Self-Directed Challenges: Self-Defined Differentiation

The classroom can become the primary source to introduce students to the processes that promote opportunities for self-differentiation or personal intellectual challenges. A missing component in some differentiated experiences is the need to provide gifted students with opportunities to gain the independence that fosters their abilities to assume the responsibility to challenge themselves. The examples in this column depict a process that can be introduced and practiced in order to develop gifted students’ abilities to comprehend the range of possible options that stimulate self-challenges