Gifted education implementation as pedagogical innovation in different school ecologies

Abstract

Like many other educational reform initiatives with a strong emphasis on school-based implementation, the introduction of gifted education (GE) in schools in Hong Kong possesses fluidity in implementation and variation of results in response to the same set of government guidelines, incentives, and supports. A number of GE initiatives have been introduced in schools for more than a decade, but they have faced sustainability challenges. Conventional models of change, such as staged models, fail to apply to contemporary schools, which are open systems involving non-linear interactions, rapid changes, and dynamic practices. From an ecological perspective, deep changes envisaged for GE can only happen through emergence that connects to different hierarchical contexts. GE needs an architecture for learning, which facilitates sharing of ideas and resources, reflects on and through practice, and deepens understanding across all levels within schools and communities. This study aims to explore how schools implement and sustain GE initiatives. The research question is “How do schools adopt and continuously develop GE in their own school ecology?” Employing an interpretative research approach, this study was conducted in three schools in which the data were collected through a pre-interview survey to the GE coordinator of the schools, focus group interviews in two periods of time, observation of relevant events, and analysis of school document and records. This study has three major discoveries. First, by developing a new framework comprising different quality levels of GE practices, diverse outcomes in the implementation of GE are found among schools. The quality of gifted students’ learning opportunities varies among schools. Second, the organizational structure that supports teachers’ learning, known as architecture for learning or learning architecture, is found to be the major driver of change. Learning architectures should be carefully designed and articulated within the school and with external organizations to enhance organizational capacity. Third, the learning architectures are further analyzed for the quality of teachers’ learning opportunities. Exploring the relationship between the quality of teachers’ learning opportunities and that of students’ helps deepen the understanding of how change is facilitated and sustained in a school setting. A positive relationship suggests that the nature of teachers’ learning opportunities is crucial to how they introduce GE in their schools. The ways teachers learn about GE are positively related to how they teach gifted students. The design of architecture for learning is further illustrated. The findings from this study contributes to the literature on pedagogical change and teacher learning. It also provides school leaders and professional development planners with new insights into the quality of GE practices, the design of organizational structure for teachers’ professional learning, focusing on the nature of teachers’ learning, in addition to the content and format of the professional development events.