Dealing With Low And High Achievements In Teaching Education Essay

Teaching is not a normal job that can be practiced by any person since it is the transmitting knowledge, behavior, and educational programs. The teacher is responsible for instructing others who may belong to different types of human behavior (Smith, 1997).

The purpose of educational or learning groups is to acquire new information or skill through a sharing of knowledge. In most small group learning situations all members have something to teach and something to learn in-text citation is required (Smith, 1997).

The role of the teacher is to provide a lecture in the classroom which means transmitting knowledge to a group of students. It is the traditional role of the teacher as one of the information provider in the lecture context. Moreover, the teacher plays an important role in increasing the practical skill of the students. Also, teachers are responsible for facilitating the learning process and mentoring the student’s performance. Furthermore, teachers are planners for the organization of the contents, the educational strategies, and the educational environment (Harden, 2000).

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The No Child Left Behind law has brought wide changes to education across the nation. It affects what students are taught, the tests they take, the training of their teachers and the way money is spent on education. Therefore, based on this law, teachers must be highly qualified to teach core academic subjects in every classroom. Specifically, an elementary school teacher must have a bachelor’s degree and pass a t test in core curriculum areas. While middle and high school teachers must show they’re competent in the subjects they teach by passing a test or by completing an academic major, graduate degree or comparable coursework. The qualification of the teacher helps in giving individual assistant on low achiever as well as high achiever. However, some teachers focus on the low achiever leaving the intelligent students or the high achiever behind which decrease their skills and ambitious (Harden, 2000).

1.1 Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the role of the teachers in the classroom regarding the existence of both high achievers as well as low achiever students.

The study will investigate the impact of giving individual assistance to a segment of the class on the engagement of high achievers in teaching and learning process.

H1: increased attention on low achievers will influence negatively on the achievement of gifted or high achiever students

H2: teachers can demotivate the successful students which may lead to their failure or their withdrawal from school.

Chapter II – Literature Review

A serious problem nowadays is faced in schools and education which is Giftedness. The meaning of this word can be summarized by a simple sentence “measure of potential”. Children vary with their ability to understand and get knowledge. Some students are gifted as named by many authors and need little help by their teachers while others have lower abilities to acquire as fast as those mentioned first. The problem stands that focusing on smart children can cause a big trouble to those who fall behind. In other words, the idea of failing to challenge a gifted mind will lead to low self-esteem and under- achievement to the child who thinks he is in the second place.

Lack of training in the classroom is leading teachers to lose the ability on recognizing gifted children. Only half of those gifted students are receiving the care they need because gifted students are misdiagnosed.

To have ability, to feel power you are never allowed to use, can become shocking and destroying. Many researchers consider the gifted as the largest group of under-achievers in education. According to the National Association for Gifted Children, there is frustration that leads to physical and psychological pain.

2.1.1Gifted Education

There are several signs that show giftedness such as endless questions, curiosity, explore subjects, precision in thinking, and the ability to concentrate on intellectually challenging. Children having these signs may require follow intelligence testing so the child’s educational needs can be properly provided.

Profoundly high achiever students are unique individuals with different talents and interests. Through the follow up of the educational needs, a challenging educational program should be identified in order to develop the intellectual ability since gifted person need coaching to acheive suitable education at a level appropriate to their abilities.

Children are becoming more annoyed and unmotivated because of the unappropriate challenge that they are facing at schools. That’s why Students will dumb-down and hide their intelligence to fit in the class if the teachers give a lot of care to the low achievers. The options that help gifted students start by the early entrance to first grade then they must be introduces to independent, multi-age gifted classes in addition to the increase of grades.

However, experts stress that gifted kids are children with special academic needs, who do not always do well without appropriate instruction. 

2.1.1.1 Identifying gifted students

School’s gifted programs are the most widely known identifications that occur in schools nowadays. Services that recognize gifted students occur in schools and show the levels of students in it (Bruer, 1997).

2.1.1.2 Characteristics & Behavior of Gifted Students

Gifted children have better comprehension of the nuances of language in early stages. It is clearly shown that half of the talented and gifted population has learned before entering schools. Moreover the rate of reading with less practice has been considered as one of the most commonly known behaviors of giftedness. Constructing and handling abstractions, picking up and interpreting nonverbal cues, drawing inferences and recognizing large vocabularies are also talent of gifted students.

Gifted children are natural learners and have an eye for important details. They often prefer reading books and articles written by people older than their age. Their abilities often set them apart from their age mates.

The characteristics of gifted students are as following: they are fluent thinkers, able to generate possibilities, consequences, or related ideas, they are flexible thinkers, able to use many different alternatives and approaches to problem solving. They are original thinkers, seeking new, unusual, or unconventional associations and combinations among items of information. They are sensitive to beauty and are attracted to aesthetic values (Riley, 1999).

2.1.1.3 The needs of High Achievers

Understanding of the gifted social and emotional needs is an essential requirement for successful teachers because they believe that not all academic angels and stellar scholars that people assume are gifted.

Gifted children’s needs do not differ from others. Intellectual and personality attributes characterize gifted children and should be noted at the outset.

The Strengths of gifted students is shown by the ability to retain information quickly while the possible problem is the impatient with others (August & Hakuta, 1998). High achiever needs to be engaged in the class even in the implementation to the no child left behind act.

2.2.1 Less Skilled Teachers

The solutions to the problem of low achievement are retaining them in grade, placing them in transition rooms, enrolling them in remedial or special education classrooms, or placing them in the bottom track. However these solutions increase low achievement and won’t allow students to improve or either graduate from high schools. Low achievement students often receive a reading curriculum that is limited and indicates low expectations for their performance (Knapp & Needels, 1990). Appropriate professional development and readily-available technical assistance is needed in order to become highly successful with all students since lack of professional training in dealing with diversity is being recognized and lead to poor training (Phillips & Crowell, 1994).

It is important that teachers have skills to help students to be more successful as mentioned by August and Hakuta (1998). Underachievement can change over time as said by Delisle and Berger (1990). the best intervention for remediation of any learning difficulty, and teachers who believe that these students can become high achievers even if the behavior did not change (Riley, 1999).

Generally, having below average is noticed on children who are low achievers. (100) IQ and resist in the classroom to keep up with general academic requirements (Gresham, MacMillan & Bocian, 1996).

2.3.1 Risk Factors for Low Achievement

Low achievers face a lot of difficulties. Focusing on the effort of preventing learning difficulties is more important that trying to remediate them (Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, 1998). A close monitor on the progress of all children is essential in addition to the changes made to instructions.

2.3.1.1 General Risk Factors

growing up in poverty with physical deficits, who attend schools with chronic school failure, whose culture varies from that of the school’s, and who arrive at school speaking languages other than English are considered problems that face certain groups of gifted children.

Having poor basic skills, low academic self-concepts, poor auditory memory, and less than average school attendance rates as mentioned by Delisile and Berger (1990) are characteristics of underachievers.

Some children risk of dropping out of school if they live in single-parent households, have parents or siblings who did not complete high school, or are home alone more than three hours a day (Dynarski and Gleason, 1999).

More than half of the Schools in Urban areas scored chronic failure. The reasons behind this is that they have young and less qualified teachers and high teacher turnover, lack resources, such as well-stocked libraries and up-to-date technology. Moreover, the connections with parents are often non-existent or aggressive and absenteeism of students is high. In addition to these reasons related to the school’s system itself, there are reasons related to the students such as enroll high percentages of students who live in poverty, the majority fail to reach even the basic level on national tests (National Education Summit, 1999).

2.3.1.2 Poor skills

Schools that provide effective reading instruction and reading practice causes the opportunities to learn letters and to recognize the internal structure of spoken words.

Children who have normal or above language skills acquire reading skills that advance motivation and expose children to have literacy. If a child lacks any of the above factors, he has increased possibilities of delayed or impeded reading (National Research Council, 1998). On the other hand, some children lack reading readiness from home and suffer from discouragement in the classroom. There are low literacy expectations, limited resources, and differential instructional practices for these children (Riley, 1999).

2.4.1Effective Instruction

Experienced and caring teachers who are able to establish close personal relationships with students, other staff members, and parents must formulate the most important competencies of a successful school. The staff and students succeed when the skills and positive atmosphere meet. It is surprising that many of the new school reform models are reverting to a teacher as factory worker mindset (French, 2000) instead of teacher as a caring expert.

Good teachers overcome the obstacles that they face in order to make children stay away from failure. They improve their skills throughout their careers (Snow, Burns, and Griffin, 1998). Moreover, a successful teacher takes time into consideration. They allow more time for discussion and questions and they allow students to participate more and engage in the classe’s atmosphere (Breaking Ranks, 1996).

If a teacher believes that each student has special capabilities and can improve their skills and achieve more, she let her students feel comfortable and encourage them and show them that she cares.

2.5 Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD

The attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a neurobehavioral disorder which is related to high or low achievement. Student who are hyperactive or irresponsible behave in a way that lead to problems. This problem is a genetic problem that creates lack of focus.

Lack of concentration represent one of the symptomf of ADHD. Some students may switch from one thing to another that may cause them to forget the lesson explained even if they are high achievers. This problem allow students to move slowly and become easily confused by any distraction.