The beginning of schooling is a revolutionary revolution in the life of every child. At the same time, gifted children may have their own difficulties and problems associated with learning at school and relationships with peers.
What is the cause of these difficulties and problems?
The experience of teachers and psychologists working with gifted children in elementary school allows us to identify several of the most common causes of children's difficulties:
- advancing cognitive development of gifted children;
- lack of sufficient experience in relationships with peers;
- a kind of spoiledness;
- social lack of independence.
Let's dwell on each of them in more detail.
Loss of motivation
The first reason may seem paradoxical, since it is the high cognitive capabilities of gifted children that determine their high academic success and achievements in various fields. However, the situation is different if in the learning process these high possibilities are actually ignored. As a well-known expert in the field of the study of giftedness E.I. Shcheblanov, "research and practical experience show that ignoring these requests can not only inhibit the disclosure and development of the existing potential, but also generate various difficulties in learning, personal development, communication, and behavior of gifted students" .
All this may result in the fact that the child's own opinion on certain issues, his remarks and attempts to express himself will be perceived by teachers and peers as “know-it-all”, “desire to stand out”, “rebellion” or inappropriate behavior. It is clear that the result of such a situation will be not only the absence of the mental load necessary for the development of a gifted child, but also a negative experience of social relationships and, ultimately, the loss of any interest in learning at school.
Each of these consequences can be equally destructive from the point of view of the further development of the child's giftedness. So, the absence of mental load contributes to the development of mental laziness and prevents the formation of the most important personal characteristics, such as the ability to overcome difficulties, persistence in achieving goals, without which a person cannot fully develop or realize his talent. The famous American educator Sandra Kaplan drew attention to the problem of mental laziness and loss of motivation for learning among modern American highly talented schoolchildren, who had studied for several years according to too easy programs. When such children were included in special programs for gifted children, most of them did not want to make an effort, overcome difficulties and chose to return to their previous programs.
Relationship experience
The negative experience of social relationships in elementary school leads to isolation and self-isolation of the child, which contributes to the development of social maladjustment in him. Unwillingness to go to school can negate all previous successes in the learning and cognitive development of a gifted child. How can these “common” problems of unusual children be avoided or mitigated as much as possible?
The answer here may be one - you need to be very serious and thoughtful about the question of which school is best to send your child to. And since in our time there are different models and different programs in schools, we will dwell on this a little later.
Another problem is the lack of sufficient experience in relationships with peers. If in preschool childhood, the excessive intellectualization of the child's development and the associated some isolation from the society of peers was perceived by adults as a harmless and even positive feature, then with the beginning of schooling the situation changes dramatically. Now the child can no longer be practically all the time in the situation "a child is an adult who understands and accepts everything," but finds himself in a motley world of communication and interpersonal interaction unknown to him both with unfamiliar adults who are far from always ready to adequately perceive the child's individuality and with peers ... The situation is aggravated by the fact that gifted children are often spoiled by the attention of adults and therefore expect an exceptional attitude towards themselves.
However, the resulting misunderstandings and difficulties in social relationships with classmates do not at all mean a disaster, as, unfortunately, it often begins to be perceived by parents and children. In this case, parents may make a hasty decision to leave school and switch to individual, in fact, home education. It also happens that this is really the only acceptable way out, while in other cases such a decision will only mean further aggravation of the problem, the child's doom to social isolation and maladjustment.
Our practical experience of working with such children shows that the school, together with their parents, not only should, but can really help such children cope with the problems that have arisen and teach them the necessary social and communicative skills. Of course, this will take a lot of time, sometimes the entire period of schooling and a wise, highly professional teacher, who often has to "dismantle the rubble of home education" (C.G. Jung).
"Absent-mindedness of a genius"
Another reason for the possible difficulties that arise in primary school is the social lack of independence, the infantilism of a gifted child. It is easy to see that this reason is closely related to the last two and, like all the others, is based on the originality of the intellectual and personal development of such a child. At the same time, it deserves the utmost attention.
The teachers of our school, in which many gifted children study, are not at all surprised by the picture when already a big boy - a young teenager, who can spend hours engaged in complex intellectual activities and amaze an adult with his hobbies and depth of knowledge of a particular subject, is led to school by his father. Or another picture - a child of 8–9 years old cannot lace up his shoes, collect things for school on his own, check how the buttons are fastened.
“These are signs of the absent-mindedness of a genius,” adults often say with a smile. At the same time, even a not very observant person can notice that behind such "absent-mindedness of genius" there is an adult (usually a mother or grandmother) who helpfully collects scattered things, folds up a briefcase and ties shoelaces, anticipating any attempts to act by the child, in fact depriving him of the opportunity to learn independence in everyday life, to gain social and, ultimately, personal independence.
Parents, unfortunately, very late begin to realize what a disaster such an addiction turns into, not a child or teenager, but a boy or girl. At the age of 18, when desperate parents turn to a psychologist, it is very difficult to solve the problems of social infantilism of a gifted, but no longer a child.
So, for example, every healthy child of preschool and primary school age can develop the habit of completing the work started. The formation of this habit ensures that the child acquires a sense and experience of self-efficacy, the development of responsibility. However, already in adolescence, the development of such a habit becomes very problematic. That is why it is important for parents to use the fertile periods of childhood to create good social and psychological habits that will contribute to the development of the child's personal maturity.
Breadth of interest priority
A gifted child poses a difficult task to parents and the school. Another important question about what should be the school education: broad or more or less narrow, specialized, depending on the sphere of interests and manifestations of the child's giftedness?
In the answer to this question, one can find a surprising similarity in the positions of different authors. Most of them emphasize the priority of latitude over specialization, at least until the age of 14. It is impossible to suppress the curiosity and the breadth of the cognitive interests of gifted children, which ensures the creation of a kind of educational basis for creativity in various fields.
This is partly why, according to C. Jung, school material should not deviate from the universal and universal into the overly special: "On the contrary, the younger generation should at least point out those doors that lead to the most different areas of life and spirit." ... A broad, “balanced education” is of great importance for gifted children as a psycho-hygienic measure, since it helps to smooth out the tendency towards one-sidedness of giftedness, the development of some abilities and talents to the detriment of others.
Finally, one cannot but pay attention to what is associated with excessive workloads and the so-called "acceleration" of learning at school, which is quite common, but not always useful for the child. The danger of "premature combustion of the child's mental strength due to excessive forcing" drew attention to V.V. Zenkovsky.
Nowadays, this sounds all the more relevant, since the widespread "olympiad-competitive" movement in our country can stimulate parents and teachers to such "excessive force" and exploitation of children's giftedness. Unfortunately, this can lead to adverse consequences for the child. Thus, it is very important that at school and at home, the content of the child's activities and the level of mental load correspond to his cognitive needs and capabilities and would not be too easy for him, nor too difficult, exhausting.
One of the most pressing issues for parents, in our opinion, is the question of teaching at school, and especially at its very first stage - in the primary grades. Immediately, we note that creative or research learning, based on the child's independent acquisition of knowledge about the world around him, is the most natural and productive form of learning for gifted children who are distinguished by an insatiable cognitive need and high research activity. The readiness to search for new information, knowledge, new ways of thinking and behavior, so characteristic of gifted children, is what, perhaps, most of all can help a person not only survive in the modern world, but realize himself, his creative potential. From this point of view, the formation of a research attitude towards life in children is the most important task of the school for the upbringing of all children.
The task of the teacher and the parent in this case is, as D. Dewey clearly formulated, “to protect the spirit of research, to prevent it from becoming dull from excessive stress, not becoming stiff from routine, not petrified from dogmatic suggestions or did not dissipate thanks to aimless exercise over insignificant things. "
The joy of creativity.
How can such an educational environment be created? Our long-term research is devoted to the creation of an educational and developmental environment for children with increased cognitive needs and capabilities. We pay special attention to elementary school, since it is in preschool and primary school age that children have especially favorable internal prerequisites for the development of a research attitude towards the world. However, in the system of traditional education of primary schoolchildren, these prerequisites are often left without any attention.
The development of a research attitude to the world is directly related to the development of cognitive interests in children. The research abilities and skills of schoolchildren develop remarkably in the process of carrying out research activities, but at the same time it is important that the child himself wants to carry out research work, so that he has such cognitive interests that, as P. Florensky aptly put it, “keep him captive” ... That is why the system of creative interdisciplinary learning, created by us, is aimed at ensuring that the child can touch to the diversity of the surrounding reality, be surprised her secrets and in the process of their knowledge to experience the joy of creativity, the delight of discovery.
In order for a child to be able to touch the diversity of the surrounding world, a fundamentally different content of education is necessary, adequate to the high cognitive needs and capabilities of children. Unique in this respect is the approach based on the study of broad, interdisciplinary topics. Such topics allow children to explore the world in all its diversity, with its complex connections and relationships, on the one hand, and specific issues of interest to the child, on the other.
The problem-dialogical method in learning can help a child to be surprised at the secrets of the world around him, and to experience the joy of creativity and the delight of discovery is such an organization of the cognitive process when the child has the opportunity to discover knowledge about the world in the course of individual or joint activity with peers.
At the same time, an important condition for the child is the opportunity to share with someone his joy of discovery, to be heard and understood by others. Thus, the enriched developmental environment we create for children with increased cognitive needs and abilities includes:
- a teaching method that simulates the process of a child discovering new knowledge about the world - problem research;
- subject-subject relationship, providing the opportunity for cooperation, dialogue and creativity in the process of cognition.
It is clear that not every school is aimed at creating conditions for the support and development of children with high cognitive needs and capabilities. At the same time, we can talk about a fairly wide spread of research methods of teaching in schools, about enriched curricula, especially widely represented in different gymnasiums. This is what should be considered when deciding which school is best to bring your child.
Let us emphasize that in the development of the creative personality of a gifted child, the family plays the most important role. In this regard, we present the "list of incentives" for the manifestation of creativity in children, proposed in the work of A.M. Matyushkina. These rewards are a form of pedagogical stimulation and support for gifted students, so they matter to both teachers and parents of gifted children.
List of rewards
In creativity, encourage:
- Proactive independent creative work and research.
- Formulation of questions and problems.
- The originality of the results of creative work.
- Clarity and grace in expressing the results of creative work.
- Using your own examples, facts, illustrations to express creative ideas.
In teaching, encourage:
- Self-initiative teaching.
- The desire to learn from creative children.
- Active participation in joint group creative work.
- Active participation in competitions and discussions.
- Development of self-control capabilities in assessing the results of their own creative work.
Natalia SHUMAKOVA
Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Doctor of Psychological Sciences,
Leading Researcher, Laboratory of Psychology of Giftedness
Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education, Moscow
Features of training and education of gifted children
Introduction
1.1 The concept of giftedness
conclusions
Introduction
Gifted children are called children who, according to experts, due to their outstanding abilities, demonstrate high achievements in one or more areas: intellectual, creative or productive thinking, organizational, artistic, sports, etc.
No clear criteria for giftedness have yet been developed, although most experts agree that advanced development is characteristic of gifted children, i.e. being ahead of their peers in a number of mental parameters. In the cognitive sphere, this manifests itself in extreme curiosity, the ability to follow several processes at the same time, actively explore the environment, perceive connections between phenomena and draw appropriate conclusions, creating alternative systems in the imagination, etc.
Exceeding the average age norms at the stage of "receiving" information is combined with excellent memory and early language development, contributing to the accumulation and intensive use of a large amount of information. In addition, gifted children are often distinguished by concentration and great perseverance in solving tasks, inventiveness and rich imagination. As a rule, they have a developed sense of humor, they like funny inconsistencies, play on words, jokes.
At the same time, they, as a rule, lack emotional balance, they are impatient, impetuous, hyperdynamic, they are often characterized by exaggerated fears and increased vulnerability. As distinctive features of gifted children, an increased energy level is sometimes noted (the duration of sleep, for example, they have less than their peers) or a relatively relative unevenness (heterochronism) in the development of various mental functions (for example, the development of coordination of movements may lag behind the development of cognitive abilities) and dr.
The identification, training and support of gifted children are currently carried out in many countries through specially developed government programs. To determine abilities and giftedness, special methods are used. For many years, intelligence was considered the main indicator of giftedness. Currently, two main trends in the study of children's giftedness have emerged: the so-called "non-intellectual" factors of intelligence (that is, the importance of certain personality traits for the development of abilities) are attracting more and more attention, and interest in the natural prerequisites of intelligence is growing.
The problem of heritability of abilities and giftedness (their inclinations) is very complex, and the hereditary potential does not always serve as a guarantee of future creative productivity. The extent to which creative impulses turn into a creative individuality largely depends on the influence of the adults around gifted children. Sometimes gifted children do not show high achievements due to the lack of intensive and constant pedagogical support.
The opinion that gifted children are able to resolve difficult situations themselves is especially harmful during the period of intensive personality formation (age from 2 to 7 years). The time of entering school, adolescence, etc., when the manifestation of the laws of heterochronism (unevenness) of individual development is especially vivid, may turn out to be periods of greatest stress for gifted children. A special problem is the combination of giftedness with early manifestations of mental pathology in children, including hereditary ones.
Section I. The concept, development and problems of giftedness, socialization of gifted children
1.1 The concept of giftedness
The main content of giftedness is ability, on which the time and effort required to achieve a result depend. Each child has certain abilities for a particular type of activity or knowledge. Abilities can be general (verbal, academic, creative, imaginative thinking, abstract-logical thinking, etc.) or private (mathematical, literary, chess, culinary, technical thinking, etc.). General abilities underlie private ones.
Gifted children are distinguished by their uneven development. In particular, they have a “childish worldview. Value orientations, etc. Their interests, attitudes, and the issues that concern them are atypical for their peers. At the same time, in other spheres of life (for example, in everyday life) they are, on the contrary, psychologically younger than their age. In general, many of them are characterized by decreased adaptability, insufficient socialization, increased sensitivity, a kind of “I - concept. Consequently, such children require special attention and help from psychologists specializing in the problem of giftedness.
Every gifted child is unique to a great extent. The complex of qualities and abilities that each of them possesses is peculiar and inimitable. Each gifted person is fundamentally different not only from those around him, but also from other gifted ones. Such a child is an isolated phenomenon, and his dissimilarity to others needs a positive acceptance of others, as well as a mentor who would accompany the child in his personal, intellectual, moral, social, and personal development.
Giftedness is complex, versatile and dynamic. Consequently, the methods for identifying giftedness should be diverse, flexible, based on the specificity of the content of qualities and attributes, their degree of expression, and include various criteria for assessing giftedness.
Methods of diagnostics, identification of gifted persons should be adequate to this category of children, sensitive to their giftedness. Modern psychodiagnostic methods for the most part do not meet these requirements. Various researchers have identified the reasons for this:
processes that have been little studied by modern psychology are associated with giftedness: involuntary self-control, intuition, specific states of consciousness, etc.;
tests of achievements are guided by the result, while the gifted themselves are guided by the process (as well as the means, conditions) of activity, which is due to their special motivation;
most of the traditional psychodiagnostic techniques in their content set a limited scope of conditions or possible options for reactions (answers, decisions) of the subject, while as a distinctive feature of giftedness is the ability for extra-situational behavior and initiative (which has an internal origin and is not limited to reactions to external stimuli);
rationing of psychodiagnostic tests, as a rule, was carried out on samples from “ordinary, normal and are designed for use among a wide category of subjects;
the overwhelming majority of psychodiagnostic tools can reveal only individual signs of giftedness, at the same time, giftedness can be fully manifested only in activity.
Due to the fact that the main content of giftedness is ability, psychological criteria and methods for identifying gifted children are of great importance. However, a comprehensive approach to the problem of giftedness presupposes the obligatory use of pedagogical criteria and methods, as well as an analysis of the results of activity over a period of time. Thus, the system of work to identify giftedness in schoolchildren may include components (directions):
psychodiagnostic methods sensitive to giftedness (and corresponding to the theoretical model of giftedness);
expert assessments of teachers of the availability and degree of abilities;
the study of the products of a certain activity (after their inclusion in such an activity, for example, research);
expert assessments of specialists in the manifestation of their abilities by children in these areas;
long-term studies of the manifestation and dynamics of giftedness.
Specialists in working with gifted children have long noticed that most often they grow up in intelligent families. And the point here is not at all in the special genes of genius - their nature has distributed among all children equally. The point is in the family atmosphere, in the system of family values.
In general, all parents are encouraging and willing to develop cognitive needs and various abilities in their child. But they do it, of course, in different ways.
Parents constantly offer their children some kind of developmental games, activities, interests: let's do something, play this game, read this book, go to this museum. With a certain amount of persistence and consistency, this strategy brings results. But often a child develops an inner protest, even with outward obedience. Sometimes this is expressed in the child's increased fatigue from any intellectual activities.
Parents entrust the determination of abilities and their development in a child to specially trained people. There are a lot of services of this kind now being offered. These are development groups for preschoolers, and preparation for school groups, and all kinds of specialized classes in schools. Of course, with a good level of such services, the benefits for the child are undeniable. But on condition that the parents are not going to completely shift the care of its development onto the shoulders of specialists.
Parents do not seek to completely control the development of the child's abilities, but they provide him with opportunities for choice and try to find a good school. The most important thing in such families is the atmosphere of bright cognitive interests of the parents themselves. They themselves are constantly passionate about something, read a lot, choose educational programs in television programs, try to visit a new exhibition, not imposing all this on the child, but giving him the opportunity to find a suitable occupation himself. As it turned out, this self-development strategy is the most effective.
Of course, a child's development cannot be limited to the family alone. Sooner or later, the gifted child will go to school. Not every kind of giftedness is related to school and finds conditions for development there. For example, the so-called social (leadership) giftedness, for obvious reasons, is not always encouraged by teachers, and even by parents. They just don't know what to do with such children.
The talent that manifested itself early in the field of arts (music, art, acting) or in sports, perhaps, has no direct relation to school either. Often such a child does not feel very comfortable at school: due to constant employment, he communicates less with classmates, often skips classes in connection with concerts or competitions. These children often have emotional problems due to high competition with other children in their "specialty".
Other types of giftedness are important for success in mainstream school.
There are children with a pronounced ability to learn, to assimilate the educational material offered to them. Moreover, they show this ability regardless of the difficulty of the subject and their own interests. This is the so-called academic giftedness. For children with this type of giftedness, school life is much easier, their parents are pleased with their successes. And later it is easier for them to get a good specialty and achieve success in their work. It is generally accepted that such children usually do not reach any special heights.
Other schoolchildren are distinguished by special intellectual giftedness, the ability to think, compare, highlight the main thing, draw independent conclusions, predict, etc. But, unfortunately, the success of such children most often depends on their attitude, interest in the subject and its teacher. They can study unevenly (now "five", now "two"): brilliantly in one subject and so-so in another.
A special kind of giftedness is creative giftedness. This refers not only to the ability to visual, musical or literary activity. Creative talent is, first of all, a non-standard perception of the world, originality of thinking, a rich emotional life.
1.2 Life of gifted children at school, problems of their socialization
Gifted children are no easier than any other child. At the same time, children with a specific type of giftedness may have different adaptation problems. Perhaps the easiest to adapt in school are the "academically gifted". They delight parents and teachers with their success. They do not have any special problems in communicating with their peers - they are always ready to explain something, help, even "give to write off". And their out-of-school interests usually do not differ from those of their classmates.
The "intellectuals" in schools are condescending. They admire their abilities in one area (for example, physics or mathematics) and forgive sometimes complete failure in something else (for example, illiteracy in writing). Often they delight the school with their brilliant successes at Olympiads of various levels. These children are often so absorbed in their intellectual hobbies that they do not experience a special need for attention from classmates. Although they may have rather persistent selective affections (for example, among fans of their "talent").
Sports and musical abilities in children are detected early enough. If such schoolchildren achieve very high results in their field, they almost stop attending a regular mass school due to their employment. Classmates and teachers are left to admire their achievements from afar. Such children often experience emotional distress because of the high competition in their "professional" environment.
Some psychologists believe that creatively gifted children in a regular school do not receive proper understanding from adults and their peers, are ridiculed and almost persecuted. Therefore, the solution is to place them in special schools for the gifted.
Not all experts agree with this point of view. If a child is talented, this does not automatically mean that he will be incompetent in communicating with peers. Sometimes these children show arrogance towards the children around them ("What should I talk to them about?") Or towards their teachers ("What can they teach me?"). In this case, communication problems will arise. But these are rather the costs of family education, and not at all an attribute of creative giftedness. Most often, children with artistic, artistic, poetic abilities enjoy well-deserved admiration in their own class, fame at school and all kinds of support from teachers.
All gifted children have a distinct search need. They experience vivid, intense emotions when doing a certain job. They are also distinguished by an extraordinary sense of purpose, the ability to long-term concentration of attention, the ability to manage their activities (in a certain area).
Intellectual giftedness and creative giftedness are not directly related. Renowned researcher in the field creativity E. Torrens said that if we identified gifted children on the basis of intelligence tests, then we would have eliminated 70 percent of the most creative of them.
In what area will a gifted child prove himself? This can be judged by observations or the results of special tests. But do not impose the results of your observations or tests on him. It is better to provide conditions for the wide manifestation of its capabilities.
The social environment is of primary importance in the development of the individual: the level of development of production and the nature of social relations determine the nature of activities and the outlook of people.
Social relations are not something external to the person who is included in them, they are a part, side, aspect of personality as a social quality of an individual. If the essence of a person, in contrast to all other living beings, constitutes the totality of all social relations, then the essence of each specific individual as a person is the totality of specific social relations in which he is included. These connections are outside of him, that is, in social being, and therefore are possible, objective, and at the same time they are inside, in him as a person.
Gifted children are ahead of others in the number and strength of perception of surrounding events and phenomena: they catch and understand more. They see, hear and feel more than others under the same conditions. They can monitor several events simultaneously. Intonations, gestures, postures and behavior patterns of others do not fall out of their field of perception. A gifted child is often compared to a sponge that absorbs a wide variety of information and sensations. But this capacity for perception goes hand-in-hand with the vulnerability born of increased sensitivity. Their normal egocentrism leads to the fact that they attribute everything that happens to their own account.
Parents should be able to perceive the emotional changes of a gifted child with a great deal of patience and calmness. These children need help to make sense of the fact that not all discouraging remarks and comments are directly related to them and that people say and act sometimes insanely, but without the intention of causing pain.
Thanks to the breadth of perception and sensitivity, gifted children deeply experience social injustice. Letha Hollingsworth recounts this in her book Gifted Children: "A person whose perception is chronically ahead of his capabilities is always under stress."
It is difficult for parents accustomed to their surroundings to adequately perceive the irrepressible desire of a gifted child to correct the injustice of society.
Leta Hallingworth contributed greatly to understanding the adaptation challenges facing intellectually gifted children.
Dislike for school. This attitude often arises because the curriculum is boring and uninteresting for a gifted child. Behavioral disorders of gifted children can appear because the curriculum does not match their abilities.
Gaming interests. Gifted children like complex games and are not interested in those that their peers of average ability are fond of. As a result, the gifted child finds himself in isolation, withdraws into himself.
Conformity. Gifted children, while rejecting standard requirements, are thus not inclined to conformity, especially if these standards run counter to their interests or seem meaningless.
Immersion in philosophical problems. It is common for gifted children to ponder over phenomena such as death, the afterlife, religious beliefs, and philosophical issues, much more so than the average child.
The mismatch between physical, intellectual and social development. Gifted children often prefer to interact and play with older children. Because of this, it is sometimes difficult for them to become leaders, since they are inferior to the latter in physical development.
This list was suggested by another researcher. Whitmore, studied the causes of the vulnerability of gifted children, cited the following factors.
Striving for excellence (perfectionism). Gifted children are characterized by an internal need for perfection. They do not calm down without reaching the highest level. This property manifests itself very early.
Feeling of dissatisfaction. This attitude towards themselves is associated with the desire for gifted children to achieve excellence in everything they do. They are very critical of their achievements, are often not satisfied, hence the feeling of their own inadequacy and low self-esteem.
Unrealistic goals. Gifted children often set themselves high goals. Unable to reach them, they begin to worry. On the other hand, striving for excellence is the force that leads to high achievements.
Hypersensitivity. Because gifted children are more receptive to sensory stimuli and better understand relationships and connections, they tend to be critical not only of themselves but also of those around them. A gifted child is more vulnerable, he often perceives words or non-verbal signals as a manifestation of rejection of others. As a result, such a child is often considered hyperactive and distracted, as he constantly reacts to various kinds of stimuli and stimuli.
Need for adult attention. Due to their natural curiosity and the desire for knowledge, gifted children often monopolize the attention of teachers, parents and other adults. This causes friction in relationships with other children who are annoyed by the need for such attention.
Intolerance. Gifted children often have insufficient tolerance for children who are below them in intellectual development. They may repel others with remarks that express contempt or impatience.
1.3 Crises of Childhood Giftedness
Many authors note the uneven dynamics of the development of children's giftedness (2.5). The phenomenon of "disappearance", "fading" of giftedness has long been of interest to practitioners - psychologists and teachers. What can be done so that children's giftedness does not disappear? And if it should disappear, is it worth spending so much money and effort on specialized education? Practitioners ask questions to theorists, who, in turn, offer preventive or surgical measures in line with their concepts, and in case of failure, they refer to the fact that "this secret is great."
All the variety of forms of the disappearance of children's giftedness, described in the special psychological and pedagogical literature, can be reduced mainly to the following types:
Loss of creativity: the child stops creating special creative products inherent in his giftedness - let's call this a crisis of creativity.
A decrease in the child's intellectual activity, manifested in the disappearance of intellectual productivity, is a crisis of intelligence.
A decrease or complete loss of interest in the process and the results of one's work is a crisis of the achievement motive. This is described in different ways - or as a violation of volitional regulation: "I could, but I don't want to"; or as a victory for low self-esteem: "I could, but it will turn out badly"; or as an inadequate assessment of the requirements of society: "I could, but no one needs it", etc.
Creativity crisis
In this case, the child's high creative potential is partially or completely lost due to the impossibility of presenting himself to others, receiving approval or support from adults, which leads to difficulties in the development of giftedness in general. Very often, educational or upbringing so-called developmental programs for gifted children do not actually develop the child's abilities, but only exploit them. A child's creative product is needed by teachers or parents in much the same way that pagans need a fetish. Olympiads, contests, festivals, conferences drain a child's giftedness in the same way that it is drained of the expectations and hopes of adults, which the child tries to meet.
Here we encounter a paradox. On the one hand, the child's giftedness is, as it were, too much in demand by society, on the other hand, giftedness falls into a crisis of impossibility to be realized, to show one's abilities (we emphasize the word "ours").
It turns out that society requires (from the best, of course, motives) not so much what a child can do, but what it itself (society) wants this child to do. “Live up to my expectations,” the society says to a gifted child. In pedagogical practice, this contradiction is often encountered: the teacher teaches the child not in accordance with his individual and unique zone of proximal development, but habitually presenting a universal model, standard, stereotype, that is, the very expectations of society. "Usually this problem is solved like this.", "It is better to draw this line to the left", etc. - say the teachers, lecturing. And who needs it, this line drawn to the left? Whose mill is this water?
gifted child learning parenting
At psychological counseling, gifted children often tell me, for example, the following: "They don't understand me, I'm used to it. I understood what they want from me, and I do it so that the teacher is satisfied. But in fact, this problem can be solved in four more ways, only these methods are not from mathematics. Therefore, they are not sent to the Olympiad, and the teacher is not interested in them, but if you want, I’ll tell you. This is how a mathematics teacher would decide her, this is a chess player, this is a philosopher, but this is mouse, mice, you know, have a very curious logic "(4).
The symptoms of this type of crisis approaching are visible to everyone who is close to the child - teachers and parents. He stopped writing good essays, lost the chess championship, was bewilderedly silent at the tournament of poets - he could not do what he could before. According to our observations and numerous data from various sources, the reaction of specialists in such cases is the same - emergency measures are taken to enhance the development of creativity. More training, rehearsals, exercises. The crisis is getting worse. The source is running out.
This practice is still widespread, although, according to V.N. Druzhinin and V. Varda (3,8), it has been known since 1980 that the purposeful development of creativity in specially organized conditions neurotizes children, makes them anxious, aggressive, leads to chronic psychosomatic diseases, depression, overexcitation, and causes interpersonal conflicts. In short, it plays a destructive role.
When discussing this type of crisis, it is important to dwell on one more aspect of the problem of the development of creative activity, namely, the development of imagination. The development of imagination has traditionally been considered an honorable task of pedagogy. At the same time, imagination, fantasy, creativity, the creative potential of a person are considered synonyms, although all these are concepts of different sciences and different orders.
For example, a child's fantasy may have not a creative, but a neurotic origin, performing the function of psychological protection against anxiety caused by some kind of internal personality conflict. Then, developing fantasy as a protective mechanism of the personality, we aggravate the child's neurosis, and nothing else. Unfortunately, there are more and more such children every year. Judging by the statistics, this is classified as maladjustment, and this is, rather, school destruction.
For a healthy, but unformed child's personality, the purposeful development of fantasy is also unsafe. T. Ribot compares daydreaming with lack of will, and creativity corresponds to his will, movement. "Every invention has a motor origin," he believes (6).
According to our data, the creative act is rooted not so much in imagination and even less in fantasy, but, firstly, in the basic cognitive stylistic characteristics of a person - independence, divergence - and, secondly, in the child's individual cognitive experience (4 ). If a child is given the opportunity to accumulate an individual cognitive experience (an emphasis on each word is an individual cognitive experience), as well as to be a subject of his own activity (an emphasis on each word is a subject of his own activity), he has every chance of successfully avoiding this type of crisis.
Intellectual crisis
The second type of crisis, the crisis of intellectuality, occurs when a gifted child is overloaded with tasks that develop only intellectual abilities, without taking into account the child's individual cognitive needs, his personal meanings. Although L.S. Vygotsky, as a prevention of errors of this kind, wrote: "General laws of pedagogy can only be scientific laws when they remain equally applicable in all areas of education", meaning that "the education of abnormal, crippled and talented people has long been considered as if extraterritorial in pedagogy. " (one).
Modern pedagogy also overlooks the fact that age-related changes in giftedness not only represent a certain continuous growth of the child's intelligence, but have regular age and personality characteristics that ensure this growth.
The main danger is that the child's intellect develops to the detriment of his physical, emotional, and personal development. An example of this is the graduates of specialized physics and mathematics schools (in their modern degenerate version). These young men, with IQs above 150 points, can translate poetry from Spanish into Japanese, bypassing Russian concepts, but they are not able to enter into effective communication, create families, and be responsible. The repertoire of their social, gender roles is very childish. The dominance of the intellectual component in the development of children, aggravated by specialized training, is a very insidious thing, primarily because the uniformity of the child's development is disturbed.
Let us borrow from M. Luscher a metaphor - a personality cube, in the four corners of which are located intellectually-productive, emotional-volitional, physical and social components. Developing intelligence to the detriment of the rest of the components, we seem to strengthen, load only one corner. What happens to the cube? It deforms. The personality of the child is also deformed if physical activity, socially and emotionally active activities are neglected in the upbringing of gifted children. That is why in the classes working according to V.S. Yurkevich and T.V. Khromova, trainings are held to develop a "sense of reality", and we almost jokingly call physical education the most important subject in schools for gifted children.
So, the principle of responsibility for the development of not only giftedness, but the gifted child as a whole, taking into account its specific features, has two important aspects.
Firstly, responsibility to the child himself for his harmonious and happy future.
Secondly, the responsibility to the state for the upbringing of a full-fledged, mature citizen, ready to make decisions, bear responsibility, capable of going through fire, water and copper pipes.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that even a very gifted person, completely immersed in his subject sphere, was happy in this isolation, it is even more difficult to imagine that such a person can bring real benefit to his state.
In addition, such a protective mechanism of personality as intellectualization can take the form of thinking, originality. And just as without special diagnostics it is difficult to recognize whether the child's fantasy has a creative or neurotic origin, it is difficult to determine whether the child is really mentally gifted, or whether his thinking is a psychological defense that performs a regulatory function aimed at eliminating anxiety caused by neurosis. In the latter case, to develop his intellect, to encourage originality, is to aggravate his neurosis.
That is why, in our opinion, the diagnosis of giftedness as such is meaningless (strictly speaking, children's giftedness is not measurable, but the element-wise qualitative or quantitative originality of the structures that make it up is measurable). It is more important to diagnose the personality of the gifted child as a whole.
You can use in combination, for example, an unadapted full version of M. Luscher's Color Test with a 4G table and a personality cube, K. Koch's tree drawing test and some other projective techniques. Only then will diagnostics be able to perform its direct function - to issue instrumental information, taking into account which it is possible to build an individual development program for each child. Such a comprehensive diagnosis of the personality of a gifted child, and not only fragmentarily of his giftedness alone, can accurately determine the specific personality traits, ascertain possible emerging anomalies, the nature of giftedness, issue a development forecast and qualified recommendations.
Such a diagnosis really makes sense, since giftedness does not function by itself, it is always "built in" into the personality. As one boy accurately put it, "I am not just chemistry, but feet that love football, and a stomach that loves marshmallows."
Thus, the development of giftedness is only one side of a big problem: the development of the personality of a gifted child. This type of crisis, like the first, is paradoxically dangerous by a decrease in the child's intellectual activity, and in the future, intellectual productivity, and can ultimately lead to inhibition of the development of giftedness.
Achievement motive crisis
This type of crisis arises if, in the process of personality formation, personal reflection begins to dominate over intellectual. This leads to the emergence of a negative "self-image" and, as a consequence, to the inhibition of the development of giftedness. It seems to us that the function of self-regulation in the system of children's giftedness is ensured by such an integrative quality of gifted children as reflection. Numerous data indicate that gifted children differ in especially developed reflection not only from their ordinary peers, but also from non-gifted adults (5,7).
We can explain this by the fact that gifted children in general better differentiate stimuli of any nature (not only perceptual or semantic, but also social), they have better developed analysis (including situational). Our experience confirms that in the majority of gifted children, starting from the age of six, reflection is no longer a diffuse and not an involuntary phenomenon (4).
From this age, one can distinguish the development and action of at least two types of reflection - intellectual and personal. Intellectual reflection manifests itself at the level of intellectual control. It is associated with the awareness of one's own intellectual qualities, the formation of regulatory thought processes and assumes the possibility of arbitrary control of one's cognitive resources. This is manifested, firstly, in the child's tracking of the course of his mental activity, in the knowledge of his cognitive qualities, their weaknesses and strengths, and secondly, in the discovery and use of methods for regulating the work of his intellect, changing strategies for processing information, stimulating or deterring intelligent operations, prediction, planning.
The child's personality is in the making. In this case, we have a relationship between the developing personality of the child and his developing giftedness. The emerging personality enters into a complex, sometimes contradictory relationship with the child's giftedness. This is manifested in the development of not only intellectual, but also personal reflection.
Our observations show that the reaction of gifted children to their own words and actions is often ambivalent. They seem to look at themselves from the side. The child speaks and at the same time assesses what he says, how he speaks and whether it meets the expectations of others. It is easy to guess that the speech and actions of gifted children, as a rule, do not correspond to the expectations of the interlocutor, cause a reaction of misunderstanding or rejection.
Totally unwittingly gifted children constantly compare themselves with their peers around them and often regard the results of this comparison in their favor. They develop an inferiority complex: "I am not like everyone else, so I am worse."
The problem is aggravated by the fact that a gifted child is aware of the difference between his abilities and the real physical capabilities of his body, which cannot meet the high intellectual and creative needs of a gifted child. As a result, a gifted child grows and develops, constantly feeling the discrepancy between "himself and himself", "himself and others." This load sometimes turns out to be an unbearable burden for the child's psyche, it not only deforms his personality, but also destroys giftedness. All of the above allows us to regard intellectual reflection as a factor of positive feedback, and personal reflection as a factor of negative feedback in the mechanism of self-regulation of the system of children's giftedness.
Section II. Features of training and education of gifted children
2.1 Features of teaching gifted children
Many people think that a child who is ahead of his peers in terms of intelligence will not encounter difficulties in his studies - he is destined for a happier childhood. In reality, children with early mental growth can expect considerable difficulties both at home and at school their dramas during age development.
First of all, it is important how parents and other senior members of the family behave when the child's unusualness is discovered. Often, along with joy and pride, such a child also causes concern, even anxiety, since the addiction to mental work gives the parents the impression of excessiveness. Sometimes parents, with whom nothing of the kind has happened, cautiously look closely at such enthusiasm, for activities that are not for their age. At the same time, adults do not always manage to at least not bring down all their doubts and fears on the child's head. In other families, the child's extraordinary abilities and successes are admired, willingly shown to acquaintances and strangers. This is how a child's vanity is fueled; but on the basis of conceit and vanity, it is not easy to find a common language with peers. In the future, this can turn into considerable grief for a growing person.
Children with early mental recovery are often especially sensitive to the expectations of others, their approval and censure. A family may impose a ban on talking about a child's talent, but it is not always sufficient, some of the family members will sometimes be forgotten, express their delight. And the child, of course, will not miss, will catch admiration for his mind, his successes. If the elders, on the contrary, do not at all value the manifestations of unusual abilities, they look at them as an oddity that will pass over time, then this attitude will also be noted , it will not escape the child's consciousness.
In a family, children with signs of giftedness find it more difficult than ordinary ones. It is more difficult whether they are admired beyond measure or considered strange. Adults can make mistakes in their assessments when they meet with a child what they did not expect.
Thus, in the matter of raising gifted children, a great responsibility lies with specialists: kindergarten educators, teachers, child psychologists. They should promptly prompt, direct parental education.
But a child with an early flowering of intelligence meets difficulties, misunderstanding not only at home, in the family, but also at school, where everyone is taught the same way, and learning often begins with something that is no longer interesting to him. The most inquisitive people often get bored in class after the very first lessons. Those who already know how to read and count have to be in idleness while others master the alphabet and the basics of arithmetic. Of course, a lot depends on how the teaching is conducted. A lot of new things and for the strongest students carries developmental learning.
But the trouble with our school system is that:
a) even the best teacher, when dealing with an entire class, is deprived of the opportunity to focus on those who are ahead;
b) most teachers simply have no time to deal with gifted children; and some of them seem to get in the way of students with amazing knowledge, with not always clear mental activity.
It happens that at first the teacher is going to give a clearly outstanding student more difficult tasks, to pay special attention to him, but then such intentions are forgotten due to the teacher's lack of time and energy. Often, the teacher sees only a person who is receptive to learning, not noticing that such a child needs a special approach.
Difficulties can begin with the fact that the child, ahead of his peers, tends to constantly draw attention to himself, and all the time craves new mental food. After some time, it bothers the teacher, and other students, and himself. Such a student gradually becomes a burden to everyone in the class. Often in the elementary grades of the most developed student they almost stop asking: the teacher is sure that he already knows. If he nevertheless persistently tries to say or ask something, then he may run into the reproach that he upstart ... Seeing that the teacher does not need his activity, he switches to something extraneous - which entails the teacher's dissatisfaction: why is the student distracted and not interested in his studies?
Thus, the child gradually becomes superfluous at school, and she becomes unnecessary to him. He prefers to get sick, just not to attend lessons. As a result, already in the very first school years, and even more so in adolescence, many outstanding children find themselves in conflict with teachers. The reason for this conflict is that the most capable students need a workload that matches their mental strength; and the secondary school has nothing to offer them except the same secondary program. Still, a considerable proportion of children with an early rise in abilities somehow adapt to the general requirements. They are forced to become less independent, slow down their curiosity and creative impulses.
There are other options for school difficulties in a child with an early mental flowering. Parents and teachers expect him to be an excellent student. But marks in the schools of the old system are given biasedly - not for knowledge, but also for behavior, for handwriting.
A child with an early mental flowering often has difficulties in relationships with peers. Often classmates, especially by the beginning of adolescence, begin to actively reject such a student from themselves, give him offensive nicknames, try to put him in an awkward position. And he, in order not to be rejected, strives to be as everyone : avoids revealing himself to be the most knowledgeable or, moreover, the most diligent. A lot of additional experiences fall on the lot of such a child, if for some reason he is not given physical education, work classes. And other students here may not be better, but they do not attract such close attention to themselves. Frictions with comrades are caused by the orientation of children's games: young intellectuals are drawn to various verbal games, to chess in those years when their peers mostly to active and more fun games.
Often one of the indicative character traits of a child with an early rise in intelligence appears - a stubborn unwillingness to do what he is not interested in. Such children usually tend to study themselves. Increased demands on their elders, from whom they seek, for example, to substantiate any statements made by those, can complicate their relationship with their parents. Some of these children, with a particularly vivid imagination, turn out to be inventors, dreamers, ready to convince everyone of what was not, but what arose in their dreams. The strengths and weaknesses of such a child are interconnected, pass into each other. So, the ease with which teaching is given, the habit of learning grabbing on the fly , can lead to unwillingness, inability to work hard; or, for example, a child's severity of mental independence, attitudes toward cognition can turn into self-will, opposing oneself to others.
Regardless of the educational system, the teacher himself plays a huge role in the development of children, especially in the lower grades. During this period, the child's social status among comrades is not yet so important as the reaction to his activities of adults: parents and in the second, no less important place, the teacher. The teaching style is also important. It is believed that there are two types of teachers: developing and teaching . Developing the teacher in his work, first of all, focuses on the development of mental processes (thinking, memory, attention, imagination, etc.), on creative work. Educational teachers pay more attention to the indicative side of teaching, high results of educational activities (reading technique, control sections).
2.2 The main tasks of working with gifted children
It is obvious that the main task of working with gifted children should proceed from the peculiarities of their development, or, more precisely, from the essence of their main problems. The biggest problem for gifted children is the difficulty of their self-realization. According to the results of a number of studies, approximately 30% of especially gifted children in the future meet the expectations placed on them. What are the reasons for such difficulties?
First, let us introduce an idea of \u200b\u200bthe contingent of gifted children mentioned in the article. It is clear that we attach a fundamental, priority importance, first of all, to the development of creative abilities in children, and upon admission, we test these abilities without fail. Nevertheless, in the first place, children with a particularly high level of intellectual development / "prodigies" / get into a school intended for teaching gifted children. At the same time, they may have, and most often lack, high creative abilities. Why it happens?
Let's start with the fact that today in childhood it is possible to reveal a special talent only in the intellectual sphere with some reliability. Although tests of creativity exist, it is generally believed that they are much less reliable and valid than intelligence tests, and the only criterion of creativity in children that works to this day is the nature of their preferred activity, i.e., ultimately, motivation. ...
At the junior school age, and even more so in preschool age, admitting children to school for those gifted in creativity does not make sense at all, since in any case it is immature, "naive" in nature and does not give any idea of \u200b\u200bthe child's future creative possibilities.
Our analysis of foreign and domestic practice of working with gifted children shows that the concept of “especially gifted children” most often means either the so-called “prodigies” / children with a sharply increased development of intelligence in comparison with their peers /, or talented children , i.e. with advanced special abilities, especially in the field of arts and sports.
That is why, in the concept of "gifted children" and even more so "especially gifted children", we first of all put the idea of \u200b\u200bsignificant intellectual, i.e. mental abilities. It is these children that represent the main contingent of the Socratic school, in the work with which the main provisions of this article were worked out. A very significant advance by a child of his peers creates enormous developmental difficulties for these children, which makes it necessary for them to receive special training, to create individual psychological and pedagogical development programs for them.
Even those who have never worked with them realize that these children have huge communication problems, they have difficult relationships in the family, they are often painfully proud and obviously neurotic.
The strongest need for gifted children is cognitive. A gifted child experiences a truly comfortable state only when he can calmly acquire knowledge. Any distraction from this comfort only irritates him. To the question "What does the time spent with benefit mean?" almost all gifted students answer: study , reading of books , "computer work", educational excursions , since at this time - you learn a lot , "getting smarter", "more interesting to live". And to the question What does wasted time mean? "90% of students answered: walking around the yard , talking on the phone without doing anything ", and. sleep since this idleness , a time when you don't learn anything new. / Data T.V. Chrome /.
Gifted children are very early in the mood for the accumulation and processing of knowledge. In many cases, it is simply a continuous absorption of them. This passion is fully shared by the school, also aimed primarily at transferring experience, familiarizing the child with the knowledge accumulated before him by humanity. It should not be surprising that the ability of a gifted child to assimilate knowledge of high quality precisely at school is met with an enthusiastic attitude.
For this and some other reasons, gifted children experience significantly greater difficulties than in assimilation, when they are invited to show a non-standard approach, to find an original solution.
According to many psychologists, the high level of intellectual abilities in gifted children quite rarely corresponds to their creative abilities, which subsequently leads to great difficulties in self-realization. Thus, the first problem of especially gifted children is creativity.
In addition, self-actualization of especially gifted children is very difficult due to insufficiently developed communication skills / insufficient social skills /.
Particularly gifted children cannot communicate with their peers, since they are sharply ahead in intellectual development, but they cannot fully communicate with older children due to the discrepancy between social experience and their intellectual development. Also, the special organization of the personality of these children interferes with communication. Thus, the next problem for especially gifted children is insufficient social competence.
Sometimes the disadvantages of volitional regulation in especially gifted children are a special problem. It should be noted that most children have certain problems with the formation of volitional habits. However, in gifted children, this is aggravated by a special developmental situation in which their main activity is their beloved mental work, which does not require special volitional regulation from them.
And, finally, one of the most acute problems of these children is the difficulty of professional self-determination - specialization of abilities.
All of the above problems of especially gifted children fit into a global problem and thus the task of developing their personality and abilities: the need to form their mature ability and need for self-actualization.
Self-actualization here is understood as the realization of a person's personal and creative capabilities in socially valuable activity, on the one hand, and subjective satisfaction with the process / and less often with the result / of such activity, on the other. It is this task that is central when working with especially gifted children. Of course, this task equally applies to work with any children, but, perhaps, it is with the gifted that it acquires a truly dramatic character.
At present, there are separate techniques and methods that, to one degree or another, implement each of the four indicated tasks. This is "brainstorming", synectics, maieutics and many other methods for the development of creativity, this is a method of forming volitional habits / V.S. Yurkevich / and a special lesson in self-regulation, numerous communication trainings, there are methods of intensifying the process of vocational guidance. However, all these methods and techniques "scatter" according to different psychological and pedagogical technologies and, on the whole, do not give a fundamentally uniform result related precisely to the possibilities of self-actualization of the individual in real life.
2.3 The main ways of implementing the method of developing discomfort in the learning and development of gifted children
There are at least several main directions for the implementation of the method of developing discomfort in the learning and development of gifted children. Only the use of all these areas in total can give the desired effect.
1. Work on the method of developing discomfort begins and constantly involves work on a certain life position of the student. It is necessary to consistently form a "winner's scenario" in children / Eric Berne /. In this case, the special attention of children should be focused on the fact that the main victory of a person is not success in itself in a specific activity, but primarily a victory over himself. That is why it is necessary to use and create special situations in the classroom, when, in case of external failure, a student is assessed by a psychologist, and then by a team of children as a real winner. Children come up with their stories on this topic, their mottos, create emblems, write scripts for the holiday, where it is the idea of \u200b\u200bdefeating oneself / one's fear, one's laziness, one's greed / as the main victory of a person that is played up. Only such a cognitive readiness for the method of developing discomfort can lead to a long-term effect and subsequently affect a person's ability and need to realize himself.
Significant learning stress. Teaching, as Sukhomlinsky said, must be difficult. You should not be afraid of the incomprehensible in the lesson. Judging by the preliminary data obtained by us, at least 10-15% of the information in the lesson may be incomprehensible. Another thing is that the volume and degree of incomprehensible in the lesson should be completely controlled by the teacher.
Let's give an example. In the classroom at school, the criteria for creativity are studied. From the beginning of the lesson, a new position has been written on the board - "variety of categories". Seven - eight-year-old children not only do not understand the essence of the introduced criterion, but also do not fully understand even the word "category" itself. A full explanation of this term will be given in only two lessons. This not only did not interfere with the full-fledged lesson, but it turned out that it was this criterion, although the most difficult of all, that most of all engraved in the memory of children and, when asked to list the criteria for creativity, they now start with it.
Significant amounts of work can also be useful for the development of a gifted child, with which a student can only cope with a special exertion of all his forces. Sometimes it may not be just a large amount of work, but an extremely difficult job that requires utmost efforts from a gifted child. To which student and how often to offer such work depends on the individuality of each student, the degree of his advancement according to the method of developing discomfort.
It should be especially emphasized that cases requiring the child to exert the utmost exertion of his strength should take place with regular and targeted monitoring and support of a psychologist, doctor, and especially the relaxation service required in every educational institution working with gifted children.
Dosed failure.
Failure should accompany the life of a gifted child to the same extent as the usual success. And in this sense, we can talk about developmental failure.
This is facilitated by a certain system in the presentation of class and homework. It should not be allowed that gifted children always and under all circumstances cope with tasks completely. In these cases, we can talk about the absence of the developmental effect of such tasks. Quite regularly / the frequency is determined by the subject, personality and abilities of an individual student / a gifted child receives a task that, to one degree or another, exceeds the level of knowledge and skills actually achieved by him. Only in this case, the child feels the need for self-development, a contradiction arises, well, even at times and uncomfortable, between his motivation and the actually achieved capabilities, and only in this case there is an incentive for development.
Dosed failure can also be of a social nature, when communication conflicts are not only not mitigated by caring adults, but attention is focused on them. In this case, failure manifests itself in the form of a so-called micro-crisis,
The developing micro-crisis is, to one degree or another, the basis of the method of developing discomfort. In essence, this concept, being, on the one hand, a separate method of working according to the method of developing discomfort, is, on the other hand, a manifestation of any somewhat expressed negative state and in this sense is the essence of any method carried out within the framework of the method of "developing discomfort ".
The very etymology of this word already carries the key to understanding the different aspects of this phenomenon.
The word "crisis" comes from the Greek krisis and has two main meanings:
A painful condition that is acute or protracted.
Fracture, transition, i.e. crisis in the narrow sense of the word. Both meanings of this word represent, as it were, different stages of a micro-crisis, initial and central. The use of spontaneous and the provocation of a pedagogically prepared microcrisis is one of the main methods of the proposed method of developing discomfort. Two characteristics of a micro-crisis are fundamental.
First of all, the micro-crisis should be developing, i.e. serve as a kind of training, on the one hand, of a gifted child's readiness for a difficult situation, in the extreme case, even for failure, and on the other hand, to form in him an active position of a successful exit from the crisis.
In addition, a micro-crisis must be developing, that is, in a crisis situation, a student must go through all the required stages. Only in the case of passing all the stages, that is, in the event of a developing micro-crisis, will he begin to develop the personality and abilities of the student.
The technology of a developing microcrisis is quite complex and requires a special place for any convincing presentation.
Obviously, in order to organize work according to the method of developing discomfort, a special assessment system is also needed, which makes it possible to build an individual and rather rigid system for assessing the performance of a gifted child. In fact, many talented teachers spontaneously use such an individual rating scale, it is only necessary for this intuitive penetration to become a conscious method.
But the point is not only in the sufficiently rigorous assessments. Within the framework of the proposed method, it is necessary to change the entire student assessment system, including in it, on an equal footing with the learning results, the sphere of communication and the sphere of creative activity. At the same time, the assessment system should be both tough and, in a certain sense, paradoxical as it may seem, a character that spares the student's pride. According to our data, the change in the student's assessment system by the teacher and the psychologist leads to a fundamental change in the student's subjective ideas about the success of their activities.
From this point of view, a new system of rewards and punishments compatible with the proposed method is of fundamental importance. If the ideology and practice of rewards to one degree or another exists in modern psychological and pedagogical science, then the situation is much worse with punishments. They, of course, are used in real school practice, but as if behind the scenes, without consecration of their high humanistic principles. From our point of view, not only the reward system, but especially the system of punishments should be comprehensively thought out when using the method of developing discomfort. Even in Pestalozzi one can come across the idea that a properly raised child himself strives for punishment, perceiving it as a kind of “atonement” for his guilt. ”We met with the same kind of ideas among the authors of religious orientation. The famous psychologist has similar ideas. A.N. Leontyev.
This article is not the place to discuss specific principles and methods of punishment, which are most compatible with the proposed method of "developing discomfort", but nevertheless, we outline the main ones.
The main principle of the punishment system in the conditions of the proposed method is: never punish a student (either by a mark or in any other way) for failure in itself in intellectual or creative activity, when the student tried, but for some reason he failed. Although gifted children love and know how to work mentally, an ill-conceived system of punishment can change this generic trait.
The punishment system should only relate to the student's regulatory activities. In other words, the student is punished only if he could, but did not show the necessary volitional efforts, if his volitional habits are not sufficiently formed and it is necessary for the student to fully realize this. Here the punishment can and should be severe and quite sensitive for the student.
Let us point out that with sufficient severity of punishment, it should be, if possible, a relatively rare event in the life of a student. The inevitability of punishment is of particular importance.
It is significant that the use of punishments is in fact itself a situation of a developing micro-crisis and therefore brings with it increased opportunities for a gradual change in the student's personality, creating conditions for the formation, strengthening and development of his ability to self-actualize. Namely, this is the main task of working with gifted children.
conclusions
Gifted children are very different: they are very lively, even sometimes just impudent, and they are quiet, barely audibly uttering the answer to an incredibly difficult task. Very charming, charming and awkward, shy, thaws only at the end of the meeting with a stranger (and then if they liked the person). They are often exaggeratedly emotional, quick-tempered, easily aroused by trifles, but these are not whims, but manifestations of the wealth of their nature. They have a special speech, special motor skills and perception. They are also different in appearance: small, fragile for their age, and large, physically developed, clearly overtaking their peers not only in mental, but also in physical development.
The main difference between gifted children and ordinary children is mental activity. The most striking characteristic of any gifted child, which does not depend on age, temperament, character, interests, gender, health, is the desire for knowledge. Mental activity is directly related to the development of abilities, since abilities grow, develop from inclinations under one prerequisite. The activity that the child is engaged in should be associated with positive emotions, i.e. bring joy, pleasure.
Neglect, indifference to the cognitive activity of a child is detrimental to him. With a strong need for knowledge, the prohibition of creativity can have a more positive effect on the development of the child than indifference.
The described qualities of gifted children require a special approach to them, and it is no coincidence that gifted children, according to the decision of the World Health Organization, are included in the "risk group" along with mentally retarded, juvenile delinquents, children of alcoholics. They need special education, special, individual curricula, specially trained teachers, special schools.
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Do you have a gifted child growing up and has recently been struggling with a range of social, emotional or school problems? Giftedness is often accompanied by a surprising array of challenges, from perfectionism and competitiveness to difficult friendships. The following are some common problems and the corresponding measures you can take to solve them and help your child develop harmoniously.
Low self-esteem problem
Being gifted in school, a child may feel different from his peers, moreover, he may be bullied and depressed in this regard. Research has shown that the more intellectually gifted a child is, the higher the risk of social difficulties. It is very important to monitor your child's self-esteem and, if he suffers from a lack of it, promptly consult with teachers and child psychologists. The presence of this problem may be evidenced by his negative opinion of himself and frequent mood swings.
- Advice: find a sport or hobby that will help your child develop a sense of self-confidence, feel “normal,” respect themselves, and find common ground with their peers. As options, you can consider football, modern dances, playing the guitar.
Guilt
Some gifted children feel the need to give themselves away, to “pay off” for what they believe to be the excessive luck of being intellectually gifted. Helping other people and doing good is great, but if your child begins to feel guilty about his giftedness and becomes emotionally overwhelmed, talk to him about the experience. Help him find a healthy balance between caring for himself and his voluntary responsibilities to help others.
- Advice: Ask your child to focus on only one volunteer work that he or she most enjoys during the quarter or half year.
Perfectionism
Gifted children often try to achieve maximum results in all areas of their lives. Your child may be putting off or spending too much extra time doing homework or starting a school project because they have a desire to make everything perfect. In addition, your child may be extremely gifted in some subjects, but average in others, and this can also exaggerate the problem of perfectionism. Trying to get everything done perfectly is time-consuming, tiring and even unhealthy. Perfectionism is accompanied by pain in the abdomen, head, eating disorders and even the formation of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- Advice: When the child is young, avoid correcting any small grammatical or factual mistakes and remind him that it is very important to be able to relax, especially when perfectionism goes wild.
- For an older child, help them establish basic goals and criteria for success in a school project or report before they even begin. For example, study the assignment with your child, get an idea of \u200b\u200bhow long and detailed the report should be (how many pages, how many citations it should have, etc.), make a rough sketch and set a time frame for the child to meet. taking into account the impact of this project or report on his progress. In other words, help your child “know when to quit” and just enjoy the project, rather than worry about imperfections.
Control issue
Many gifted children like to be in control. From an early age, your precocious child can demonstrate extreme independence. “I'll do it myself!” He often declares. Over time, your child's desire to be in control can lead to "dictatorship" towards peers, as well as fear of taking risks - especially as the child grows up and learns more about the possible consequences.
- Advice: Encourage your child to try new fun activities, such as taking a ride on the most unusual swings in an amusement park. Also, help him find a healthy outlet for his aspirations for leadership, for example, by teaching or coaching younger children.
Unrealistic expectations
Gifted children tend to be the harshest critics of themselves. Many of them are too worried before exams because of the expectation of sky-high results. In school, after getting mostly grades of "10-12", getting "8" or "5" on the exam becomes a disaster for the child and shock for the parents. Help your child maintain a healthy outlook on their own performance. Can't get "12" from kindergarten before leaving school. Also, support your child if last year everyone recognized him as “gifted,” but not this year.
- Advice: Giftedness is a term used by parents and teachers to help bright, capable students, but not a goal for your child. Instead of using the term giftedness as a source of motivation or as a specific standard for your child's performance in school, try to maintain the same high but healthy expectations for your child as you did when you thought they were just capable.
Impatience
Gifted children can get angry and become impatient with themselves and other children. Your child may get flustered if they don't instantly understand a word in a book or a question from homework, or they may easily give up extracurricular activities if they don't do well right from the start. Younger children who are not yet aware of their giftedness may become angry with their classmates who do not grasp the subject as quickly as they do.
- Advice: when the child is feeling overly anxious, pause, close his eyes, and take a few deep breaths. Advise him in moments of disappointment to think only of the good both in relation to himself and in relation to other people.
Friendship problem
One of the most challenging aspects of giftedness is the problem of making and keeping friends. Gifted children may appear socially mature and well-adjusted to social life, yet feel lonely and sad about peer problems. Your child may feel like they have little in common with their classmates, or they may find it challenging to join peers for play and other collaborative activities. Sometimes a child can easily make friends, but then friends begin to perceive him as a "creep". A gifted child may have expectations from friendship that differ from those of his peers, as he is more intellectually developed and more sensitive and emotional.
The most gifted children tend to have the greatest difficulty with friendships. It is very important to help children overcome social and emotional problems in the early stages of their onset, and it is worth seeking help from teachers or psychologists. The number of social problems can increase with age.
- Advice: help your child find the right company by organizing joint activities with children of similar interests and intelligence. Ask the teacher to find other gifted children in the school (not just in his class). Attend scientific circles and literary seminars with your child, where he can meet bright and capable peers.
Attention and self-organization issues
Many gifted children face problems with lack of focus and organizational skills, as they tend to think abstractly and quickly get bored. Education experts have found that boys are more likely to be disorganized and distracted. Fortunately, there are tips and tricks you can use to help your gifted child, boy or girl, overcome the problems of lack of attention and disorganization. Identify your child's characteristics and talk to the teacher about existing problems and possible solutions.
- Advice: Let your child do their homework in writing rather than using a cell phone or the Internet. That said, give him short breaks about every 30 minutes to give his brain time to rest.
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A number of psychological studies and special observations show that gifted children are generally much more prosperous than other children: they do not experience learning problems, communicate better with their peers, and quickly adapt to a new environment. Their ingrained interests and inclinations, developed from childhood, serve as a good basis for successful personal and professional self-determination. True, even these children may have problems if their increased capabilities are not taken into account: learning becomes too easy or there are no conditions for the development of their creative potential.
One of these common myths is the opinion that a gifted child is a difficult child. It is believed that teachers are afraid of them, parents are perplexed by them, and peers are unkindly looking at them.
However, if in relation to all "ordinary" children, when they have difficulties in learning, behavior, communication, a teacher, a psychologist and a parent are looking for ways of help and correction through identifying their causes, then the situation is fundamentally different with the "gifted". A touch of fatalism - "Such is the gift!" - determines the global strategy of working with them only through the search for forms of organizing their education: individual classes, special schools, individual programs. However, in order for work with gifted children to be effective, it is necessary to analyze and identify the true mechanisms that give rise to these problems, and an understanding that giftedness is not just the result of a child's high abilities, but, first of all, the problem of the formation of his personality.
Problems arising in connection with a faster pace of development and, accordingly, of teaching gifted children are the problems of socialization and adequate inclusion in the team of peers, the problems of drawing up training programs and developing criteria for assessing the achievements of a child.
The nature of advanced early development can be spontaneous and artificially provoked.
Another type of problems in behavior and activity in children with signs of giftedness is a consequence of violations of the functional organization. mental processes... Then there are not only problems in the behavior and communication of the child, but also academic failure in teaching at school. Until recently, such problems were ignored by domestic specialists, or the very giftedness of a child who has such problems was ignored. The Working Concept of Giftedness notes that children who have pronounced signs of giftedness in the field of special abilities, or who show accelerated development in intellectual parameters, often differ in specific problems in adaptation to a peer group, emotional lability, and personal infantilism. It is noted that especially gifted children, due to their exhaustion, find it difficult to tolerate any activity that requires physical or mental effort. Thus, these children are characterized by problems “... volitional skills or, more broadly, self-regulation ... they are engaged only in activities that are quite interesting and easy for them, ie. constituting the essence of their giftedness ”. These children are able to memorize large amounts of information and easily assimilate educational material in a certain area of \u200b\u200bknowledge. As a rule, these are mathematics and subjects of the natural science cycle. Teachers and parents, appealing to high cognitive abilities, non-standard reasoning, classify such children as gifted in preschool age. At the same time, these children may differ in motor disinhibition, inability to concentrate for a long time, difficulties in communication, and conflict. Such children find it difficult to assimilate social norms, often reinterpreting them, which sometimes looks like "depth" unusual for age. And, despite the fact that they have significant problems in adaptation to the team and a delay in emotional and personal development, serious violations in their behavior and communication by adults are regarded as another confirmation of the originality of thinking. ...
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A number of psychological studies and special observations show that gifted children are generally much more prosperous than other children: they do not experience learning problems, communicate better with their peers, and quickly adapt to a new environment. Their ingrained interests and inclinations, developed from childhood, serve as a good basis for successful personal and professional self-determination. True, even these children may have problems if their increased capabilities are not taken into account: learning becomes too easy or there are no conditions for the development of their creative potential.
One of these common myths is the opinion that a gifted child is a difficult child. It is believed that teachers are afraid of them, parents are perplexed by them, and peers are unkindly looking at them.
However, if in relation to all "ordinary" children, when they have difficulties in learning, behavior, communication, a teacher, a psychologist and a parent are looking for ways of help and correction through identifying their causes, then the situation is fundamentally different with the "gifted". A touch of fatalism - "Such is the gift!" - determines the global strategy of working with them only through the search for forms of organizing their education: individual classes, special schools, individual programs. However, in order for work with gifted children to be effective, it is necessary to analyze and identify the true mechanisms that give rise to these problems, and an understanding that giftedness is not just the result of a child's high abilities, but, first of all, the problem of the formation of his personality.
Problems arising in connection with a faster pace of development and, accordingly, of teaching gifted children are the problems of socialization and adequate inclusion in the team of peers, the problems of drawing up training programs and developing criteria for assessing the achievements of a child.
The nature of advanced early development can be spontaneous and artificially provoked.
Another type of problems in behavior and activity in children with signs of giftedness is a consequence of violations of the functional organization of mental processes. Then there are not only problems in the behavior and communication of the child, but also academic failure in teaching at school. Until recently, such problems were ignored by domestic specialists, or the very giftedness of a child who has such problems was ignored. The Working Concept of Giftedness notes that children who have pronounced signs of giftedness in the field of special abilities, or who show accelerated development in intellectual parameters, often differ in specific problems in adaptation to a peer group, emotional lability, and personal infantilism. It is noted that especially gifted children, due to their exhaustion, find it difficult to tolerate any activity that requires physical or mental effort. Thus, these children are characterized by problems “... volitional skills or, more broadly, self-regulation ... they are engaged only in activities that are interesting and easy enough for them, ie. constituting the essence of their giftedness ”. These children are able to memorize large amounts of information and easily assimilate educational material in a certain area of \u200b\u200bknowledge. As a rule, these are mathematics and subjects of the natural science cycle. Teachers and parents, appealing to high cognitive abilities, non-standard reasoning, classify these children as gifted in preschool age. At the same time, these children may be distinguished by motor disinhibition, inability to concentrate for a long time, difficulties in communication, and conflict. Such children find it difficult to assimilate social norms, often reinterpreting them, which sometimes looks like "depth" unusual for age. And, despite the fact that they have significant problems in adapting to the team and a delay in emotional and personal development, serious violations in their behavior and communication by adults are regarded as another confirmation of the originality of thinking. ...
There is an opinion that gifted children do not need adult help, special attention and guidance. However, due to their personality characteristics, such children are most sensitive to the assessment of their activities, behavior and thinking, they are more receptive to sensory stimuli and better understand relationships and connections. A gifted child is prone to a critical attitude not only towards himself, but also towards the environment. Therefore, teachers who work with gifted children should be sufficiently tolerant of criticism in general and themselves in particular. Talented children often perceive non-verbal cues as a manifestation of rejection of others. As a result, such a child can give the impression of being distracted, restless, constantly reacting to everything. For them, there are no standard requirements (everything is like everyone else), it is difficult for them to be conformists, especially if the existing norms and rules go against their interests and seem meaningless. For a gifted child, the assertion that this is so is not an argument. It is important for him to know and understand who adopted this rule, when and why.
Parents face their first problems soon after the birth of a gifted child. His increased activity gives parents a lot of inconvenience: sleep problems (such children, as a rule, sleep much less than ordinary children), with food, etc. make life difficult for parents. Then the difficulties associated with the increased cognitive activity of the gifted baby begin. Such activity has many unpleasant consequences: broken phones and electrical appliances, disassembled watches and sewing machines - everything that a gifted child gets under the arm can become the subject of his insatiable curiosity. This trait causes displeasure among parents.
Other issues of concern to parents of gifted children are the endless questions these children ask, as well as (and this is especially often) the difficulties that gifted children experience in the early stages of schooling. The fact is that, as a rule, a gifted child develops a zone of his special interests early enough. For school subjects, which for a number of reasons are outside this zone, a gifted child simply does not have either time or desire. It will take a lot, a lot of patience for parents to overcome this problem.
Another level of problems is the gifted child and society. The central point of this problem is anti-intellectualism prevalent in society. Fetishization of the "ordinary", "average" person, distrust of the "clever" - all this permeates modern society.
The main consequence of this is the desire of many parents to see their child like everyone else. As a result, not only parents suffer, but also gifted children themselves, for whom the main thing is not to stand out, not to look like a “black sheep”. All this is extremely negative on their self-esteem, and ultimately on the formation of their personality. Peers and teachers feel constant intellectual pressure from talented children, while those, in turn, feel hostility and distrust from others. ...
Taking into account the above, all forms of work with gifted children should fully take into account the personal characteristics of a gifted child and be guided by effective assistance in solving his problems.
At the same time, the activities of teachers should include:
a) the implementation of a personality-oriented pedagogical approach for the harmonious development of a person as a subject of creative activity;
b) creation of a system of developing and developing education on the basis of psychological and pedagogical research, providing early identification and disclosure of the creative potential of children with an increased level of learning;
c) the study of the factors of psychological and pedagogical assistance to the processes of personality formation, the effective implementation of the cognitive abilities of students
d) the introduction into the educational process of the idea of \u200b\u200bharmonizing all academic disciplines in the system of the basic curriculum, which is a condition for ensuring the dominant role of cognitive motivations, activating all types and forms of creative self-realization of the individual.
e) management of the development of intellectual abilities of students.
The structural integrity of the educational process is based on the interdependence of the structuring components: ideas - content - updating the content of education, variability of educational programs - defining individual educational trajectories - technologies - methods of developmental education and practice - educational activities - family assistance in the education and upbringing of gifted children.
There is no doubt that the teacher (educator) is the key figure in creating an educational environment conducive to the development of the creative nature of a gifted child. In turn, this makes special demands on his professional and personal training. Here, there is not enough high subject training, because training begins to acquire a developmental character. Consequently, the traditional educational technologies focused on transferring knowledge - skills - skills in a particular subject area to a student are replaced by developmental technologies focused on the development of the student's abilities.
Principles of pedagogical activity in working with gifted children:
· The principle of the maximum variety of provided opportunities for personal development;
· The principle of increasing the role of extracurricular activities;
· The principle of individualization and differentiation of training;
· The principle of creating conditions for the joint work of students with minimal teacher participation;
· The principle of freedom of choice for students of additional educational services, assistance, mentoring.
Conditions for successful work with gifted students:
• awareness of the importance of successful work with gifted children by each member of the team and, in this regard, increased attention to the problem of forming positive motivation for learning;
· Creation and continuous improvement of the methodological system of work with gifted children;
· Recognition by the team of teachers and the school leadership that the implementation of the system of work with gifted children is one of the priority areas of the school.
For all children, the main goal of education and upbringing is to provide conditions for the disclosure and development of all abilities and talents with a view to their subsequent implementation in professional activities. But in relation to gifted children, this goal is especially significant. It should be emphasized that it is on these children that society first of all places its hope in solving the urgent problems of modern civilization. Thus, to support and develop the individuality of the child, not to lose, not to slow down the growth of his abilities is a particularly important task of teaching gifted children.
Understanding giftedness as a systemic quality involves considering personal development as the fundamental goal of teaching and upbringing gifted children. It is important to keep in mind that the system-forming component of giftedness is a special, internal motivation, the creation of conditions for the maintenance and development of which should be considered as the central task of personal development.
Of great importance for understanding the personality traits of a gifted child with a disharmonious type of development is the analysis of his relationships with peers and adults, which, as a consequence of the unusualness of the child himself, largely determine the history of his life and thereby shape his personality. Often, special cognitive development occurs in a sense at the expense of other areas. So, until a certain time, communication with peers in the sphere of personal interests occupies much less space for many gifted people than for other children of the same age. That is why such children rarely become leaders in their neighborhood or school group. ...
So, due to the unevenness of development already described above, some children with sharply increased intellectual and artistic and aesthetic abilities often lack sufficiently formed and effective skills of social behavior and problems arise in communication. This can manifest itself in excessive conflict. In many cases, special giftedness is accompanied by unusual behavior and oddities, which causes bewilderment or ridicule among classmates.
Sometimes the life of such a child in a team develops in the most dramatic way (the child is beaten, they come up with offensive nicknames for him, arrange humiliating pranks).
The level of intellectual development allows gifted children to analyze their own behavior, but due to normal age-related egocentrism, they need the help of adults. Gifted children are characterized by fairly standard compatibility of behavioral models, so it is difficult for them to find a common language with their peers. In this regard, teachers of gifted children often note their desire to interrupt the interlocutor, correct him, demonstrate their own knowledge and turn others into an object of ridicule.
The reason for the desire of such children to interrupt the interlocutor lies in the fact that they are already aware of what is being said, and are ready to complete the interlocutor's thought for him, offering their answer, although the interlocutor is not yet ready to accept it. Such children grasp the idea on the fly, even if something new is communicated to them, and strive to demonstrate their understanding. Such an "interrupting", premature response is a reflection of the standard speed of perception of the interlocutors.
As a result, the gifted child encounters alienation. He does not understand the negative reaction to his act, which, in his opinion, should have shown community, and by no means superiority. Such a child is much more successful in speech development than in the art of communication.
Also, the reason for the lack of mutual understanding is mockery, ridicule of others.
Gifted children seek to hurt in return using two kinds of shattering weapons - a rich language base and a keen perception of the vulnerabilities of friends or family members. Because of this, their retaliatory attacks are often more painful than what provoked them.
A gifted child knows that physical retribution is not encouraged, that his intellectual abilities are significantly ahead of physical ones, and chooses the word as his weapon. This is a kind of demonstration of strength, expressed in ridicule, mockery, ruthless sarcasm towards other children.
So, taking into account all of the above, we can conclude that the absence of good, healthy relationships between gifted children and their peers is not unreasonable, where the gifted children themselves are to blame.
Parents should help the child find a normal self-perception and change this or that unwanted pattern of introduction.
It is important that a gifted child has the right to expect that his abilities will find understanding and support from parents in finding the best use of such abilities for himself and for those around him. The relationship between a child and parents is the most important thing in fostering good feelings both for himself and the whole world.
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