System of supporting gifted students in Małopolska region as a solution responding to the needs of the knowledge society

De : Krystyna Dynowska-Chmielewska
Pays : Polska/Małopolska
Structure : MCDN

System of supporting gifted students in Małopolska region as a solution responding to the needs of the knowledge society

The awareness of the importance of supporting talented students in the knowledge society has been growing for the past few years. Still, they are too rarely perceived as students with special educational needs, requiring effective diagnosis, modern programmes, and support of professional staff. Moreover, Polish educational system lacks system solutions addressing talented children and teenagers. The potential of various institutions and organizations is not fully used, too, including the possibilities educational law gives to local authorities as governing bodies of schools, and voivodship governments.

In Malopolska region, within DiAMEnT project,a model responding to the aforementioned problems was constructed. Within the project, innovative system of working with talented students was prepared, tested and presented in its final version. The system allows for supporting talents within the areas of English, Maths, ICT and Enterpreneurship, as well as for mastering creative thinking skills. The system is an essential compliment of the solutions present in previous educational practice. It is based on cooperation between various units of the educational environment, giving key role to local authorities of different levels.

The key assumption of the project is to withdraw from traditional techniques of working with gifted students, that usually revolve around developing academic knowledge, i.e. preparing for contests, or individual curricula, and to implement  complex solutions aiming at identifying and developing subject skills and social skills, with special attention to creative thinking skills.
DiAMENT aims at supporting the intellectual potential of Grade 1,2, and 3 of primary school, by introducing a programme supporting creative thinking and by diagnosing a group of subject talented students from Grade4,5, and 6 of primary school, as well as from junior secondary schools and secondary schools. The next step is the implementation of special programmes for that group, following the ‘pull out’ rule, which means pulling out talented students and grouping students with similar subject giftedness outside standard didactic practice of schools. Participants  were offered innovative classes with the use of project methods, and elements of PBL (Problem-Based Learning) strategy.

Innovative programmes were implemented in the whole Malopolska region in 2010/2011-2013/2014 school years. Almost 19 thousand students at the early primary education stage were involved in a programme developing creative thinking in 494 primary schools. About 9 thousand primary school, junior secondary school and secondary school students, diagnosed as gifted out of 27 thousand students who took part in the diagnosis, participated in classes in 161 Local Centers for Gifted Students. Over 1,600 students took part in summer workshops. Almost 200 primary school and junior secondary school students participated in e-learning academic clubs, conducted by university professors and scientists. 200 students went to a Summer Young Talents School.
On the basis of conclusions drawn after implementing innovative curricula into school practice, final version of the programme of working with gifted students was concluded on, and is to be implemented in Małopolska region in 2016-2021, with the use of European Social Fund, within Malopolska Talents programme.

DiAMEnT – innovative Project of Małopolska region, conducted  between 2010 and 2014 by Małopolskie Centrum Doskonalenia Nauczycieli,  Business University in Nowy Sącz and National Louis University in Chicago within Human Capital Operational Programme.