Nominating
A student’s parents/carers, teachers, or classmates may submit a nomination identifying a child as potentially gifted, or students may nominate themselves. The use of rating scales and checklists to accompany the nomination ensures the nominee is judged on the characteristics and behaviours seen in gifted populations. The inclusion of such items has also been shown to considerably improve the validity of teacher and peer nominations by limiting potentially subjective biases.
There are several ways of determining if a student should be nominated as being potentially gifted or high potential:
Gifted and Talented Checklist for Teachers (PDF - 127Kb) may be used to identify gifted characteristics of their students.
Multiple nominations
Students who are nominated by multiple parties are deemed to be deserving of further consideration to determine whether they may be gifted.
Parent nomination is under utilised however research has consistently shown that the accuracy of parent identification, particularly in the identification of younger students, is high.
Peer nomination has been shown to be quite accurate, where peers are asked to identify particular talent domains and utilise a checklist to direct their decision-making.
Nominators are generally asked to consider the same gifted behaviour or characteristic but it is expressed in different ways for each group.
Example: Mathematical aptitude
Nominee: Parent
Child description: Pre-school
Question asked: When out walking with your child do they enjoy counting house numbers; do they anticipate the next house number?
Nominee: Parent
Child description: Primary school
Question asked: Does your child ask questions about numbers? Do they wonder and think about patterns and different ways to group numbers?
Nominee: Teacher
Child description: Secondary school
Question asked: Which student has shown mathematical knowledge in advance of the rest of the year level?
Nominee: Peer
Child description: Lower–middle primary school
Question asked: If you needed help with a maths problem, which student in your class would you approach to help you with your maths? Why them?
Nominee: Peer
Child description: Upper Primary school
Question asked: Who might benefit from an Advanced Maths workshop in Year Six?
Nominee: Self
Child description: Primary School
Question asked: I feel I would benefit. I already know the basics of algebra and I would like to learn more about it.