4.5.6 Individual Education for Gifted Students to Preserve Their Motivation

Highly talented and gifted pupils and students often require an individual and faster learning pace. Their demands on education and on learning differ fundamentally from the needs of other students. Their desire for less repetitions along with their needs for a deeper understanding of the education material often confronts teachers with the challenge to appropriately cater for such learners. Identifying the developmental stage of a gifted child and taking it into consideration opens several possible scenarios to parents and teachers: early entrance into School, full term skipping, individualised teaching, an ‘early university study for secondary School students’ or online academic studies, all of which promote a gifted student whilst maintaining motivation and addressing individual needs. The possible methods in our digital age are versatile and it is of high importance to find the matching method and learning pace for each student or pupil. As not every gifted child develops the same way or has the same interests, parents need detailed information to support Schools with the implementation of chosen support. To maintain motivation for gifted learners is a permanent challenge for which hardly any school system or becoming parent in the world is properly prepared. Tailored education supported by our digital world could come up to match this purpose more easily than a uniformed system aiming more to convey similar learning matters to a high number of students at a time. More variety in possible methods can help schools as well to give consideration to all of their students. Students on the other hand need to experience learning and to fill the word with different possible methods. Not every skill suite every pupil in equal measure. But those different but highly important skills are needed on a lifetime basis and should be developed during childhood.

When is the best time to implement a possible method and where do limits show? How individual can the promotion of a gifted child be? Can an individual learner still be an integrated child in class or at his school so that the important social binding is kept alive? Examples are presented in the speech.

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