Special Education
Gifted Education - A Resource Guide for Teachers
Developing a Student Profile
Nine Learning Preferences...
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Developing a student profile helps to provide a deeper understanding of an individual's unique interests, styles and abilities. By gathering information from a variety of sources, teachers and school-based teams are in a better position to make educational decisions that will enhance the student's development.
Means of gathering data include: observations of student performance; assessment of student products, portfolios, journals and learning logs; informal and formal classroom testing; learning style inventories; interest inventories; rating scales of student characteristics; previous report cards; information from parents; and psycho-educational testing.
Five areas to consider are the student's:
- academic achievement,
- learning styles and strengths,
- interests,
- special abilities, and
- visions and goals for the future.
Academic achievement tells us what the student can do in various areas of the curriculum. Watching a student during learning activities, analyzing student products, and using learning inventories are a few ways to gather information. In addition to academic achievement, tests that have a ceiling many years beyond the student's age level can provide information about the student's maximum level of performance. This information is valuable when selecting learning activities, materials and environments that can provide a challenge.
Learning styles and strengths refer to the way a student approaches learning. The concept of learning styles is approached by different authors from different perspectives.
Renzulli and Smith's (1978) Learning Styles Inventory measures student attitudes toward nine general modes of instruction: projects, drill and recitation, peer teaching, discussion, teaching games, independent study, programmed instruction, lecture and simulation.
Silver and Hanson (1980) base their learning style inventory on the Myers-Briggs personality type indicators. Gardner's multiple intelligences theory describes seven different areas in which a student might show learning strengths.
Brilliant Behaviours (Kanevsky, Maker, Nielsen & Rogers, 1994) is a checklist that describes twelve characteristics associated with giftedness. This checklist is intended to help teachers make systematic observations that can lead to assessment and identification of gifted students. Maker and Nielsen (in press) have included this checklist and suggested applications for its use in Principles and Curriculum Development for the Gifted. The checklist itself is included in an appendix in this resource guide.
Interests of the students can provide a basis for curriculum development, extension exercises and independent studies. While teachers have many ways to find out about student interests, there are some published inventories that can be helpful. One is My Book of Things and Stuff (McGreevy, 1982) written for primary and intermediate students. Another is The Interest-A-lyzer (Renzulli, 1977) appropriate for middle and secondary school students.
Special abilities refers to the student's talents that may or may not be exhibited through the school's curriculum. The student may have a special ability in taking mechanical objects apart and putting them back together or may be an accomplished pianist, figure skater or hockey player. Special abilities can often be identified through knowledge of the student's hobbies, extracurricular activities and outside interests.
Vision and goals for the future are the student's personal values and hopes for the future. This includes the student's desired lifestyle, possible careers and community interests set in the context of a long term vision. Creating a vision or desired future provides the student with a focus for personal planning.
| Classroom Resources:
My Book of Things and Stuff: An Interest Questionnaire for Young Children (McGreevy, 1982) |
