching
Concurrent Session Block 2
Comments
Gifted and talented learners understand, think and know in ways that differ qualitatively from how regular learners perform these activities. Recent research that has examined the neuropsychological processes engaged by these learners provides insights into how they process information, convert it to knowledge and make links. It also assists in understanding the creative activity they display. These findings, in turn, assist in understanding how these students learn and think and how they can be taught. This discussion reviews this research and links it with an explicit model of gifted and talented learning. The review helps teachers and schools understand what gifted and talented learning, in its multiple forms, ‘looks like’ or how it is displayed in regular classrooms. The discussion also identifies implications for identifying gifted and talented learning and for teaching these students. It focuses particularly on recommendations for implementing pedagogic and curriculum differentiation. The phenomenon of giftedness is usually associated with high-level outcomes, whether on a measure of general ability, responses to achievement task, a performance or a production. The focus of this session is on the thinking and knowing that leads to these outcomes. The context for this session is the classroom. Its perspective is the set of learning–teaching interactions that lead to the gifted outcomes. It is in these interactions that links with brain processing are more visible, as long as educators can recognise and interpret them. This presentation begins by describing typical interpretations made by gifted students in a regular mathematics lesson. It unpacks these interpretations in terms of the learning and thinking processes that were implicated. It then links these outcomes with recent investigations of the neuropsychological processes associated with gifted learning. It concludes by examining implications for pedagogic and curriculum differentiation.