Can Different Learning Activities Bring Out Students’ Unseen Academic Potential?

Many conversations among education reformers focus on how schools can better support low-achieving, low-income students. Unfortunately, this can detract attention from low-income students with advanced academic potential (AAP). The consequences for AAP students can be devastating; one study found that 44 percent of high-achieving, low-income first graders are no longer high achieving by fifth grade, and another found a 15 to 20 percent decrease in the number of high-achieving, low-income students over five years.

Problem-based learning (PBL), where students actively learn by solving an open-ended problem or case, has been found to be engaging to students, especially gifted students, as it requires inquiry-based thinking. Consequently, PBL may resolve the difficulty of recognizing low-income students with AAP. In a spring 2013 article, “Using Problem-based Learning to Explore Unseen Academic Potential,” Shelagh A. Gallagher and her late father James J. Gallagher find that a well-designed PBL curriculum can help teachers recognize overlooked AAP in students.

The Gallaghers studied 271 sixth graders and 14 teachers in two low-income middle schools in North Carolina, with 62 percent of the students participating in the National School Lunch Program. Test scores, classroom performance, and teacher recommendations had already identified 20 students as gifted. In the PBL unit, students took on the roles of community members and medical experts concerned with stopping the spread of diseases. All their work was stored in a problem log, which also contained records of questions students researched, their notes, critical thinking activities, and self-reflections about their problem-solving process.

After the two units, teachers were asked to use students’ cognitive performance (evidence of analytical and evaluative thinking) and in-class engagement (quality of work, class participation, and group work/behavior) to identify students with AAP. Students who had already been identified as gifted before the study were not to be chosen as AAP students.

The data unsurprisingly show that the 20 students who had been previously identified as gifted had higher standardized test scores than the 34 AAP students and those in general education (GE). However, the AAP group scored higher than the GE group on PBL scores, indicating that standardized test scores alone would not identify this group as gifted when in fact they perform at a higher level in PBL activities than the rest of their GE peers.

The most interesting finding may be that students identified as having AAP matched the quality of work, participation, and group work/behavior demonstrated by the gifted group. Independent evaluators corroborated the teachers’ list of AAP students, and they rated the quality of their products to be similar and even somewhat superior to those already in the gifted group. The only difference between the gifted group and the AAP group, then, were their standardized test scores. Had these students never been exposed to PBL their teachers likely would not have recognized their AAP.

PBL uses inquiry-based thinking to catalyze students’ motivation. The data from this study support the claim that the higher-level thinking skills that PBL requires better engaged AAP students and motivated them to produce higher quality work than their regular curriculum. The data also reveal that some students may not perform to their highest potential without more engaging activities such as PBL.

Policy makers ought to respond to these findings by carefully examining what factors act as barriers or incentives to schools incorporating PBL into their curriculum. If students continue to be assessed through a narrow set of measurement tools such as standardized tests, classroom activities will continue to mimic tasks from the test, furthering the trend of AAP students remaining unrecognized and unchallenged. However, the more assessments begin to require inquiry-based thinking and critical thinking, the more teachers will incorporate these tasks to the betterment of AAP students and human potential as a whole.

Article Source: Shelagh A. Gallagher and James J. Gallagher, “Using Problem-based Learning to Explore Unseen Academic Potential,” Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning 7, No. 1 (2013): 111-31.

Feature Photo: cc/(Ann Lusch)