Affect and Meeting the Needs of the Gifted Chemistry Learner: Providing Intellectual Challenge to Engage Students in Enjoyable Learning - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 129

Kanevsky and Keighley ( 2003 ) consider that learning can act as an antidote to
the emotion of boredom in gifted learners. In other words, when we feel we are
genuinely learning something and recognise that we need to commit our concen-
tration to do so, we are engaged and consider we are involved in purposeful and
worthwhile activity.
1.2 What Is Giftedness?
Giftedness and high ability are understood differently in different national educa-
tional contexts (Cropley & Dehn, 1996 ). So some work on giftedness is focused
only on those who have demonstrated extremely high attainment, whilst elsewhere
(in the English national context, considered below, for example) it simply means
the top 5-10 % of students (however judged) in any ability group (Taber, 2012 ).
There are different approaches to how giftedness is best understood and identified
(Sternberg & Davidson, 1986 ; Taber, 2007c ), for example, about the extent to
which it is determined by genetic factors or can be nurtured through educational
experiences. There are questions over whether giftedness describes a person or
needs to be understood contextually, i.e. that a person is only considered gifted in
the context of certain activities that are evaluated in terms of particular norms and
expectations (Sternberg, 1993 ).
These are important issues, but detailed consideration of them is outside the
scope of the present chapter. So for the purposes of the present account, giftedness
will be defined in a pragmatic way that relates to the concerns of teachers and others
charged with established curriculum or educational provision.
The premises of the present chapter are that:
1. In any teaching group, learners are likely to vary across a range of characteris-
tics, including:
(a) The extent of their existing knowledge of the material to be learnt
(b) Their prior learning of the prerequisite knowledge of what is to be learnt
(c) The cognitive and metacognitive attributes available to support new learning
(d) The predisposition to engage fully in learning
2. This variation may not be uniform across a teaching subject (such as chemistry):
for example, some students will more readily learn new conceptual material;
some will enjoy practical work more than others; some will have particular
strengths (or limitations) in applying mathematics in the subject; students may
have uneven prior knowledge (stronger in some topics than others within a
subject), with differences among a teaching group, etc.
3. Effective teaching will be pitched at a level that challenges learners whilst
supporting achievement (see Chapter “Meeting Educational Objectives in the
Affective and Cognitive Domains: Personal and Social Constructivist Perspec-
tives on Enjoyment, Motivation and Learning Chemistry”).