Differentiated curriculum: Multiple means and fixed ends

Social Studies Review, Spring 2002 by Kaplan, Sandra N

The contemporary educational dilemma facing teachers of the gifted is how to assist students in meeting the multitude of expectations defined by the state standards, the district, the community, and the demands of student potential and ability. Many questions are ever present in discussions related to how gifted students can meet all these expectations. These include the:

* priority that should be given to the various expectations.

* concern for the time and energy demanded to teach and learn these expectations.

* attention to issues pertaining to a curriculum design that accommodates these expectations without minimizing them.

The design and implementation of a differentiated curriculum has been the attempt of educators to reconcile the core curriculum and the needs, interests, and abilities of gifted students. As specified in the new state standards regulating GATE education, a differentiated curriculum provides the means by which gifted students will both meet and exceed the discipline-based standards. Thus, a differentiated curriculum has the core curriculum as its foundation and provides those learning experiences that extend the core curriculum so it is responsive to the traits that distinguish gifted students. The curricular principles considered necessary to the design of a differentiated curriculum or the curriculum that differs to stimulate the academic rigor giftedness requires are shown in figure 1.

WHY SOCIAL STUDIES FOR GIFTED STUDENTS?

The theoretical, practical, cognitive, and affective importance of social studies for all students is agreed upon as seen in the literature. However, the value of social studies for gifted students needs to be addressed from several vantage points.

1. If one of the goals for educating gifted students is to develop scholarliness and not just to achieve scholarship, the learning of social studies provides the background for more scholarly literature, science, and mathematics.

2. If the development of social or intellectual leadership is a desired outcome of education for gifted students, the learning of social studies is crucial to understanding the ramifications of leadership and its relationship to personal and social power.

3. If the development of self-concept and identity are vital to realize one's potential, the learning of social studies provides the information supporting the individual and collective identities of gifted students through the study of history.

Social studies has particular value for gifted students to learn and exercise the elements that comprise a differentiated curriculum. Inherent in the teaching of social studies are elements compatible with those underlying a differentiated curriculum (Figure 2).

PROVIDING A PATHWAY: FIXED END, MULTIPLE MEANS

Unless educators perceive the value of the relationship between the core and differentiated curricula, the task of providing for the gifted becomes difficult and often cumbersome. When educators see the core and differentiated curricula as separate and attainable only if each is travelled in its own distinctive linear pathway, the co-existence of the core and differentiated curricula as a single or overlapping curriculum is impossible. A means to achieve this co-existence is to apply a fixed end, multiple means approach to curriculum design.

Social studies curriculum provides a model to achieve simultaneously held multiple and varied outcomes in pursuit of a defined goal. This factor has become a predominant consideration to design differentiated curriculum for gifted students. The often used additive approach to develop a differentiated curriculum, wherein selected expectations are included to the core curriculum when time allows, can be replaced by the fixed ends/multiple means approach to design a differentiated curriculum.

The fixed end becomes the social studies standard; the multiple means represent the expectations appropriate to the needs, interests, and abilities of gifted students. For gifted and high ability students, this curriculum design provides a differentiated pathway to study sophisticated discipline-specific concepts, to prompt depth and complexity, to experience a variety of student-centered models of teaching, and to generalize the content and skills to intra/interdisciplinary studies en route to a standard. For teachers, this curriculum enables educators to comply with the teaching of a standard while still meeting the expectations to differentiate curriculum and instruction to meet the needs advocated for gifted and high ability (Figure 3).

The elements defined as the multiple means to the end are founded in research and theory related to teaching gifted and high ability students:

* Universal Concepts - A recognized trait that characterizes gifted and high ability students is their ability to respond to abstract concepts and generalize them. Emphasis is on the movement from simple to sophisticated to universal concepts. The following is an example of this movement: settlers-diffusion-change & migration-manifest destiny-power. Change and power are the universal concepts to study en route to the standard.