Madelaine's Ideas

Associate Professor Tracy Riley’s recent research, shared in a SENG article, Thinking Along the Same Lines , and to be further explored at the upcoming NZAGC conference , puts like-mindedness in the spotlight. Like-mindedness is an important part of gifted education. The benefits of grouping gifted children together, creating like-minded environments, are both intellectual and social. Intellectually, like-minded students can work together at a faster pace, in greater depth, can challenge and question each other in order to bolster their individual and collective learning. Research by Adams-Byers, Whitsell and Moon (2004) found that gifted students saw the academic advantages in learning with like-minded peers as being challenge, fast pace, quality and depth of discussion, and lack of repetition of content.  Sandra Kaplan highlights that in like-minded groups, students can share perspectives and ideas that can be more readily understood, without the need for protracted explanati

Working (effectively) with like-minded peers is an essential element of the MindPlus programme. But what do children actually think and say about working with their like-minded peers?... I asked two classes of gifted children and here are their responses: Learning with like-minded peers… -           It’s easier because we don’t have to explain ourselves or our ideas -           It’s not as hard as working with non-like-minded peers -           We can work together on the same things, or on different things in the same ways -           We can help each other learn -           You can understand each other -           We can learn from each other -           It’s just easier to work with like-minded peeps       Communicating with like-minded peers… -           We don’t have to tackle ‘what does that mean?’ -           You can really properly listen to and think about other people’s ideas -           It’s waaay easier to communicate Connecting with lik