Cognitive Strategies and Exceptionality in Education

Uniqueness and Giftedness: Bidirectional Concepts

Uniqueness is a term used to describe the characteristics of individuals who show high intellectual ability, as well as those with low capacity. Characteristics of uniqueness include:

• Low Frequency: It appears with low frequency. This includes a small number of defects in relation to the norm; similarly, the frequency of gifted and talented individuals is low within the normal population.
• Difference from the Norm: Exceptional individuals generally possess specific characteristics that differ from those of the normal population. These differences are of two types: quantitative (more or less frequent in their productions) and qualitative (distinct intellectual patterns, more or less elaborate products).
• Differentiated Educational Response: It requires a differentiated and diversified educational response. Specifically, intellectual deficiencies and difficulties necessitate educational measures tailored to the learning pace of individuals experiencing problems, difficulties, or delays in the teaching-learning process.

Features of Mental Processes

Mental processes are shaped by a series of mental operations:

• They are initiated intentionally and have a purposive character.
• These processes are scheduled and planned for the achievement of a goal.
• Strategies are used to control and regulate cognitive activity by the individual.

Functions of Mental Processes

The functions of mental processes:

• They condition and improve performance.
• They promote the development of autonomous learning, giving each student a fundamental role in instruction.
• They can improve students' ability for learning to learn.
• Learning methods allow for easier, faster, and higher-quality learning.

These functions depend on the objectives set for students. Currently, teaching strategies are considered one of the primary objectives for implementation and enforcement within the curriculum.

Metacognitive Strategies

Metacognition implies the ability to plan, use, review, and control strategies. The main components are:

• Knowledge: The student's ability to identify the processes and skills needed for learning planning.
• Control of Learning: The student's knowledge of how and when to use strategies to achieve learning goals.
• Planning: This is the reflection that precedes any learning process.
• Regulation: The student monitors their progress and the achievements being made.

Challenges in Educational Psychology

Although educational psychology historically emerged with the claim of being a unified discipline in which both psychological and educational domains were taken into account simultaneously, and perspectives of each were integrated into a coherent whole (Firinder, 1989), the historical development and current status of the discipline are far from having achieved this goal, though it may retain its validity today.

In the Rivlin report, dedicated to educational psychology, the lack of contributions from the psychology of education to teaching practice is noted, along with the identification of discipline issues distant from practical educational application.

Scandura, in a second report of the APA, recognized that educational psychology lacked a clear self-image due to a lack of integrative focus in its research. Furthermore, the diversity of tasks developed under this name should be noted, including various professional activities, which has led to the existence of different areas or specialties of educational psychology, such as school psychology or psychopedagogy. Genovard states that defining the psychology of education is a risky operation, given its complex history, and because the different explanatory models that emerged along its development are still theoretical elements in the process of integration.

Beltrán (1987; see Beltrán & Bueno, 1995) suggests that the conceptual problems of educational psychology today lie in epistemological pluralism.

The same situation persisted in the late eighties when defining the field of educational psychology (Wittrock and Farley, 1989), as supported by another APA report.

The current president of Division 15, Sternberg, still emphasizes the difficulty of establishing the identity of the discipline around a coherent body of knowledge, suggesting the process of teaching and learning as a unifying field of the discipline, treated from the point of view of subjects within general cognitive psychology and the psychology of instruction in particular.