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5.8.1 The Impact of Outside-of-School Learning: Insights from “Super Users” of Supplemental Gifted Programs

Reaching the pinnacle of talent development requires systematic and continuous instruction, support, and motivation. Though schools are one environment in which academic talent can be honed, most schools only have the capacity to provide students an introduction to domains and fields of study. To have regular access to experts and receive the differentiated, enriched, and advanced learning opportunities their talent development requires, numerous talented students and their parents have embraced supplementary educational programs that take place outside-of-school on weekends, during school breaks, or online.

The rigorous, focused instruction that takes place in supplemental programs challenges students beyond their current level of understanding and moves them along the talent development trajectory. In addition, students gain psychosocial skills through interactions with like-minded peers and mentors. Research suggests that many gifted students find outside-of-school learning opportunities more challenging and influential to their talent development than their in-school experiences.

With the importance of supplemental programs in mind, it is important to ask what schools and classroom educators can learn from students’ experiences in supplementary programs to create more impactful in-school talent development programming. What can be learned from students who participate heavily in supplementary programs about synchronizing and articulating learning within and outside of school? This session will highlight example talent development pathways and explore answers to these questions using the findings from a study involving interviews of approximately 60 frequent participants, or “super users”, of supplementary talent development programs. The interviewees were students who participated in at least 5 summer, weekend, or online programs between 2005 and 2015 and were representative of the larger group of program participants in terms of gender, age, and program type. A semi-structured interview protocol, containing 41 interview questions was employed. This session will examine the relationship, from the perspective of the students, between in-school and outside of school environments for gifted students, and encourage discussion about the implications of out-of-school supplementary programs for the design of talent development programs within schools.

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