by Günter Schmid, Sir-Karl-Popper-Schule, Vienna, Austria
As an experimental special stream within a public grammar school ("Wiedner Gymnasium") "Sir-Karl-Popper-Schule" is open to any pupil who has finished eight (or, in the case of pupils who have jumped a class, seven) years of school and whose high ability ("Hochbegabung") has been verified by a standardized psychological test. Attendance is basically free, although parents are asked to make a voluntary contribution of 70 Euro per month to enable the school management to maintain the enormous variety of projects and extra-curricular activities that form a substantial proportion of the outstanding educational facilities that the school offers to its students, while maintaining the professional standard of teaching (through an institutionalized system of targeted in-service-training) and the technical equipment of classes (such as data projectors, complete audio-visual and IT-equipment etc.) at the highest possible and most up-to-date level. The "Sir-Karl-Popper-Schule" covers the whole of what is called "Oberstufe" (upper stage) in the Austrian secondary school system, offering students the choice between a more humanistic, language-oriented ("Gymnasium") and a more science-oriented approach ("Realgymnasium"). Each of these leads up to what is called "Matura", corresponding to the German "Abitur" or "A-levels" in the British system.
A school that focuses on the promotion of highly gifted pupils should be more intensely aware of its own specific strengths and limitations - and of its resulting responsibility to accept only those students to whom it defines itself as ideally suited. The point is, it is not a question of whether a student suits a school but of whether a specific school suits a specific student by offering him or her the best possible pedagogical resources. This applies to the highly gifted even more than to "ordinary" pupils. It is a wide-spread misconception that highly gifted pupils "will look after themselves" anyway and are thus bound to prosper in any surroundings. The very opposite is, in fact, the case: unless they feel sufficiently challenged in their special fields of interest this situation will almost inevitably lead to a lack of involvement, which may well end up in resignation. This fact attaches enormous importance to a very careful and reliable process of selection. Applicants are therefore subjected to a five-hour testing procedure, which consists of a whole battery of standardized psychological tests that provide the admissions officer with objective data not only concerning the former's various manifestations of intelligence (verbal vs. figural vs. numerical; fluid vs. crystallized) but also of their individual working styles, durability and stress resistance, performance under duress and motivational resources (extrinsic vs. intrinsic). Students are thus recruited not on the basis of their previous school results - nor on that of their social background, but solely on the basis of objective criteria, which " and this seems very important to us - are gauged by an external authority (a local psychological institute which specializes in tests of this genre).
Having successfully selected a largely homogeneous group of students (homogeneous as far as the above defined criteria are concerned) the school is next called upon to provide those pupils with a learning environment (equipment, facilities, stimuli, openness to innovative ideas) and with "learning agents" (teachers) that will meet their specific requirements. I consciously avoid the word "teachers" since a shift in focus from a pedagogy of teaching to a pedagogy of learning is the alpha and omega of gifted education. For the traditional "teacher" this means a change of roles from that of the "magister" (Latin for somebody who "knows more") to that of a "facilitator": somebody who "enables" and smoothes the learning process for a set of different pupils by first of all understanding each individual's specific intellectual and motivational disposition and, as a consequence of this insight, by providing the kind of learning context, tasks, learning materials, learning environment and carefully measured guidance that will produce the best results coupled with the highest degree of satisfaction on the part of the pupils. I call this type of teacher the "supporting" or "promotional" teacher - a weak translation for German "begabungsfördernder Lehrer". Qualification for this highest of all ratings the teaching profession has to award is not primarily a matter of theoretical knowledge, nor even of methodological brilliance, but rather of the teacher's personality and pedagogical attitude. Any teacher who is willing to respect his juniors' uniqueness as individual human beings and to encourage their unlimited right to experiment, to explore untrodden paths, to "learn by doing" relying on the trial and error method, to gradually approach the truth by continually falsifying methods that prove erroneous (cf. Karl Popper's theory of falsification), has a good chance of developing into this type of "teacher-facilitator". All he or she needs is external support from a "system" that is willing to tolerate - or even encourage - unorthodox experiments for their own sake, even at the risk of failure.
This is, more or less, a definition of the pedagogical philosophy of the "Sir-Karl-Popper-Schule" in a nutshell. "Anything goes", is the headmaster's standard reply to tentative suggestions by teachers, pupils and parents alike, as long as nobody is harmed and no law is broken. As a result, the school has never stopped evolving in its eight-year history. (And I do not hesitate to admit that I believe that when a school - or any living organism, for that matter - does stop evolving, it is literally dead and should be closed down at once.)
If it is this sense of security that teachers need to be willing to give up their traditional "authority" as leaders in favour of a new role as team players who just happen to be more experienced than others in a particular field, it is encouragement and motivation that pupils need to be seduced into exploring their own capacities. The prospect of speeding up the learning process (acceleration), the possibility to dive into special areas of interest that are not part of the normal curriculum (enrichment), in brief, the individualization of the learning process have become traditional and widely accepted instruments of gifted education.
What is less generally recognized is the importance of signalling to the learner that he or she is in fact master of his or her own learning process; that he or she is called upon to make his or her own choices (within certain limits that will safeguard a minimum common core of general knowledge); to determine his or her own speed of learning; to participate in the planning of the group's work; even to make suggestions as to the methods of assessment; and last but not least, to evaluate the effectiveness of the common learning process and offer feedback to the learning manager (i.e. the teacher) - and what is more, feedback that will be taken heed of.
What I am talking about is a democratisation of the learning process. This should be attempted at all possible levels: at the organizational level by granting students a say in the actual running of the school. The "Popper-Forum", for example, is a regular informal meeting of the board of directors with any students and parents who choose to attend, in which any school matters can be openly discussed. Many an innovation and improvement of the past eight years has been initiated by students in the course of these meetings - and has left them with a feeling of self importance, with a sense of satisfaction at having been taken no less seriously by the school management than their teachers.
At the structural level a university-type system of courses offers students in their final two years the option of specializing according to their own preferences and interests and choosing fairly freely not only among a wide range of different subjects but also, in each subject-based course, between a "basic" and a "reinforcement" version. Thus each student ends up with his or her own individual timetable. Also, they are allowed to skip lessons on their own discretion, as long as they score an attendance rate of no less than 70% and catch up on what they have missed on their own. This extensive freedom and independence is highly treasured by students - while it is admittedly abused by a minority among them. But on the whole the system has proved a success and an important factor of motivation.
At class- or group level, student participation at the planning stage takes the form of a contract which is negotiated by the teacher and his class in the first two weeks of the school year and signed by each member of the group. In this contract, key topics to be dealt with, working formats, criteria and methods of assessment are defined and a common policy of cooperation is agreed upon. It is important that the teacher (being the one who knows what the minimum requirements are) should act as a careful counsellor without arbitrarily dictating his or her own preferences or conditions.
At a level suited to the student's own individual learning process, "assignments" rather than lesson-to-lesson homework offer pupils a limited freedom of choice from different tasks to be completed within a given period of time, the possibility to engage in the various activities required at times of their own preference and at their own speed, and the option of setting their own target.
Last but not least, the extraordinary degree of student motivation that has been objectively measured in polls conducted among students of the "Sir-Karl-Popper-Schule" results from the latter's awareness that they are always being listened to and asked for their written feedback by their teachers at regular intervals.
The last two points are compelling illustrations as to what has been said about the precedence of a conducive pedagogical attitude over "professional competence". "Gifted education" requires gifted teachers. And giftedness in teachers manifests itself as a pedagogical attitude of unlimited openness - to innovative ideas as well as to democratic structures. By doing away with redundant and impeding hierarchies, a school can avail itself of the most precious of all resources: the well-motivated student.
Source: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference "Developmental Distinctiveness and Potential Realization of Gifted Children", Bratislava 2005, p. 86 ff.