Enrichment and Gifted Education Pedagogy to Develop Talents, Gifts, and Creative Productivity

Abstract

Providing challenging and engaging learning opportunities is one way to motivate students to learn. In this article, we discuss the contributions of the gifted education field to the development of enrichment pedagogy and identify several different types of these engaging instructional strategies, including interest-based learning pedagogy, differentiation and curriculum compacting, project-based learning, open-ended choice, and the application of creative productivity to students learning. We identify this specialized pedagogy and give examples of how these exciting pedagogical strategies can be implemented in classrooms and by enrichment specialists and school counselors, both for academically talented and for all students. We conclude with a brief overview of research that demonstrates longitudinal benefits for students who are exposed to this type of teaching, suggesting positive outcomes.

1. Introduction

Many different enrichment theories have been proposed, developed, and some have been studied in the field of gifted education and enrichment during the last few decades. Our own theoretical work on the development of the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) [1,2,3] and its broad implementation across the globe, is testimony to the fact that gifted education has served a true laboratory for the enrichment innovations that have subsequently become mainstays of talent development opportunities [4]. This movement has been fueled in part by frustrations over the types of teaching that has been in the past and is currently being asked of teachers in many classrooms across the world. Too often we have heard numerous testimonials from creative teachers about administrative insistence on scripted lessons, the need to teach the same lesson on the same day in the same format to every student in a grade level across the district, and diminished opportunities to teach creatively, accompanied by a loss of creative opportunities for talent development and enrichment.

In this article, we discuss various forms of enrichment pedagogy, including strategies for increasing student effort, enjoyment, and performance, and for integrating a range of advanced-level learning experiences and thinking skills into all curricular areas. Enrichment pedagogy enable students to experience advanced-level learning, critical and creative thinking and problem solving, and the motivation to pursue rigorous and rewarding work. Although an in-depth discussion of specific enrichment models is beyond the scope of this article, a comprehensive overview of systems and models in gifted education is available in a volume of that name [5].

Enrichment and enrichment pedagogy theories relating to gifted education generally fall into two broad categories. The first is enrichment experiences constructed around the interests and talents of children, such as those we recommend in the SEM, and the second, theories in which enrichment is selected by teachers or curricular opportunities that are selected for their appropriate content and curriculum for enrichment. Enrichment theories usually are interest-based; integrate advanced content, processes, and products; include broad interdisciplinary themes; foster effective independent and autonomous learning; provide compacted, individualized and differentiated curriculum and instruction; develop investigative creative problem solving abilities and creativity; and integrate the tools of the practicing professionals in the development of products.

As early as 1985, we advocated the use of and extension of some types of enrichment pedagogy for the talent development of all students. The seeds of this idea were cultivated in Renzulli’s Enrichment Triad Model [6] with three types of enrichment, which serve as the pedagogical core of our SEM approach [1,2,3]. This model is often used as a theme for magnet schools, or as a whole school enrichment approach for schools that use the model for all students. It is also implemented as a program for gifted and academically talented students and has even been suggested as a social and emotional and counseling intervention [7]. The knowledge gained and research conducted on this approach over four decades demonstrates that the SEM is widely implemented as an enrichment program used with academically gifted and talented students and a magnet theme school for all students using talent development experiences [8]. The SEM provides enriched learning experiences and higher learning standards for all children through three goals; developing talents in all children, providing a broad range of advanced-level enrichment experiences for all students, and follow-up advanced learning for children based on interests and strong motivation to pursue a topic of special interest. The enrichment pedagogy included in our SEM pedagogy has resulted in increased engagement, higher achievement in multiple forms (both in standardized achievement tests and more important, in creative productivity) and the use of enjoyable and challenging learning experiences constructed around students’ interests, learning styles, and product styles [8].

2. Enrichment Pedagogy

We define pedagogy as methods used by teachers to instruct and teach children and enrichment pedagogy as the teaching methods that respond to students’ academic strengths and interests. Enrichment pedagogy refers to enriched, strength based instructional approaches that teachers use to engage learners. For over four decades, we have advocated the use of a systematic strength-based, talent-focused pedagogy based on acquired knowledge of students’ academic strengths, learning preferences, interests, and talents. In our Schoolwide Enrichment Model, we specify the need to both identify and develop students’ talents, strengths, and interests to provide opportunities for enrichment and talent development. In fact, our focus has been on what we call the concept of ORE, that is providing Resources, and Encouragement in areas of student interest, that will contribute to the development of their future areas of expertise, talents, or interests. These opportunities should be provided both within and outside of the curriculum to develop students’ advanced abilities and interests.

Enrichment pedagogy is embedded within the Enrichment Triad Model [6], the pedagogical core of the SEM. The Triad includes two categories of general enrichment (Types I and II), which we recommend for all students, and a third category (Type III), a more advanced type of enrichment that is appropriate for students, with academic talents, as well as advanced abilities and interests and task commitment. These three types of enrichment are introduced briefly here for context and application of enrichment pedagogy. Type I Enrichment consists of general exploratory experiences that expose young people to new interests and potential areas of follow-up. Type II Enrichment consists of training activities in the following six categories: Cognitive Thinking Skills, Character Development Skills, Learning How-To-Learn Skills, Using Advanced Research and Reference Skills, Written, Oral, and Communication Skills, and Meta-Cognitive Technology Skills. Type III Enrichment includes individual and small group investigations of real problems; and it is with this type of enrichment pedagogy that we have seen the most innovative and creative examples of talent development.

We define some enrichment pedagogy strategies briefly in

Table 1. Enrichment Pedagogy Strategies.

Enrichment Pedagogy Strategy	Description
Strength-based Learning Opportunities	Using knowledge of students’ academic strengths, learning preferences, interests, and talents to systematically create learning opportunities focusing on talent development opportunities to develop their talents, gifts, interests, and strengths
Critical/Creative Thinking and Problem Solving	Providing opportunities to use critical and creative thinking and problem solving (ability to interpret information critically and make a judgement, and using open-ended thinking resulting in multiple ideas and solutions)
Identification and Development of Interests (such as using Interest Development Centers)	Purposeful methods used to identify and develop student interests in class, such as using interest assessment instruments and interest development centers in the classroom.
Independent and Small Group Projects, Studies, and Explorations (Opportunities for Creative Productivity)	Enable the development of creative-productive gifted behaviors that enable students to work on problems and areas of study that have personal relevance to them. Work on these studies can often be used for solving problems and making a difference in society, either by individual or groups of students.
Open-ended and Choice Assignments and Other Choice Enrichment	Provide open-ended and choice in assignments, including homework and class assignments. Additionally, offering choices for enrichment learning, such as in enrichment clusters selected by students, in which the production of a product or service occurs.
Differentiated Instruction (Curriculum Compacting) Targeted to Student Needs	Make instructional and curricular modifications and differentiated instruction to ensure that instruction and content are more challenging and advanced, as needed.
Integrating Depth and Complexity	Infuse the curriculum with depth and promoting in students a desire for complexities beyond the requirements of the standard curriculum to stimulate student inquiry or questioning and/or student responses
Embracing Affective Differences and Support for Social Emotional Needs and Development	Use pedagogy that addresses the multifaceted characteristics of diverse groups of students, also focusing on their social and emotional needs, and ways of supporting their social and affective growth through academic engagement and strength-based pedagogy

below and in the sections that follow, illustrate how these types of pedagogies can be applied in both classrooms and enrichment programs.

In the sections below, we describe some of the ways that teachers can integrate some or a combination of the gifted education pedagogy strategies suggested in Table I into teaching and instructional strategies that work. Examples include strategies that can be implemented either in one content area, such as reading, as well as in multiple content areas and across grade levels.

3. Curriculum Compacting

To maximize instructional time, enrichment pedagogy also incorporates rigor into the differentiated and compacted curriculum to eliminate work that students have already mastered. Compacting is one differentiation strategy used to document which work within content areas has been compacted and alternative work that has been substituted. Compacting can include content acceleration for students who can cover regular curriculum material faster, as well as accelerated content necessary for an advanced project or additional depth or complexity in content. In this way, compacting is compatible with acceleration best-practices and models [9]. Curriculum Compacting integrates several of the pedagogy strategies outlined in Table 1. For example, it is a strategy focusing on students’ curricular strengths and interests, and also focuses on increasing depth and complexity. It enables students to pursue these interests and encourages involvement and completion of Type III enrichment studies. In addition, it exposes students to advanced thinking and problem-solving skills and strategies, as well as ways of embracing greater challenge. When teachers compact curriculum, they also provide affective support for more advanced work and help to reduce the likelihood of underachievement through the substitution of more engaging work leading to social and emotional support for advanced students.

Curriculum compacting is one of the most well-researched and practiced methods of differentiation [10]. It is traditionally offered and provided to all eligible above average students. Compacting enables classroom teachers to modify the regular curriculum by eliminating portions of previously mastered content when students demonstrate content strengths in a particular area (s). Research on compacting has demonstrated that academically talented students can have up to 50–75% of their regular curriculum eliminated or streamlined to avoid repetition of previously mastered work while guaranteeing mastery and simultaneously substituting more appropriately challenging activities [11,12]. Research shows a huge range of reading achievement and fluency across both heterogeneous, as well as homogeneous classrooms [13]. Firmender and colleagues found wide ranges in reading comprehension across five diverse schools (including a gifted magnet school), with a range of nine grade levels for Grade 3 students and over eleven grades levels for Grade 5 students. A similar wide range of oral reading fluency scores was found across each of the five elementary schools, as students scored from below the 10th percentile to above the 90th percentile. These results demonstrate the wide range of reading achievement in diverse populations of students, including gifted students, and the need for teachers to differentiate and compact reading content and instruction to enable all students to make continuous progress in reading. Compacting enables teachers to document the content areas that have been compacted and substitute them with alternative work that is more interesting, challenging, and engaging. In a certain sense, compacting allows students to “buy time” that can then be devoted to talent development activities, such as advanced projects or independent or small group Type III investigations.

4. Integrating Depth and Content into Student Learning

Integrating depth and complexity into student learning enables students to experience complexity of content, enabling them to understand, appreciate, and think critically about the content matter of what they are reading [14]. A focus on depth and complexity with content leads to higher engagement for academically talented and high potential learners. Specifically, for gifted students, the emphasis on depth should enable students to acquire a deep understanding of the content in a particular field. An emphasis on complexity should enable students to gain insights into connections across disciplines. Kaplan found that deep understanding occurs when students can investigate content and she has provided icons that enable deeper discussions to occur about details, patterns, rules, trends, unanswered questions, ethics and big ideas [14]. She has found that more complex understanding of disciplines is gained when students can investigate how fields have changed over time, the different perspectives that are held and also, how disciplines connect with each other. Kaplan also developed icons to serve as learning tools/prompts to accompany these more challenging discussions for teachers to use.

5. Interest Centers

Another method for integrating enrichment pedagogy into a classroom is by assembling a variety of enrichment choices into an interest center that can be used spark the curiosity of students within or across disciplines. Teachers can organize the materials using a space in a classroom, such as a bulletin board or table in such a manner as to invite students to peruse the resources and begin to pursue interdisciplinary or content-specific enrichment. These centers can include many high interest resources including fiction, non-fiction, picture books, websites and virtual tours to entice students into an historical, artistic, and investigative journeys about topics of interest. Interest Centers are recommended as an interdisciplinary enrichment experience in the SEM, where content can be delivered through Interest Centers can include exciting and innovative Type I experiences such as video clips of interesting expert speakers, exposure to internet sites, as well as a variety of books at varying levels of difficulty and disciplines. Students can pursue interests, find interdisciplinary connections, and then decide to begin engaging Type III studies. An Interest Center about biology, for example, can include various books about biology (either non-fiction and fiction); magazines, journals, some that can be cut up by students; a model of the human skeleton; an old stethoscope; additional charts, posters, and diagrams of body organs; a measuring tape, timer; X-rays of bones; writing and art supplies; stamp pads, glue, chalk; poster board, and construction paper; as well as a computer with internet access; a model of human skin. These types of interest center enable students to explore their interests by reading about a subject, holding and touching objects relating to biology, viewing films, reading books, and even listening to blogs or TED talks about this topic.

6. Independent and Small Group Projects: Type III Studies

Type III Enrichment is the most advanced level in the Enrichment Triad Model. Types I and II Enrichment, as well as curriculum compacting, can and should be provided on a regular basis to students, but the ability to revolve into Type III Enrichment depends on an individual’s interests, motivation, and desire to pursue advanced level study. Type III Enrichment can be defined as investigative activities and artistic productions in which the learner assumes the role of a first-hand inquirer thinking, feeling, and doing like a practicing professional, with involvement pursued at as advanced or professional level as possible given the student’s level of development and age. The most important feature of the model is the “flow” or connection among the experiences. Each type of enrichment is viewed as a component part of a holistic process that blends present or newly developed interests (Type I) and advanced level thinking and research skills (Type II) with application situations based on the modus operandi of the first-hand inquirer (Type III). For example, students with interests and passions in the arts can pursue Type III’s in school, spending hours drawing, painting, animating, and illustrating.

In a Type III experience, individual or small groups of students can also conduct research, pursue intense interests, and create original products to address personally relevant real problems, which do not have preexisting or unique solutions. These projects are usually intended to cause change or to make new contributions in the relevant field (s), and are of interest to a real audience [6]. Type III projects include examples of students transforming interests into investigative activities. The benefits of participating in Type III enrichment include reversing underachievement [15,16]. These researchers all described how students who completed Type III projects believed that the projects supported their career decision-making through interest exploration and clarification.

Type III enrichment can be pursued when students who become interested in learning more about a self-selected area and become willing to commit the time necessary for advanced content acquisition and process training. This is the period in which they assume the role of a first-hand inquirer, supported by a teacher or adult mentor who understands the goal of enrichment pedagogy. The goals of Type III enrichment include the following:

• opportunities for applying interests, knowledge, creative ideas and task commitment to a self-selected problem or area of study;
• advanced level understanding of the knowledge (content) and methodology (process) that are used within particular disciplines, artistic areas of expression and interdisciplinary studies;
• authentic products that are primarily directed toward bringing about a desired impact upon a specified audience;
• self-directed learning skills in the areas of planning, organization, resource utilization, time management, decision making and self-evaluation, and,
• development of task commitment, self-confidence, and feelings of creative accomplishment.

Type III products are always based on students’ interests. A book written by a fifth grade student named Gretchen provides one example of a Type III study. Gretchen had two passionate interests as a fifth grader: the literature of Louisa May Alcott and cooking. Gretchen had read all of Louisa May Alcott’s books and identified, in each book, any specific food mentioned. She researched the recipes of the time that would have been used to make the food (such as buckwheat cakes), field-tested each recipe (including making substitutions for ingredients no longer available), and created an original cookbook. Gretchen spent a year and a half working on a cookbook that combined vignettes of scenes from Little Women and Little Men with many authentic 19th century recipes for making the foods described in the novels. The Louisa May Alcott Cookbook was accepted and became the first book contracted by Little Brown with a child author. In Gretchen’s Type III, both the process she used and the final product involved high levels of creative engagement and clear evidence of creative work. Using this advanced enrichment pedagogy also enables teachers to address students’ social and emotional needs, and to support their social and affective growth through this advanced academic engagement and strength-based pursuit of interests. Type III studies that engage students often offer the opportunity for teachers to get to know students well, helping them deal with the challenges associated with advanced content and also ensuring that they understand how to cope with rigor, which, in turns leads to less of a chance that these students will underachieve in the future, as suggested by research conducted by Baum and colleagues [15].

7. Enrichment Clusters

Enrichment clusters, a component of the Schoolwide Enrichment Model, are non-graded, often multi-age groups of students who share common interests and who are grouped together during specially designated time blocks to work with an adult who shares their interests and who has some degree of advanced knowledge and expertise in the area [17]. This type of enrichment pedagogy can be provided to the entire school population, as all students benefit from the interests they are able to develop and pursue in clusters. In many schools, enrichment clusters provide an introduction to enrichment pedagogy that then can be transferred into other regular classroom teaching experiences [18]. A series of clusters can be planned and implemented for all students in a school, for example, in both fall and the spring semester. Students complete an interest inventory to assess their interests, and an enrichment coordinator tallies all of the major families of interests (or uses technology to do so automatically). Teachers and parents who want to facilitate clusters also complete an interest questionnaire to help them decide which interest areas to offer as clusters. Parents and other school personnel such as counselors can also participate in planning and coordinating enrichment clusters, thereby enabling these important groups to be a part of providing strength-based enrichment opportunities [19].

SEM schools offer enrichment clusters in the areas of high student interest as well as talent development opportunities, such as the arts, drama, history, creative writing, drawing, music, science, inventions, archeology, and other areas. Training is provided to the facilitators who agree to offer the clusters, and a brochure is developed and sent to all parents and students with descriptions of enrichment clusters. Students select their top three choices for the clusters and scheduling is completed to place all children into their first, or in some cases, second choice. All teachers (including music, art, physical education, etc.) are involved in facilitating the clusters; and their involvement in any particular cluster is based on the same type of interest assessment that is used for students in selecting clusters of choice. Students also have choice in products or services that are completed in enrichment clusters, guided and facilitated by teachers or adult volunteers with advanced knowledge of the area. Some of the introductory products that are completed lead to more advanced level Type III projects.

Titles of enrichment clusters can be exciting but also give important information about the advanced content introduced in the cluster. For example, titles such as Lights, Camera Action: Techniques of Video Production; Dear Mr. Shakespeare: Play Writing for Young Authors point out specific skills in the arts. Titles can also define the type of work that might be completed in a cluster. Examples are: The Desktop Publishing Company; The Local History Research Team; and The Creative Furniture Design Guild. In every cluster, students have a choice of completing a product or some kind of service.

Reis, Gentry and Maxfield [18] investigated the impact of providing enrichment clusters in two urban elementary schools, finding positive effects on differentiated teaching practices. After classroom teachers facilitated clusters, they introduced more challenging content, as well as more authentic methodologies, advanced thinking, and problem-solving strategies in their regular classroom teaching, suggesting that the use of enrichment pedagogy in clusters subsequently transfers to classroom teaching. Renzulli and Gelbar [7] also suggest that school counselors also have opportunities to serve as advocates and leaders for students identified as twice exceptional including by organizing enrichment opportunities to enable them to participante in strength-based learning and to work with other students with whom they may not regularly interact.

8. The Schoolwide Enrichment Model in Reading (SEM-R)

The SEM-R [20] is an enrichment approach to differentiation in reading based upon the constructivist theories of Renzulli [6] and Renzulli and Reis [1,2,3] and integrating the theories of Kaplan’s [14] depth and complexity approach to gifted education content and pedagogy. The SEM-R provides a broad range of structured enrichment experiences for all students and follow-up advanced learning for those with high levels of achievement and interest. In the SEM-R, teachers strive to build interdisciplinary understandings about literature, both fiction and non-fiction, and enable important connections to emerge across content areas. This enriched, interest-based reading approach exposes students to the interdisciplinary nature of literature, as well as to books both within and outside of their areas of interest. A focus of SEM-R is matching students with self-selected reading books that are slightly above their current reading levels and to ensure that their books are both challenging and interesting to them.

The goals of the SEM-R approach are to encourage children to enjoy reading by giving them access to the choice of high-interest, self-selected books that they can read for periods of time both at school and home; to develop independence and self-regulation in reading through the selection of these books as well as the opportunity to have individualized reading instruction; and, finally, to enable all students to improve in reading fluency and comprehension. Based on almost a decade of research, the SEM-R has been effective at enabling teachers to implement the use of enrichment pedagogy to increase achievement in reading and encourage talented readers to read more enjoyable and challenging material for longer periods of time. Results of randomized studies suggest it is especially effective for diverse groups of talented students [21,22,23,24].

9. Conclusions

As noted earlier, we believe that gifted education has served a true laboratory for the development of enrichment pedagogy and innovative teaching strategies. When teachers are trained in how to deliver and apply enrichment pedagogy to students’ learning, they can use more creative teaching pedagogy that has benefits for all students. For example, in one research study, the majority of classroom teachers who facilitated enrichment clusters integrated advanced content, teaching specific investigative methodologies, use of advanced vocabulary and authentic methods, such as developing surveys and using instruments for scientific projects, as well as the use of creative thinking and problem-solving strategies in their classrooms [8].

Enrichment experiences constructed around the interests and talents of children, such as those recommended in this article, can lead students to identify their interests and pursue them in secondary school and college, leading to the selection of majors and careers in these areas of interest. Using the Enrichment Triad Model as an intervention with twice exceptional students, for example, has shown positive outcomes about academic achievement and identification of strengths [15]. Longitudinal research on the use of this enrichment approach has also demonstrated that students who completed Type III projects, both in and out of school, maintained their interests and had corresponding career aspirations both in college and graduate school [25,26,27]. Research on the use of the Triad Model in college has also been conducted, with positive findings related to student creative productivity and engagement [27].

Researchers have also conducted longitudinal investigations on impact of project based work and Type III projects, suggesting that students who engage in Type III Enrichment have a positive relationship between their early interests and subsequent interests [27], postsecondary school plans [28], career choices [29,30], goal valuation [16], and self-regulation [27,30]. Baum and colleagues [15] reported that Type III enrichment was an effective approach to reverse underachievement. Brigandi et al. [16] also found that students who engaged in Type III Enrichment perceived their projects to be interesting and beneficial and believed they would contribute to their continued interest and perceptions of enjoyment in the future. More recently, Brigandi et al. [28] found that students who engaged in Type III enrichment benefitted from environmental supports, including exposure to challenging coursework and trusted relationships with project mentors and teachers and like-minded peers, which positively affected their ability to self-regulate their work and self-actualize their goals.

Teachers who use enrichment pedagogy offer their students interest-based opportunities to learn, the opportunity to experience advanced content, processes, and products, and exposure to new ideas and broad interdisciplinary themes. Teachers who use these strategies also foster effective independent and autonomous learning; provide compacted, individualized and differentiated curriculum and instruction, and contribute to the development of creative problem solving abilities and students’ creativity productivity. We hope, in the future, more of these gifted education pedagogy strategies will be widely used by general education, as well as special education, teachers.