Levels of Teaching Science to Gifted Students

In this article, we present a hierarchical model for teaching scientific thinking to gifted students. This article follows up on an article published 40 years ago in this journal. The problem now, as 40 years ago, is that gifted students often are taught science courses at a more intensive level, but without their truly learning how to think scientifically. We argue that students of science need not only learn the content of science courses, but also learn, at a deep level, how to think scientifically. Our model addresses the issue of what this deep level consists of. Level I involves Teaching Scientific Knowledge. Level II involves Teaching Scientific Problem Solving. Level III involves the deepest level of scientific thinking: Teaching Scientific Problem Finding. We end the article with conclusions about these issues.