Estimated reading time 4 minutes
Table of Contents
Introducing Musical Talent and Giftedness
Music teachers: do you have students who show musical talent and giftedness? Do you need some information on how they learn? With musically gifted and talented students, just like any other students, you need to meet them where they’re at, making the adjustments in their playing based on what you see. That way, they can become better students than before they came to you. Keep reading to learn more about musical talent and giftedness.
This article uses technical terms. For definitions, see the Glossary at the end of the post.
Assessing Musical Talent and Giftedness
So far, we’ve talked about twice exceptional students, so now it’s time to talk about gifted students.
The problem, according to Kimberly McCord, is there aren’t any good tests to measure musical talent and giftedness.
- This explains why everyone argues over the definition of musical giftedness.
- Why? Because the tests can’t reliably predict musical giftedness in test subjects.
- This lack of psych measures may have encouraged a bias for intellectual giftedness over talent.
Likewise, IQ scores have been criticized for been too closely aligned with academic achievement.
- IQ scores don’t do well at predicting creativity.
- In addition, gifted artists often test low on IQ tests, so it doesn’t do a great job of assessing spatial ability either.
- And spatial aptitude happens to be one of the abilities associated with musically gifted and talented students.
So, IQ tests should be only one measure used among a battery of aptitude tests.
What’s the Difference Between Gifted and Talented?
What’s the difference between talent and giftedness?
- Howard Gardener has stated that there shouldn’t be a distinction between gifted and talented students.
- He didn’t find enough support in the neurological literature to support separating talent and giftedness.
- Gardener thought this separation discriminated against talented students.
In any case, NEVER praise gifted students for their musical talent.
- Instead, praise them for their effort.
- Studies have shown that students who get praised for their effort work harder.
- Conversely, students who get praised for their musical talent tend to pick easier tasks to maintain the flow of praise from mentors.
Keep reading to find out the relationship between memory and giftedness.
Enhanced Memory in Gifted and Talented Students
Ellen Winner has stated that gifted and talented students have enhanced memory in the area of their giftedness.
- Similarly, Daniel Coyle goes into detail about skill development and memory.
- Coyle comes down on the “effort” side of the effort-versus-talent question.
- However, he makes the point that myelin, at the neurological level, is memory.
Therefore, if gifted students have enhanced talent-oriented memory, giftedness might be thought of as the ability to remember things more easily.
- Specifically, they myelinate more quickly than other students, optimizing their neurons faster, allowing them to rapidly pick up skills.
- However, for this to be truly effective, students must go a bit past their comfort levels to the place where mistakes start happening.
- Not too many mistakes, mind you, just enough to turbocharge the learning process. However, many gifted students don’t get challenged enough.
Ellen Winner seems to think that a student with moderate talent and giftedness will do alright when taught the same way as a typical learner student.
- While this might be true for some gifted students, it’s not true for all of them.
- Yes, some gifted students will need to be more challenged.
- However, visual-spatial learners will often need a qualitatively different learning approach.
These students need multisensory teaching to help minimize mistakes while learning.
- If they get the wrong information stuck in their long-term memories, it can be hard to dig out again.
- This explains why it can be difficult to deal with letter reversals in twice exceptional students because the wrong letter orientations get stuck in long term memory.
- And since the twice exceptional student has an enhanced memory, this creates problems.
Visual and concrete multisensory strategies can head off problems before they start:
Twice Exceptional: Gifted and Talented LD Students
It’s possible this is why we see so many twice exceptional musicians. They’re potentially gifted and talented students who fall through the cracks of the system.
With Response to Intervention (RTI), students start with the main group.
- Then, some students start to struggle, so they get sent to the tier two group.
- If they continue to struggle, they’ll get sent to the tier three group and get an IEP.
- This process allows too many mistakes to get into long-term memory which will take a specialist to dig out.
However, it’s still better than the old way of letting a kid fall two years behind grade level before administering a battery of tests in anticipation of assigning an IEP.
- We don’t want to have kids with musical talent and giftedness dealing with the issues that come along with an ADHD or dyslexia diagnosis.
- An LD diagnoses can be bad for a student’s self-esteem and self-concept.
- In many cases, learning issues can be prevented with early intervention.
Final Thoughts on “Musical Talent and Giftedness”
Here’s a summary of Musical Talent and Giftedness.
- Gifted and talented students need support that’s different from both special needs and typical learner students.
- We lack good measures that can reliably test for musical talent and giftedness.
- The terms gifted and talented reflect a bias toward giftedness over talent.
- Never praise students for their talent. Instead, praise them for their effort.
- Students with talent and giftedness have enhanced memory in the area of their giftedness.
- Visual-spatial students need multisensory teaching to minimize mistakes while learning.
- Otherwise, some gifted and talented students will run the risk of becoming twice exceptional students.
Related Posts:
- Learning Differences and Spatial Ability
- Does ADD and ADHD Make People More Creative?
- What Are Some Signs of a Twice Exceptional (2E) Child?
© 2023 Geoffrey Keith
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