m. When bored, a gifted student may react with socially or academically inappropriate behaviors, or by ignoring the subject matter being taught entirely.
A common problem for teachers with bored students is talking or otherwise disturbing other students. Teachers often attempt to treat the symptoms of boredom instead of treating boredom itself. Teachers will often discuss the offense with the student, the parents of the student, the student's counselor or treat the problem by temporarily removing the student from the room. These solutions are not solutions to the original trigger for the disrupting behavior. The gifted student may even have recognized the true problem as boredom or lack of interest and mentioned it, but in most cases the primary problem of boredom is not rectified. The intelligent student may realize the consequence (the punishment, lower grade) to his behavior in class outweighs the benefit (of not being bored) gained and stop the disruptions, but the student is still not receiving proper stimulation for effective learning to take place.
Gifted students are generally further along in their epistemological development than their peers (Gallagher, 1998, p. 17). These students do not respond well to didactic teaching methods often found in high school courses. This follows from their greater verbal fluency and their divergent methods of thinking. These students are able to see a problem from more than one perspective and form solutions from these differing perspectives.
The Perry scheme (Perry, 1970) uses four stages of epistemological development. In dualism, students believe all valid questions have set answers; they expect black-and-white, right-or-wrong answers to questions. Answers at this stage of development are memorized or regurgitated back to the teacher. This is the point at which most students begin secondary school. One step beyond
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