Gifted Child Quarterly

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Teachers' Perceptions of Giftedness Samuel L. Guskin, Chao-Ying J. Peng and Massoumeh Majd-Jabbari Gifted Child Quarterly 1988; 32; 216 DOI: 10.1177/001698628803200106 The online version of this article can be found at: http://gcq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/32/1/216

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Teachers’ Samuel L. Guskin

Perceptions

Chao-Ying

J.

of Giftedness

Peng

Massoumeh

Majd-Jabbari

Indiana University

Abstract This investigation examined

prospective and experienced teachers’ perceptions of relatedness among abilities. Participants included 111 undergraduate edu-

cation students without teaching experience and 79 graduate students who were experienced teachers. Stu-

dents were required to indicate the resemblance among 20 different kinds of abilities, using sorting, similarity

ratings, and/or trait ratings. These data were analyzed using clustering, multidimensional scaling, and factor analysis approaches. Both prospective and experienced

teachers tended to agree on five categories of gifted-

ness: analytic or cognitive ability, personality and social Skills, creative arts, motor skitts, and verbal ability. Although the findings resemble Gardner’s (1983) "multiple intelligences" and suggest that teachers hold appropriate beliefs about relationships among abilities, further investigations are required to explore the extent

to which their conceptions relate to their day-to-day interactions, judgments, and decisions in their classrooms

Categories of Giftedness Perceived by Teachers

Despite renewed interest in educational programming for gifted and talented students, most of these pupils are taught primarily by teachers who lack special training in the area. Under these conditions, it is important to understand how teachers perceive giftedness and talent. Much research has shown that when teachers perceive a student to be generally able, there are important consequences for teaching and learning. (Good and Brophy, 1984). We know less about the extent to which teachers overgeneralize or are realistic in their recognition of the relationships among different abilities. Do they perceive students who are gifted in one area to be also talented in most other areas, or do they see abilities as unique to highly specific and nonoverlapping areas? Do they think students who are excellent in mathematics are unlikely to be any good in the arts? The answers to such questions would appear to be of more than academic interest. If teachers overgeneralize from their observation of a student’s apparent ability in one area to other areas, the consequence is likely to be inappropriate teaching and leaming. Gardner (1985) has pointed out the widespread tendency in our culture to conceive of abilities as highly interrelated and to encompass this generalized ability under the notion of intelligence and the measure of IQ. His work is devoted to demonstrating the existence of several relatively 216

independent &dquo;intelligences&dquo; in order to break down this bias a unitary concept of intelligence. It seems likely that

toward

teachers may also have this bias. The consequences of such a bias among teachers may be much more serious than the misconceptions of the average person because of its potential influence on instruction and referral for special programming for gifted students. Although the question of whether intelligence should be viewed as unitary or as multiple abilities has been the subject of extensive investigation and theorizing (e.g., Gardner, 1982; Guilford, ~1967; Thurstone, 1938), the focus of such work has been on objective correlations among abilities. Little attention has been paid to how these interrelationships are viewed by the public, by teachers, or by students. Yet it is these perceptions rather than the &dquo;true&dquo; relatedness among abilities which may have the greatest impact on the education of gifted .and talented children. In one recent study (Peng, Guskin & Samuel, 1986), fifth through ninth graders attending summer programs for academically gifted and artistically talented youth were asked to estimate the likelihood that students outstanding in one ability area would be good (or poor) in other areas. Data were analyzed utilizing cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling. Both analyses were consistent in revealing that these students did not perceive most abilities to be closely interrelated nor did they view each of the areas presented to be unique. Instead, their judgments could be accounted for by five categories : two cognitive or academic, two artistic or creative, and one psychomotor cluster. Although intriguing, the findings are limited by having only a small number (10) of ability areas represented, by employing only gifted students, and by the particular characteristics of the questionnaire used. The present study increases the number and representativeness of the ability areas examined, explores the view of experienced and prospective teachers rather than students, and uses various methodological strategies to overcome the limitations of the

exploratory study. Methods Overview The study

was carried out in three phases. In the first, instrument development phase, undergraduates were asked: (1) to think of as many areas of ability in which 12 year olds might excel as possible; (2) to think of as many terms as pos-

sible which might characterize students who are outstanding in each area presented to them. These initial open ended responses were employed to derive the final lists of 20 abilities and 25 traits. In the second phase, data were collected from


Ill education undergraduates (i.e., prospective teachers) who were asked to sort these 20 abilities into nonoverlapping clusters, rate similarities among 190 pairs of abilities, and rate a subset of the abilities on 25 traits. In the third phase, in order to test the applicability of findings to classroom teachers, a more limited set of data were collected from 79 graduate students who were experienced teachers. Since the findings derived from the second phase were similar for the different methods of data collection, and since the sorting task required far less subject time than the similarity judgment or trait rating tasks, we chose to use only the sorting task for these subjects. Also, since the clustering analysis of the sorting data was highly consistent with the Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) result in the first sample and involved no additional cost in subject time, both data analysis methods were applied to the second sample (See Guskin and Peng, 1985). For simplicity and briefness of presentation, the findings reported in this article are limited to these common procedures, i.e., sorting method and cluster analysis plus multidimensional scaling, shared by phases two and three.’

Subjects The 111 undergraduate education students recruited for the second phase were enrolled in five different reading or social studies methods sections in the School of Education at a midwestern university. The 79 participating graduate students were experienced teachers enrolled in graduate courses in educational psychology or special education. The mean age of graduate students was approximately five years older. The proportion of males to females was nearly comparable in both groups (1:3). Procedure Sorting Method. Each subject received a booklet which included the following instructions: Below are listed several different areas in which a 12 year old might be outstanding. 1. memory 8. computers 15. motivation 2. music 9. comprehension 16. problem solving 3. science 10. social skills 17. mechanical ability 4. art 11. vocabulary 18. independence 5. athletics 12. creativity 19. writing 6. leadership 13. speaking 20. logical reasoning 7. reading 14. mathematics Please sort these areas into separate groups in the blank space below so that those in the same group are similar to one another... Continue grouping and labeling until you have included every item number in at least ’Data collected from prospective teachers

rating methods

To decide 2

by similarity judgment

or

trait

available upon request. If interested, please write to: Professor Samuel L. Guskin Department of Special Education Room 170 Smith Research Center Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405

are

on

which level

we

should summarize the solution, i.e., how

one

circled grouping. (You may use an area in more seems similar to other areas in

than one grouping if it those groupings ... )

Data Analysis From each respondent’s groupings, a 20 x 20 matrix of 1’s and 0’s was constructed to indicate the presence or absence of a pairwise linkage. That is, &dquo;I&dquo; indicates that the abilities were sorted into the same category and &dquo;0&dquo; means the opposite. Aggregating these matrices across 111 undergraduate subjects resulted in a group proximity matrix. A similar matrix was obtained for the 79 experienced teachers. In each group matrix, entries indicate the frequency with which a pair of abilities was sorted into the same category by subjects. Both group matrices, representing experienced teachers or prospective teachers, were each subjected to complete-link cluster analysis and then verified by multidimensional scaling. Results The clustering results are shown as dendrograms in Figures 1 and 2, for prospective and experienced teachers, respectively. The 20 abilities are shown along the vertical axis and the hierarchy is comprised of the levels on the horizontal axis.

The closer the perceived relationship among abilities, the lower on the figure they are joined. The higher on the figure, the more general or larger the clusters are and therefore the less commonality is shared by members of the cluster.22 The five clusters identified are analytic abilities, socialpersonality skills, verbal skills, motor ability, and creative arts. Some minor differences obtained for the two samples are that mechanical ability is in the motor cluster for undergraduates and joined with analytic abilities for experienced teachers while memory joined with analytic abilities for undergraduates and with the verbal cluster for experienced teachers. These five clusters agreed strongly with the three dimensional configuration derived from metric MDS. Tables 1 and 2 below summarize findings for prospective and experienced teachers respectively.’3 Inspection of these tables confirms the findings of cluster analysis; that is, the five categories of abilities emerging crossvalidated the groupings of analytic abilities, social-personality skills, verbal skill, motor ability and creative arts. Minor disagreements between samples are: (1) memory and motivation were not distinct members of any grouping for undergraduate, prospective teachers whereas they fell in the verbal and social-personality groupings, respectively, for graduate many clusters should be reported, two criteria were employed: (1) a measure of the change in normalized distance resulting from an increase or dein the number of clusters; and (2) the comparability of the clustering

crease

result with those obtained from multidimensional scaling. In the case of both prospective and experienced teachers, the five cluster solution showed the greatest resemblance with one another and with the three-dimensional configuration uncovered by multidimensional scaling. For the purpose of clarity, abilities "loaded"significantly, (i.e., with coor3 dinates equal to or greater than 1.00) are presented in both tables.


217

Three Dimensional Metric MDS Solution of the Sorting Data (Prospective Teachers)’ *

* Only abilities with coordinates greater than or close to 1.00 reported in this table.

are

Table 2 Three Dimensional Metric MDS Solution of the

Sorting

emerge. Both samples of subjects viewed students talented in one subskill as resembling those who are talented in another subskill in the same area and as differing from those who are talented in other areas. Thus, they are not likely to make the error of Rist’s (1970) teacher who saw social, verbal, and cognitive skills as closely interrelated. On the other hand, there is the possibility of overdifferentiation on the part of these teachers. They don’t expect students with analytic or verbal skills to be especially talented in the arts. In this regard, subjects of this study resemble the gifted pupils we studied previously who also differentiated verbal, cognitive, motor, and artistic abilities. The findings for both teachers and gifted students may be compared with Gardner’s (1983) conception of multiple intelligences. Gardner drew on diverse sources, including studies of gifted persons, brain damage, and cross cultural investigations and concluded that a convergence of these sources suggested several relatively autonomous intellectual

sistently

Table 1

Data

*

(Experienced Teachers)’

who

are

competencies: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical,

spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, and personal. Teachers in this study made similar differentiations. They did not distinguish musical and spatial categories, the latter of which includes the visual

arts in

Gardner’s theory. However, in this study, the

general term art or artistic ability (rather than visual arts) was given to teachers who grouped it with music and creativity. In an earlier study (Peng, et al., 1986), gifted students did make that differentiation, placing drawing and piano playing in separate categories. Thus, except for the limitations placed on subjects by our procedures, both teachers and gifted students are in general agreement with Gardner’s distinctions. The fact that findings are very similar for inexperienced and experienced teachers suggests either that these conceptions regarding abilities are learned relatively early and are insenexperience or that experience is consistent with these preconceptions. The few differences in the findings could be attributed to sampling differences, since not all undergraduates preparing to become teachers do end up as teachers and not all experienced teachers are likely to be taking master’s sitive to

coursework. Other differences

*Only abilities with coordinates greater than or close to 1.00 reported in this table.

are

experienced teachers; (2) athletics joined with the socialpersonality and the motor grouping for undergraduates and yet it belonged in only the motor grouping for graduates; and (3) mechanical ability was combined with athletics in the motor grouping by undergraduates but the graduates judged this ability to be related to both motor and analytical ability areas. Discussion Both prospective and experienced teachers differentiate among verbal, analytic, personal/social, artistic/creative, and motor skills. Regardless of how the data were analyzed, either with a cluster approach or MDS, these five ability areas con-

218

might be due to short term in-

fluences, e.g., undergraduates in reading methods courses being sensitized to reading related abilities and educational psychology and special education courses sensitizing students to cognitive skills and individual differences. However, the study was not designed as a comparative study. The sample of experienced teachers was merely a sample of convenience added to assess the possibility that the prospective teachers did not adequately represent the larger population of teachers to which we wished to apply our findings and methodology. The findings from graduate students with teaching experience do appear to reinforce those we obtained on undergraduates. What implications do these findings have for further research and practice? Since the findings about prospective teachers’ perceptions of the relationships among abilities are consistent with those of experienced teachers and with Gardner’s &dquo;multiple intelligences,&dquo; it would seem that we should


I

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1. Clustering resultfor ofGifted teachers on perceived relatedness National Association Children. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. abilities. Figure© 1988 prospective among 20

219

Gifted

Child

Quarterly


220

have little concern about teachers’ stereotypes about abilities. do not appear to overgeneralize nor do they fail to recognize relationships among subsets of abilities. However, before we have confidence in the appropriateness of teachers’ beliefs in this area, we need to understand how these conceptions held by teachers relate to their day-to-day interactions, judgments and decisions in their classrooms. Do teachers assign leadership positions to students on the basis of their judgments of the students’ social skills or of their academic ability? Do they recommend students for advanced or higher track sections of a new computer course on the basis of their overall academic performance or of their past performance in science oriented coursework? Do teachers outside of music and art know what their students’ creative talents are in these areas? How do teachers react to students who show obvious ability in more than one area? Empirical data are needed on such questions in order to determine whether and how to change teachers’ beliefs about the relationships among abilities.

They

References Gardner,

H. (1983). Frames

New York: Basic Books.

of mind.

The

theory of multiple intelligences,

Good, T.L. and Brophy, J.G. (1984). Teacher behavior and student achievement. (Occasional paper No. 73), Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, Institute for Research on Teaching. Guilford, J.P. (1967). The nature of human intelligence, New York: McGraw-Hill.

Guskin, S.L., and Peng, C.Y. (1985). Developing a valid methodolgy for the study of prospective teachers’ perceptions of giftedness/talent. Final report for the Proffitt Foundation Grant.

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University. C-Y and K.V. J., Guskin, S.L., Peng, Samuel, (1986). Stereotypes of the gifted by the gifted: Academically gifted students’ perceptions of relationships among abilities. Paper submitted for publication. Rist, R.C. (1970). Student social class and teacher expectation: The selffulfilling prophecy in ghetto education. Harvard Educational Review, 40, 411-451.

Thurstone, L.L. (1938). Primary mental abilities. Psychometric Monographs, No. 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Author’s Note

Support for this study was provided by a grant to Samuel Guskin and Chao-Ying J. Peng from the Maris M. Proffitt and Mary Higgins Proffitt Endowment to Indiana University.


221