Expert says gifted kids at risk of falling through the cracks in Alberta

One expert suggests Alberta’s gifted kids may be falling through the cracks, given a failure to identify and teach them properly.

Department of Educational Psychology Professor George Georgiou at the University of Alberta looked at three different schools in his research of curriculum.

In his study, he looked at their skill-set and measures of intelligence and found very few were meeting the necessary score to be qualified as gifted.

“I can tell you from the discussions I’ve had with several principals as well as parents of gifted kids, the impression I have is that there is not common ground,” he said.

What he means is that some schools are classifying a child as gifted if they can score a 120 IQ while the threshold is far higher in other schools.

As a result some are not going identified and getting the proper resources they need.

“There is something wrong with the process of identifying these children, there is not a single common approach within single boards or across Alberta,” he said. “It has a lot of implications because if there’s not common ground that literally means, you have two kids who teach gifted kids, they’re side by side and they’re not being taught the same thing.”

Georgiou says it’s the schools that are deciding what tests to give and accept and that’s a problem.

“I think the first thing that we have to do is agree on what qualifies as gifted and if you look at the definition of gifted you will see that there are lots of abilities and skills under the term gifted and talented.”

He says talented should be viewed separately from gifted and once people agree on a definition, there needs to be someone calling to ask what are the common measures to assess the students.

“Ideally gifted should be the 1 per cent of the population so if we go with an IQ score of 140 or even higher,” he said. “By using a lower score you allow more kids to be coded as gifted when they are just typical.”

It’s still unclear if there is a quick fix, Georgiou says this would require a coordination on different levels and programming.

“I think we should approach giftedness that same way we approach any kind of learning disability, these kids also have the right for education and we have to meet their needs. The fact that they are brilliant or smart, doesn’t mean that we should not pay attention to them.”

He says school boards, since he’s approached them, have started look at the issue differently.