Gifted and Talented Students (GATE) at Aquinas College

We have a number of GATE students at the College and it is our desire and responsibility to work with their parents to ensure they have opportunities to develop their talents. The Ministry of Education also expects each school to identify and provide for such students. This paper sets out our rationale and guidelines for working with these students.

The range of special abilities that relate to the concept of giftedness and talent has become quite broad over the years and includes general intellectual abilities, academic aptitude, creative abilities, leadership ability, physical abilities, and abilities in the visual and performing arts.

Gagnè (1996) has argued consistently, however, for differentiating the two terms by claiming that giftedness relates more to aptitude domains (intellectual, creative, socioaffective, perceptual/motor) while talent is associated more with outstanding achievements in a variety of fields of human endeavour (academic, technical, artistic, interpersonal, and athletic fields).

GATE students at Aquinas College

Each faculty is strongly encouraged to develop programmes for identified students however the school also provides an Autonomous Learner Program to assist gifted students develop.

Autonomous Learner Provision.

This is about students moving from being a dependent thinker to taking charge of their own educational future.
We call this being an Autonomous Learner. "One who solves problems or develops new ideas through a combination of divergent and convergent thinking and functions with minimal external guidance in selected areas of endeavour". (Betts and Knapp, 1981)
On a general note, the term autonomy has come to be used in at least five ways (Benson & Voller, 1997)
• for situations in which learners study entirely on their own;
• for a set of skills which can be learned and applied in self-directed learning;
• for a capacity which is suppressed by institutional education;
• for the exercise of learners' responsibility for their own learning;
• for the right of learners to determine the direction of their own learning.
Autonomous learning is about seeing learners as individuals who can and should be autonomous i.e. - responsible for their own learning climate.
Autonomous education helps students develop their self-consciousness, vision, practicality and freedom of discussion. These attributes serve to aid the student in their independent learning throughout their entire life.