STEM Network Working Group
The NAGC Board voted to support the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) position statement on Providing Opportunities for Students with Exceptional Mathematical Promise. However, a video by Jo Boaler has caused some to question the importance of identifying gifted students. This is a response from the NAGC STEM Network Working Group.
In 1980, in their Agenda for Action the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) asserted, “The student most neglected in terms of realizing full potential, is the gifted student of mathematics. Outstanding mathematical ability is a precious societal resource, sorely needed to maintain leadership in a technological world.” This is even truer today, nearly forty years later as the world becomes increasingly technological and interdependent. In 1995, NCTM appointed a Task Force on what they termed “mathematically promising” students and charged the task force with rethinking the traditional definition of mathematically gifted students to broaden it to the more inclusive idea of mathematically promising students. The Task Force defined those students as ones who have the potential to become the leaders and problem solvers of the future. They averred that mathematical promise is a function of ability, motivation, belief and experience or opportunity, all variables that are not fixed and need to be developed so that success for these promising students can be maximized. In 2016, the NCTM Board of Directors reaffirmed the need to recognize, nurture and challenge these students when they approved a position on Providing Opportunities for Students with Exceptional Mathematical Promise to answer the question “How can teachers and schools identify and support students with exceptional mathematical promise to nurture and sustain their mathematical development and interest in mathematics?” They noted that “exceptional mathematical promise is evenly distributed across geographic, demographic, and economic boundaries, and growing and leveraging such mathematical promise is essential for our field and society to thrive.”
As acknowledged by the NCTM board, the use of term gifted may overly restrict students receiving needed services, but regardless of the label, it is necessary to provide these students with “differentiated instruction in an engaging mathematical learning environment that ignites and enhances their mathematical passions and challenges them to make continuing progress throughout their K–16 schooling and beyond.” Research has shown that this is not only important for students with mathematical promise but for all students with exceptional promise.
The following are just a few of the reasons that gifted services are critical.
Every child, with excellent instruction, can learn at a much higher level, and a wide variety of stimulating challenges, opportunities and resources should be available to all students. But given similar exposure and instruction, some children are capable of or have a greater passion for understanding concepts on a deeper, more complex, faster and/or more creative level. Refraining from offering suitable curricular challenges to students who are ready for them, whether called gifted, talented, exceptionally promising, advanced, or something else because other students are not ready for or do not have an interest in them is not ethically justifiable.
The STEM Network Working Group is chaired by Linda J. Sheffield.