Cultivating a Learning Environment to Support Diverse Gifted Students

Abstract

Educators have the responsibility to meet the academic, social, and emotional needs of every child in their care, including students who are gifted or high-achieving from diverse backgrounds. For gifted students to thrive in the differentiated classroom, teachers can consider the ways in which they establish and promote positive affective, physical, and digital learning environments. This article introduces the Reciprocal Learning Environments Model in which we describe four teacher actions based on research and recommended best practices from the field of gifted education to cultivate a more positive classroom culture conducive to differentiation.

A Pragmatic Analysis of How North Carolina School Districts Aim to Differentiate for Gifted High School Students

“…Various social media platforms have enabled gifted teenagers to freely express and write about their perspectives and sentiments about their giftedness and seek support from like-minded users (Hodges, Simonsen, et al, 2022). Differentiation also comprises how educators adjust the physical, online, and affective learning environments to promote a classroom culture conducive to gifted pedagogy (Gilson & Lee, 2023;Lee et al, 2021).…”