News Release

Emotional needs key for teaching gifted students

According to chapter in new book

Book Announcement

Dick Jones Communications

Teachers of gifted students need to play close attention to the social and emotional needs of their pupils or they are far less likely to reach their potential.

So says Dr. Stephanie K. Ferguson, director of the Program for the Exceptionally Gifted at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA in a chapter she wrote for a new book about how to teach gifted children.

"All too often in school gifted students are asked to put their emotions aside and focus on the cognitive task at hand," she says. "But gifted students who wonder where they belong in the schema of school and the social cliques and hierarchies may have trouble forming a positive self-concept and reaching self-actualization."

Her chapter is titled "Affective Education: Addressing the Social and Emotional Needs of Gifted Students in the Classoom." It appears in a new book: Methods and Materials for Teaching the Gifted, copyright 2009 by Prufrock Press.

Affective education means paying attention to the attitudes, beliefs, feelings and emotions of students as well as their interpersonal relationships. It often gets short shrift in the classroom.

"Prior to crises or overt threats schools have traditionally paid little attention to the social and emotional needs of the student body in general and gifted students in particular," Dr. Ferguson says.

Gifted children often show uneven rates of development in thinking, the affective domain and physical skills. This is called "asynchronous development." If left unchecked it can lead to unhealthy lifestyles. These include perfectionism, self-criticism, poor self-concept, or maladjustments such as depression, eating disorders and anti-social behavior.

There are classroom strategies that teachers can employ to address the social and emotional needs of gifted students, Dr. Ferguson notes. To help set a positive classroom climate, for instance, they can have students brainstorm a list of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. That makes them "stakeholders in the classroom community."

She also discusses how to use art, books and films to address the social and emotional growth of gifted students while incorporating the traditional cognitive tasks. The Madeline L' Engle book, A Wrinkle in Time, for example, can be used to teach about the asynchronous development of gifted children and how to understand it and cope with it. And the film "Finding Forrester" can reveal through guided discussion the concepts of conformity, masking talent, empathy, stereotyping and challenge to authority.

Other tools for incorporating affective education into the curriculum include service learning and student questionnaires.

"Addressing the affective domain within the curricula is appropriate for all students," says Dr. Ferguson, "but it is essential for gifted students."

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The Program for the Exceptionally Gifted that Dr. Ferguson directs at Mary Baldwin College enrolls 72 female students between the ages of 12 and 16 who are full-fledged undergraduates in college.


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