Instructional Management

Instructional management, described in this entry, deals with coordinating the flow of information in a school system, arranging the grouping and movement of students, organizing the processes of learning, and planning how the scope and sequence of the curriculum is implemented. Teachers manage these routine educational processes everyday. Providing education for gifted students puts special demands on normal instructional management and requires extra skills from the teacher. In particular, the needs of gifted, creative, and talented students require curriculum adaptations such as acceleration and differentiation.

Calls for accountability in education have increased dramatically in recent years, leading to an increased need to justify decision making, including determining the eligibility for special programs. Gifted and talented classes are often perceived as offering unique and desirable opportunities, and access to those services requires clear assessment and identification procedures. These identification processes prompt the flow of information through the school system's gifted and talented programming. Once students are placed in a gifted program, whether it involves cluster grouping, a gifted resource room, or a self-contained gifted class, their teachers must then do further preassessment to determine where each student is in regard to readiness for the curriculum, interests, and learning styles. One goal of the preassessment is to prevent re-teaching content that has already been learned. Another is to ensure that educational experiences match students' needs and interests as closely as possible. As students progress through a program, their accomplishments must be observed and translated into some kind of record, such as grades, portfolios, or rubrics. That feedback is used to guide educational planning for the next step in the classroom and conveyed to parents and school personnel as needed. For gifted students, records may also be important outside the district for admission to select programs or college.

There are a variety of options for grouping gifted students, depending on the size of the school district, goals of the curriculum, and availability of teachers who are trained in gifted education. Preferably, gifted students are grouped according to ability, interest, or stage in the curriculum rather than by age. Possible choices for grouping include cluster grouping (a few gifted students in each regular classroom), flexible grouping within a classroom or between classrooms (changing groupings of students based on ability, interests, and learning styles), part-time gifted education, and full-time gifted classes. Although there are advantages and disadvantage to each, there are some concerns about part-time gifted education because having instruction tailored to giftedness for a few hours a week does not help a gifted student during the rest of the week. It is important for teachers and districts to have the ability and willingness to adjust groupings as students advance or experience difficulties. It is common for gifted students to [Page 472]progress through an assignment or class more quickly than expected and the student who does so needs other options upon completion of the work. If the curriculum is at a sufficiently high level, gifted students may encounter difficulties and need more time than expected to complete assignments, and this should be accommodated. Gifted students may take a class earlier than is usual or proceed through a class more quickly, leading to situations such as a fourth-grade student enrolled in calculus or a high school student who is enrolled in both high school and college classes (dual enrollment). Advanced Placement classes and International Baccalaureate programs allow students to finish high school with some credit earned for college classes. By capitalizing on these various grouping procedures, teachers allow appropriate pacing of instruction for gifted students.

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