Roles centrales

The teachers had responsibility, within their school contexts (influenced by policy, as described in Chapter 5), for the detail of the programme content, the teaching approaches, and to some extent the resources used. However, the quality of the programme planning and delivery is influenced in part by the individual teacher (Leppien & Westburg, 2006). There are personal and professional characteristics that make a good teacher and in particular a good teacher of mathematically gifted and talented students (Mingus & Grassl, 1999). The students during Phase One interviews were asked a specific question pertaining to this topic and the teachers were asked to comment on any challenges in providing a programme for mathematically gifted and talented students. The data from the parents relevant to this topic is included when it arose in the context of responses to other questions rather than from an explicit interview question.

The students were in agreement on several characteristics of a good mathematics teacher for gifted and talented students. The most favoured attribute, from the

students’ perspectives, concerned the teacher knowing the student. According to the students, this meant treating each student as an individual and showing understanding if the student was grappling with a concept. The importance of teachers knowing their students and having an empathy with them was also recognized by both the teachers and the parents. The teachers acknowledged that you had to “really know the students” and one teacher stated that it was important to specifically identify those aspects students excelled at in mathematics. The teachers believed that you had to establish a good relationship between teacher and student, “be interested in”, and “value” the students.

Another commonly reported attribute was the teacher’s mathematical content knowledge. Students expected their teacher to be good at mathematics and to “know tons of maths”. Aligned with this competence in mathematics, most students agreed, was the teacher’s enjoyment of mathematics. The teachers acknowledged that it was important to be interested in mathematics; the secondary school mathematics teachers articulated the importance of strong content knowledge so that a teacher knew where the students were heading in their study of the subject.

Some of the parents also acknowledged the importance of the teacher’s subject matter knowledge. Parents were aware that the secondary mathematics teacher was expected to have specialized qualifications in this subject area. Bob’s mother explained that “the [mathematics] teacher is more qualified; he’s not a jack of all trades. He’s got a good knowledge of the subject”. Subject matter or content knowledge was a greater expectation once their children moved on from primary school. Some of the parents did not view strong content knowledge of mathematics as the reserve of the secondary school teacher, but an expectation from Year 7 and Year 8 teachers as well. In one of the primary schools (School B), the gifted and talented students spent some of their mathematics time with their school principal. The principal also helped prepare the students for competitions. Both the students and parents acknowledged the principal’s expertise, interest, and enjoyment in mathematics.

Another quality mentioned by the teachers and students was flexibility. Flexibility was talked about in different contexts: organizational, time, responding to students, and in the use of resources. For one of the teachers from School B (two teachers from

this school were in the study), flexibility in teaching time was important. Gifted students, according to this teacher, sometimes wanted to spend sustained periods of time on a particular mathematics problem or investigation. Mrs J (School BP) believed that the teacher needed to recognize this and respond accordingly. This was one of her reasons for being an advocate of catering for gifted and talented students within the regular class. Without tight timetable restraints and cross class grouping, she explained, you could let students continue with a particular problem or investigation.

The other notion of flexibility was a teacher’s ability to respond to the students as individuals. This aligns with the earlier attribute expressed by the students as “knowing the student”. One teacher described it as the ability to recognize “the teachable moment” and be flexible enough to pursue the student’s “line of thinking”. Another skill, identified by the teachers, was the ability to adapt material and to use resources flexibly. Several of the teachers talked about this as a valuable skill given that there were not resources available written specifically for gifted and talented mathematics students. Miss L (School CI) explained that “it’s about making sure that there’s stuff available and the tools so you just have to be flexible with the challenges that do come up, and you adapt”.

One student affirmed this and stated that she expected material to be adapted to meet each student’s individual needs; a teacher who “doesn’t give the same thing to everyone, adapts things”. Nina elaborated:

Mostly you need to know what each gifted child’s abilities are so that you can show them the next step upwards….If it was a whole class of gifted students the teacher would need to know each of their abilities [and give them] the right level of work so that it’s neither too hard nor too easy. If it’s a gifted child each child needs to be given separate versions, grouping doesn’t really go. (Nina)

Teachers talked about other skills such as the ability to provide “open-ended tasks”, “to be able to question well”, “to encourage higher-order thinking”, and to be able to “give them confidence”. Students, teachers, and parents acknowledged that an effective mathematics teacher must provide the right level of challenge. This is presented in the next section in relation to provisions. It was acknowledged as a quality, but also as a challenge in itself.

In the majority of cases, the parents appreciated their children’s mathematics and/or class teacher and used adjectives such as “inspiring”, “dedicated”, “absolutely wonderful for pushing him further”, and “a one-off, amazing, push them really hard teacher”.

Education is all about the quality of the practitioner standing in front of your child. [Mr M] in terms of maths is absolutely fantastic. He obviously has very high personal standards and skills, and he expects that of everyone; he is quite fantastic. (Lewis’ father)

There was acknowledgement by some of the teachers that the students could present behavioural challenges and so the teacher needed to provide a motivating and challenging programme to keep students on task. This was discussed in the previous chapter as one of the characteristics of gifted and talented students. In two cases, the parents were not happy with the teachers and schools (Phase Two Schools) and their lack of recognition of their children’s needs. They found the situations for their children “distressing” and “disappointing”. The reasons for this were different for each case. In one case, the parent felt that the teacher had very poor behaviour management skills and that the programme was not challenging her daughter. The second is the case of the student who was not placed into the gifted class until half way through the year and had a regular class teacher who admitted that she did not have the mathematical expertise to provide suitable challenges for him in the programme.

Paul sums up the key attributes and expectations for a good mathematics teacher of gifted and talented students.

A good teacher is one who understands what they’re talking about. They know the best way to show how it’s done. They should have good resources. They should know their students. (Paul)

The students experienced mathematics firstly through the primary school system with generalized teachers who did not have in-depth specialized mathematics knowledge. One group of the Year 6 students in Phase One of this study had been identified as gifted and talented in mathematics and organized in to a cross-class ability group (School A). This class was taught by a teacher who had interest in mathematics and wanted to take this particular group of students. She had no specialized qualifications in mathematics, but had attended a gifted education

professional development course. The other Year 6 students (School B) were ability grouped within their regular classes and had additional mathematics classes taken by the principal. One of these teachers at School B was very experienced and strongly interested in mathematics and the other teacher was relatively inexperienced and relied considerably on the use of computer programmes.

The Phase One students at the intermediate school (School C) were in the special fulltime gifted class and were taught by a teacher with expertise and experience in gifted education. She was also a teacher with a keen interest in mathematics. The situation for the students in Year 7 (Phase Two) varied considerably. The teachers had wide-ranging expertise in mathematics and in their knowledge and experience working with gifted and talented students. The three secondary school teachers each had several years of mathematics teaching experience and experience with teaching streamed classes. Within these streamed classes they had all taught students gifted and talented in mathematics. One of the secondary teachers had additional training in gifted education and another secondary school teacher had a Masters degree in psychology.

In this study, the students, teachers, and parents collectively recognized the following as the qualities of an effective teacher of mathematically gifted students:

 knows the students as individuals;  establishes a good rapport with students;  has sound content knowledge of mathematics;  is interested in and enjoys mathematics;

 appreciates and provides challenging mathematics; and

 is flexible─with time, organization, planning, and use of resources.

The teacher has the dual challenge of teaching mathematics and teaching this subject to a special population, the gifted and talented. There are many programme options available; the following section presents the findings about programmes experienced by the students in this study.