By Jeanne L. Paynter, EdD., President of the Maryland Coalition for Gifted and Talented Education (MCGATE)

Did the sudden shift to virtual learning send you searching for motivating, engaging, and challenging activities for online learning? More and more, I am hearing teachers and parents lament over students who are logging in, but tuning out. Yet as schools transition back to face-to-face, the issue of unmotivated and disengaged students remains, because as we know, we have wrestled with this problem for some time.

We all want to work smarter, not harder (how could we even do that!). So, let’s start our problem-solving process the way that a genius would—Einstein, that is. He once said, “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.” I don’t have even one hour here, so let me get started now by re-defining our problem:

Instead of searching for motivating, engaging and challenging activities for learners, what if, instead, we created motivating, engaging, and challenging GOALS for learning?

Goals, you say? But I have my learning goals, which aim at having students acquire the content standards and skills that I teach. Mostly, the goals are handed to me in a curriculum document and assessed by standardized tests with scores that I’m accountable for. Yes, but…

What are our Long-Term Aims for Learners?

I believe that your school has other goals, as well. These are inherent in the long-term aim for graduates to be “college and career ready.” In the 21st century, this encompasses developing cognitive and psychosocial skills such as curiosity, creativity, logical thinking, insight, persistence, metacognition, and leadership. I’ve named these qualities “the seven aptitudes (or talents) of innovators.”

Today, it is the capacity for innovation, the finding of unique and useful answers to meaningful problems, that will define our students’ success in careers and in life. Are we intentionally targeting and assessing learning goals to discover, develop, and advance the aptitudes of innovators in all learners? If not, I think we should be, and could be, using a goal-oriented approach I call talent-targeted teaching and learning.

What are Talent-Targeted Learning Goals?

Let’s get back to our initial need for motivating and engaging learners, in both virtual and bricks-and-mortar environments. We have been searching for activities, but brain research tells us that it is goals that motivate. Goals focus our attention and energy and help us to visualize outcomes. Without this focused attention on goals, we waste time, energy, and, ultimately, talent.

Problem Solution: A new process for creating and assessing long-term, intrinsically motivating, content-rich learning goals. In talent-targeted teaching and learning, teachers and students set “talent goals” that explicitly align the aptitudes of innovators with the required content standards in STEM and the humanities. I use “aptitude” as a synonym for talent to capture its dynamic nature.

How to Create a Talent Goal

Let’s walk through the talent-targeted goal planning process (Figure 1) using an example from a problem-based STEM unit, Stop Sports Injuries. There are many more examples of these “talent goal frames,” as well as the aptitude definitions, student talent goals, and aptitude assessment rubrics in my book, Teach to Develop Talent: How to Engage and Motivate Tomorrow’s Innovators Today.

You can transform your current “test-targeted” curriculum/lessons to “talent-targeted” ones simply by reframing your learning goals.  Do this by making the long-term aim for students to develop the talent aptitudes of innovators, i.e. “creativity,” drive the short-term goal for content and skill acquisition. Students gain both. Add a real application that matters to students, and you’re teaching to develop talent. For example:

Traditional mathematics learning goal: 

  • Collect, graph, and analyze data to interpret ratio relationships. (Students think, “why are we doing this?” The purpose is missing)

Talent-targeted goal:

  • Use your creativity to collect, graph, and analyze data on classmate’s sports injuries in order to determine the greatest need for a product or process to reduce youth sports injuries.

Do you see how the talent-targeted goal makes learning mathematics personal and purposeful for students? I am developing my creativity and using it in an important way.  Students are motivated and engaged.

You can assess the content and skills using your traditional measures, but now you also can assess demonstration of the talent aptitude using the teacher and student learning progressions in Teach to Develop Talent.

How Do We Assess Talent Goals?

Teachers have many assessment tools related to content and skills, but far fewer, if any, to assess cognitive and psychosocial aptitudes. The Talent Aptitude Learning Progressions, teacher and student versions, are used to compose the rubrics used in formative, summative, and self-assessments (see Figure 2).

The learning progressions develop a talent continuum from emerging to progressing to advancing. All students are considered “at promise” and emerging, with potential to progress and advance. The targets affirm existing strengths while providing explicit direction for growth.

We Can Teach to Develop Talent!

We can turn around student disengagement, boredom, and underachievement as we shift our focus to long-term aims for learners, viewing them as tomorrow’s innovators, today. The complete cycle of talent-targeted teaching and learning encompasses five stages: (1) Prepare and Pre-Assess. (2) Set Goals, (3) Develop Targets, (4) Design Talent-Targeted Tasks, and (5) Assess and Reflect.

Use this model with at-risk students as a catalyst for identifying and developing emerging talent, in grade-level groups to challenge the talents of progressing students, and with gifted students to advance their identified talents. All students are motivated to face tough challenges because their aptitudes and interests are engaged.

Jeanne L. Paynter, Ed.D. currently works as an educational consultant and faculty associate at the Johns Hopkins University. She has had a wide variety of experiences in K-12 public education that have shaped her interest in talent development, leading to the design of a new approach that brings gifted education pedagogy to all, talent-targeted teaching and learning. Currently she serves as the President of the Maryland Coalition for Gifted and Talented Education (MCGATE).

Jeanne earned her Master’s Degree in Gifted Education and Doctorate in Teacher Development and Leadership from the Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor of Science degree in English from the Towson University. She resides in Baltimore, Maryland.

About the Maryland Coalition for Gifted and Talented Education

A Friends level member of THE G WORD’s Global Partnership Network, MCGATE’s mission is to educate about and advocate for the needs of gifted and talented individuals in Maryland.

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