Abstract

Gifted learners expect to be educated in accordance with their specific abilities in a heterogeneous learning environment. The complexity of the subject matter taught to gifted learners must be beyond the abilities of slow and high risk learners in the regular classroom. The focus of this paper is to determine how media-based enrichment programs can be developed by making use of four theories to cater for the specific learning needs in gifted learners of the regular classroom. The four theories are: •Piaget’s Stage Theory of Intellectual Development •Renzulli’s Enrichment Triad Model •Guilford’s Structure of the Intellect Model •Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Access to the school’s media centre made possible by flexible scheduling can reduce the challenges for educators of teaching gifted learners in the regular classroom. Media-based enrichment activities, as discussed in this paper, empowers gifted learners in the regular classroom to cultivate their faculties to be critical, imaginative and autonomous in their quest for divergent responses instead of being co-operative, passive and dependent in chase of convergent responses. The four theories analysed in this paper bear testimony to this. It is therefore inconceivable to develop a curriculum for gifted learners in the absence of a well resourced media centre.