Curriculum is a craft, and always a work in progress. Here we’ll talk about TIP’s rationale for best practices for gifted in curriculum design. Here you can share ideas, solutions, and challenges.
At Duke TIP we believe curriculum for gifted youth should be conceptual, thematic, issue-driven, and problem-finding, delivering content characterized by attributes of rigor, depth and complexity, uniquely specialized for the gifted.
It should allow the learner to construct knowledge, skills, and understandings, guiding the student through a balance of content, processes and products of the discipline.
Integrating academic national and state standards–but also extending beyond–the curriculum introduces innovative, emerging, and cutting-edge aspects of traditional and nascent fields and engages the learner in real-world investigations and research.
The curriculum organizes the intellectual content of the discipline to be sequential and cumulative in nature, moving from basic/foundational to advanced/theoretical aspects of the discipline.
The curriculum provides flexibility in its delivery, recognizing that the gifted population is heterogeneous with varying readiness levels, learning styles, and interests.
It leads ultimately to dispositions and habits of mind that foster inquiry: curiosity, creativity, commitment, and a passion about learning for the sake of learning.
It offers the learner an opportunity to find how to express their own strengths and explore possible future roles and post-secondary pursuits through productivity in the discipline.
It fosters and nurtures not only the learning and academic skills, but the social, civic and personal skills of the student, as well.
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