| |
Self-Advocacy: Encouraging Students to Become Partners in Differentiation.
by Deborah Douglas There are myriad means to an appropriately challenging educational experience for gifted adolescents including Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), distance learning, virtual schools, online courses, independent study, and differentiated instruction in the regular classroom. However, these opportunities are ineffective if students do not willingly engage in them. For their education to be personally meaningful, gifted students must be allowed to make choices. Much research has focused on the value of allowing students this ownership. Providing them with choices has been identified as a primary motivational tool that encourages learning (Gentry & Springer, 2002). Pintrich and DeGroot (1990) found that self-regulated learning that included choice led to higher self-efficacy and improved academic performance for middle school students. Teachers, of course, play the key role in providing choices and helping students select them. Tomlinson (2001) noted that teachers in differentiated classrooms understood the need to help students take increasing responsibility for their own growth, encouraging them to be active in making and evaluating decisions. Writing on the needs of students with disabilities, Ferguson (2001) stated: For all students to achieve the schooling outcome of active, meaningful participation in their community, they must each receive an education that has been uniquely tailored or personalized to their abilities, interests, and communities. [Teachers] must look to the activities and patterns of the lives students are leading as an important curricular source, and then overlap and embed real-life learning goals into the curriculum ... [including] activities they enjoy or are even passionate about and activities they would like to explore. (p. ii) Although it is important for teachers to believe in student choice and to create varied learning opportunities, it is just as important for students to understand their specific personal educational needs and to develop the skill to advocate for themselves. Weimer (1994) reports that one school district taught self-advocacy skills to its students with learning disabilities, including an awareness of one's disability, test modifications, and adult independence skills. Phillips (1990) also describes interviews with ninth and tenth grade students with learning disabilities, their parents, and their resource teachers which indicated that self-advocacy is effective in developing awareness of educational opportunities. In fact, an ERIC search of the key words "student self-advocacy" returned 78 hits. While 77 of those articles dealt with self-advocacy of people with disabilities, only one was geared toward gifted students. Yet Karnes and McGinnis (1996) contend that children with high intellectual ability are especially ready to take charge of their own education, citing several studies which conclude that a more internal locus of control (the feeling that control of one's life rests in one's own hands) is associated with giftedness. Robinson (1996) relates that counseling for highly gifted students must help them understand their own intellectual achievement and the means to be effective self-advocates within the educational system. Delisle and Galbraith (2002) wrote: Some students know their needs and interests at least
as well as their teachers do, and this is especially true
with gifted students ... As teachers, we can help our
students to become more than passive recipients of our
teaching. With some enlightened self-exploration into
their own educational agendas, your students will
become partners with you in an enterprise that was
never meant to be a one-way street: education. (p. 149)
Self-advocacy may also be the key to success for gifted students considered to be underachieving. Winebrenner (2001) writes, "The most common complaint about underachievers is, 'They won't do their work.' In my experience, the reality is that they won't do the teacher's work, but would be very happy to work on what is meaningful for them" (p.22). Glasser (1996) found that the issue of choice was crucial for addressing motivation and student achievement. However, he added that providing choices in the classroom requires that teachers share power with students, thus encouraging decision making and ownership of learning. Schultz (2002), too, contends that students and teachers need to plan together for achievement: [We must] move away from the "fix the broken" mentality
of working on students, to one of working with
students to develop understanding and learning ... and
no longer focus on how to conform these learners to
the educational system as it exists. Broadening the
focus can provide and enhance understanding and
promote additional dialogue between gifted underachievers
and individuals attempting to meet these
diverse learners' needs. (pp. 204-5)
If gifted students are capable of self-advocacy, why don't they do it? Perhaps it is ...
| |
