Interview with Alena Bičáková about the new study “What Do We (Not) Know About Quantitatively Gifted Pupils? The Czech Republic in International Comparison”
Can you explain the link between supporting gifted students and a country’s economic performance? Common sense tells us that there is a strong relationship between the two, but is there any rigorous evidence to support this belief?
International economic literature shows that economic growth is primarily driven by innovation and new technologies. This is what drives the economy most of all. It is related to both the number of patents and scientific discoveries. There are also other studies showing that gifted individuals are up to five times more likely than the rest of the population to obtain patents, for example.
When we put these findings together, we see that the most gifted 5% of the population contributes disproportionately more to economic growth than any other 5% of the population.
How does your study on gifted children fit into the Talent project?
The TALENT project began less than three years ago as a joint activity of the RSJ Foundation and IDEA at CERGE-EI. Representatives of the RSJ Foundation approached D. Münich because they felt that there was insufficient rigorous research on talent and gifted children in the Czech Republic. And so the TALENT project was created within the IDEA think tank at CERGE-EI. The TALENT team consists of CERGE-EI researchers who focus primarily on labor market economics and the economics of education. The topic of giftedness was partly new to us, so we had to familiarize ourselves with it first. However, we did not want to reinvent the wheel, so we started by drawing on existing scientific literature. Two colleagues compiled a comprehensive critical review of existing international research and then produced a Czech summary so that it would be available to interested Czech readers.
The main focus of the TALENT project is applied research in the field of giftedness, which uses empirical economic methodology to present facts based on analyses of representative data in the Czech Republic, such as our current study on gifted children. Another objective is to raise awareness by providing the Czech public with a summary of existing knowledge and expertise from around the world and by organizing public lectures by foreign experts on the topic of giftedness. Patrick Gaule, professor of economics at the University of Bristol, spoke about quantitatively or mathematically gifted children and ways to support them. And this spring, we invited Scott Imberman, professor of economics and educational policy at Michigan State University, who lectured on evaluating the impact of various measures to support gifted children. Both are leading experts on the economics of talent and giftedness.
“The problem with the whole system is that it is based on initiative—either from parents or teachers who notice a child’s talent. This means that the students who actually get tested for giftedness are a very narrow, selected group.”
Was there a general assumption before your study that the Czech education system was failing to identify gifted children?
It is widely known that the system for identifying gifted children in our country is inadequate. The only official data on gifted children in the Czech Republic comes from school reports and educational and psychological counseling centers. However, there is general agreement that these numbers are greatly underestimated. And as we show in our study, there is also a distortion that concerns, for example, the distribution of talent across gender or the socioeconomic background of pupils. The problem with the whole system is that it is based on initiative—either from parents or teachers who notice a child’s talent. In both cases, the student must be sent to a specialized psychologist at an educational-psychological counseling center or to a school that has one, and the psychologist must test the student and issue an opinion: Yes, this is a gifted student.
This means that the students who actually get tested for giftedness are a very narrow, selected group. Typically, they either have educated and ambitious parents who notice their talent, or they are students who stand out so much at school that their teachers notice them.
“If we look at the expected IQ distribution in the population, there should be 10-15% of gifted people and approximately 3% of exceptionally gifted people.”
This brings us to another systemic problem, namely that not all teachers have the appropriate education and ability to recognize talent. These facts are well known and have been highlighted by the Czech School Inspectorate. In their report, they conducted their own survey based on interviews with teachers, identifying slightly higher numbers of gifted children than school reports, but the conclusion was that there are still far fewer than the scientific literature suggests. If we look at the expected IQ distribution in the population, there should be 10-15% of gifted people and approximately 3% of exceptionally gifted people.
“We define quantitative giftedness as logical reasoning in a mathematical context. It is a certain component of intelligence that also correlates relatively well with general giftedness, e.g., IQ.”
Your study came to similar conclusions, similar figures to those you just mentioned.
Yes, but I would like to explain our initial considerations when we were well aware of the problems with identifying gifted individuals. How can we address this problem? How can we present the Czech public with facts about gifted individuals based on representative data? Where can we get this data and information about children’s talent? My colleague and co-author Miroslava Federičová had previously worked with data from the TIMSS and PISA international surveys, which test fourth-grade pupils, i.e. approximately ten-year-olds, and then fifteen-year-olds. We considered whether and how certain types of tests could be used to identify giftedness. Some tests are explicitly knowledge-based, while others test abilities more. We wanted to find out whether the data contained information that would enable us to identify gifted children based on their talents rather than their knowledge because knowledge tests reflect which school a child attended, but we needed to identify their talents.
So it was convenient for us that the TALENT project and the RSJ Foundation work very closely with a team of psychologists from Masaryk University in Brno, who developed the Invenio diagnostic tool for testing talent. We consulted extensively about our approach with psychologist Michal Jabůrek, who helped us select which questions from the PISA and TIMSS tests could be used to identify talent and which could not.
Once we knew which tests we could use to identify talent and what type of talent and how well these tests measure it – specifically quantitative talent – it was just a matter of selecting the highest and second highest levels from the range of results of these quantitatively focused tests, i.e., exceptionally gifted and above-average gifted children. Moreover, these levels are already defined in the data; in the TIMSS survey, this is the gifted group, while in PISA, it is also possible to distinguish between exceptionally gifted and children with above-average talent. The rest was fairly easy; we just calculated averages and made graphs, etc. The important moment for us was when we became certain that we had a tool for identifying a certain type of giftedness, based on relatively large samples of representative data covering representative groups of schools in the Czech Republic, which would enable us to draw relevant conclusions about gifted children in the country. Our method of identifying giftedness is not ideal; it is not a standard diagnostic tool, but it is a sufficiently good approximate indicator of quantitative giftedness, which we were able to use to carry out analyses and present facts that did not yet exist in our country.
In your study, you work with the term quantitative giftedness. What exactly is that?
We define it as logical reasoning in a mathematical context. According to the CHC theory of intelligence, it is closest to the narrow ability of quantitative reasoning (falling under the broad ability of fluid intelligence) and the broad ability of quantitative knowledge. It is therefore a certain component of intelligence that also correlates relatively well with general giftedness, e.g., IQ.
This is psychology, not economics. The precise description of what type of giftedness we measure was something completely new to us. We consulted the concept with psychologist Michal Jabůrek from MUNI, who helped us better understand what exactly we were identifying in the data and confirmed that it was a specific type of quantitative giftedness. We also drew on previous scientific literature, which also uses the international PISA and TIMSS tests and shows that the results of these tests correlate well with general intelligence.
“In the study, we discuss in great detail why our results are not perfectly comparable with the official statistics from the school reports, and we are very transparent about our definition. What is also important to keep in mind is that we are not just presenting facts about the number of gifted children, but also providing new information about the composition of gifted children in the population.”
I’m going to play devil’s advocate here: when you embarked on your research, you knew the “right answer” in advance: you knew what number you wanted to arrive at, and you actually did. How did you deal with the fact that you knew what the number should be during the process of identifying gifted children in the Czech Republic?
It wasn’t like that. We ourselves were surprised by the numbers. Moreover, the expectation of roughly 10% occurs in general intelligence, whereas we focused specifically on measuring quantitative talent. We proceeded by identifying suitable tests and consulting with psychologist Michael Jabůrek, and only then did we start the calculations based on the data.
In the study, we discuss in great detail why our results are not perfectly comparable with the official statistics from the school reports, and we are very transparent about our definition. What is also important to keep in mind is that we are not just presenting facts about the number of gifted children, but also providing new information about the composition of gifted children in the population.
In addition, our study presents facts not only about the Czech Republic but also about other European countries from which we have data. So we offer a comparison of the Czech Republic with other countries, which is also very informative. Not all countries have the expected 10% of gifted children. It is a question of why this is the case in some places and not in others, but for the Czech Republic, we actually found 10 to 13% of gifted children, which corresponds to the highest level in the TIMSS data and the two highest levels of giftedness in the PISA data, and about 3% of exceptionally gifted children, which corresponds to the highest level in PISA. At the same time, this places the Czech Republic in the top third of European countries in terms of the proportion of gifted students.
“In terms of gender, official data show that girls make up only about a quarter of gifted students registered by schools. In contrast, our data show a much more balanced ratio.”
Let’s move on to the conclusions of your study. You have already mentioned some of them, so let’s take a closer look. Perhaps the main conclusion is that we have many more gifted students in the Czech Republic than we think. Which groups of students do the Czech education system chronically fail to identify as gifted?
While working on our study, we did indeed find significant discrepancies with the official data. Incidentally, the only information the official data provides about the characteristics of gifted children is their gender, so we know nothing, for example, about their socioeconomic background. In terms of gender, official data show that girls make up only about a quarter of gifted students registered by schools. In contrast, our data show a much more balanced ratio—girls make up about 42% of fourth-grade students and almost half of fifteen-year-olds. Even among the exceptionally gifted, the proportion of girls is higher, at about 37%. The difference between our data and the official data therefore suggests that girls are much more likely to be overlooked in the current selective system. This may be due to their talents manifesting themselves differently than in boys, or to various gender stereotypes, whereby parents do not expect their daughters to be talented, or teachers fail to recognize their potential.
In terms of socioeconomic background, we found that gifted children are significantly more likely to come from families with university-educated parents and from materially well-off backgrounds. There are significantly fewer gifted children from disadvantaged backgrounds. To a certain extent, this may be due to genetic factors, but not only. In the Czech Republic, the difference in the proportion of gifted children in different socioeconomic strata is much greater than in other countries, which suggests that systemic barriers, and not just genetics, are also responsible. This means that many gifted children from disadvantaged backgrounds are not identified at all by current methods – and it is likely that some remain hidden from us as well. Our identification methods also have limitations. Low motivation may play a greater role for these students, for example. However, there are other reasons why a gifted child may perform poorly on a test and their giftedness remains undetected. These include test anxiety or, for example, specific learning disabilities that are often associated with giftedness (known as dual exceptionality).
“We therefore think that the differences in the share of gifted children across different socioeconomic groups do not reflect the actual situation, but rather the inadequate conditions for the development and recognition of giftedness in children from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
Unfortunately, we do not have further data to support this. Even so, we identify a significant proportion of gifted children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Approximately 30% of our gifted respondents (aged 10 and 15) come from families where their parents do not have a university education. The question then remains whether these children have sufficient conditions and incentives to further develop their potential—and whether their talent is actually recognized and nurtured.
To sum up, we were surprised that our results correspond to what is predicted in the scientific literature and, at the same time, that the differences between our data and official statistics are so significant. We were also taken aback by the results for gender and socioeconomic background.
Are there any other findings that surprised you as a researcher?
An interesting variable that we tracked in our data was so-called aspirations—that is, the expectations of parents (for fourth-grade students) and the expectations of the students themselves (for fifteen-year-olds) regarding higher education. Among gifted 10-year-olds from families where the parents did not have a university education, approximately one-third of parents said they did not expect their child to go to university in the future – even though these children achieved exceptional results in the tests. This is alarming. In contrast, the situation is more optimistic among 15-year-old students, with more than 90% of them stating that they expect to continue their tertiary education. It therefore seems that school or other external factors can contribute to the development of aspirations and ambitions and to greater awareness of one’s own potential over time.
“The study therefore points to the shortcomings of the current identification system and proposes the introduction of universal testing in schools as the most appropriate and fairest solution. This would make it possible to identify even those children who never get to educational and psychological counseling centers and therefore do not receive official confirmation of their giftedness—and thus the necessary support.”
What recommendations for the Czech education system emerge from your study?
I consider the main contribution of our study to be that it presents new facts about gifted children in this country. It draws attention to the underestimation of their numbers in official data and, above all, to the distortions in terms of their composition. The study therefore points to the shortcomings of the current identification system and proposes the introduction of universal testing in schools as the most appropriate and fairest solution. This would make it possible to identify even those children who never get to educational and psychological counseling centers and therefore do not receive official confirmation of their giftedness—and thus the necessary support.
Of course, the question arises as to which tool to use for universal testing. It is well known that girls are generally more sensitive to stress and competitive environments. Even when they have the same abilities as boys, when exposed to stressful testing conditions, they often perform worse than their otherwise equally capable male peers. This is another reason why it is important to choose testing tools that are sensitive to these differences. A suitable example is the Invenio diagnostic tool developed in Brno, which uses a video game format. Children play through individual games that test different components of talent. This approach is not only fun but also less stressful.
Another important recommendation is to focus specifically on overlooked groups, especially girls and children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. This is not just about material support, although that is also important. For example, almost 50% of gifted ten-year-olds do not have ideal conditions for learning at home—they lack, for example, an internet connection or their own room. A variable that describes the amount of educational resources available in a child’s home in the data suggests that almost half of these children have only limited resources for learning. Among 15-year-old students who achieve excellent results in tests, we even find about 15% of those who come from families that are not financially secure. I find this very alarming because their chances of developing their talents are probably very low.
However, it is not only about financial support, but also about providing information, stimuli, and education to the public in general. It is important to educate parents and schools about how to recognize talent and how to work with it. Offer different ways how to further develop talent. Part of this education should include breaking down gender stereotypes, as we know that girls are more often overlooked than boys in the talent identification process. It is important to realize that gifted girls may act differently and to treat them accordingly. Similarly, and even more so, there is a need to focus on gifted children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Alena Bičáková is a researcher at CERGE-EI specializing in labor economics, consumer credit, household portfolios, and applied microeconomics.
