Gifted students' learning gains result from complex, advanced, and meaningful content provided by a knowledgeable teacher through high-quality curriculum and instruction at an appropriate pace with scaffolding and feedback. These elements exert influence that increases with dosage and within structures that facilitate student engagement in rigorous experiences, including interactions with one another. Talent development is a two-part process. First, educators and parents must provide opportunities for talent to surface, and then they must recognize the talent and provide educational opportunities that engage the emerging talent and move it to exceptional levels. Unfortunately, a variety of barriers exist that limit underserved students' participation in this process. We discuss these barriers within a proposed model of talent development. Keywords academic achievement, underrepresentation, at risk, identification of gifted children, cultural differences Gifted and talented programs and services aim to promote, enhance, and extend the talents and abilities of students. Prior to such interventions, students' potential talents
Though qualitative research has become more prevalent in practice over the last 30 years, there is still considerable uncertainty among researchers regarding how to ensure inter-rater consistency when teams are tasked with coding qualitative data. In this article, we offer an explanation of a methodology that our qualitative team used to achieve systematic coding of our dataset in a way that preserved the contextual, subjective nature of the data, lent itself to the deductive and inductive creation of a layered codebook, and ensured consistent application of the codebook to varied types of data. This methodology prepared us to draw logical and substantiated conclusions during subsequent analyses; hence, the process serves as a welcome addition to the literature on consistently coding qualitative data in a manner that honors its defining characteristics.
Although the number of English learners (ELs) in the United States continues to increase, this population remains underserved by gifted and talented (GT) education programs across the nation. This underrepresentation represents a societal and research dilemma for reasons we address in this systematic review of the most effective practices documented to identify and serve ELs for GT programs. We examine 50 theoretical and empirical articles according to four major themes: nomination, screening/assessment, services, and identification models. We discuss identification recommendations, including outreach and professional learning to foster stakeholder recognition of GT potential in all ELs, an equitable referral process based on a multiple-lens approach, and observation of students completing problem-solving tasks. Finally, we address perceived best practices in serving GT ELs, including making accommodations for ELs in GT programs.
The underrepresentation of English learners (ELs) in gifted and talented programs is a societal and research problem that merits investigation. Three state departments of education and their state directors of gifted programs supported our access to 16 schools across nine districts. In these three states with gifted identification and programming mandates, ELs were proportionally represented in gifted and talented programs in the 16 schools we visited. Interview data from 225 participants revealed four themes: adopting universal screening procedures, creating alternative pathways to identification, establishing a web of communication, and using professional learning as a lever for change.
The importance of alignment between identification processes and program design is widely noted in gifted and talented education literature. We analyzed publicly available district gifted program plans (Grades 3-5) from two states to examine the extent to which district identification practices matched intervention strategies. Our team developed a coding scheme matrix with 133 items for State 1 ( n = 115) and State 2 ( n = 178). The results of this study indicated that, at least in terms of planning, districts in the two states we examined appeared to be aligning identification and programming practices to meet the needs of gifted students identified in mathematics and/or reading/English language arts. In State 1, at least 60% of the districts reported the following intervention strategies in mathematics and reading/English language arts: faster pace of coverage, regular grade-level standards, in-depth coverage, preassessment, above grade-level standards, and expanded grade-level standards. In contrast, State 2 districts reported faster pace of coverage; however, with less commonly utilized interventions, subject-matter identification significantly influenced their usage. Differentiation was the primary learning environment strategy utilized by districts in both states.
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