Peter Parker Principle: From White Privilege to Gifted Critical Discourse

Connecting QuantCrit to Gifted Education Research: An Introduction

“…Researchers should consider utilizing critical frameworks, such as QuantCrit, to support the larger mission of improving opportunity, identification, underrepresentation, funding, engagement, relevance, training, and success (among other topics) for racially minoritized populations in gifted education. Critical frameworks exist for other identities, such as disability, sexuality, and gender, and gifted education scholars should also consider how more critical perspectives can inform their work in the entirety of gifted education research (Novak, 2022). Our final recommendation is that gifted education researchers should continue reading more about QuantCrit and other critical quantitative approaches while uplifting the Scholars of Color who conduct this work.…”

A Revised GTCrit Framework: A Broadened Critical Lens for Gifted and Advanced Education Settings

“…Perhaps the most frequently criticized contributor to inequity in gifted education is the set of biased identification processes widely adopted across the field (Anderson, 2020;Ecker-Lyster & Niileksela, 2017;Novak, 2022b;Savick, 2009;Wells & Plucker, 2022). Many programs rely upon teacher or counselor referral systems for students to participate in gifted identification testing or advanced course-taking (McBee, 2006;Peters, 2021), despite numerous studies showing that teachers and counselors often nominate compliant, passive, dependent students whose backgrounds reflect their own rather than students who might differ from them or display originality, critical thinking, or intense behaviors (Ecker-Lyster & Niileksela, 2017;Francis et al, 2019;Kanno & Kangas, 2014;Savick, 2009).…”

“…Despite the relative absence of critical frameworks in the field thus far, scholars are expressing a desire for their increased use in gifted and advanced education research, K-12 programs and classrooms, and pre-service teacher training programs. In 2022, Gifted Child Quarterly, the premier gifted education journal in the United States, published a special issue dedicated to equity, in which authors directly argued the need for more critical frameworks (Barnes, 2022;Novak, 2022b;Lee et al, 2022;Young & Young, 2022) or endorsed actions related to critical frameworks. For example, Wilson (2022) discussed the need to center the voices of historically excluded communities, while Garces-Bacsal & Elhoweris (2022) addressed the field's relationship with whiteness and a need for social justice.…”

“…The fifth tenet-question formal labels and identification processes-confronts the use of the "gifted" label to either determine who is "in" or "out" (Harris, 1993;Savick, 2009;Staiger, 2004), as well as point to the limitations and underlying meritocratic nature of standardized identification processes (Savick, 2009;Staiger, 2004). Novak (2022a) discussed this idea in her description of GTCrit's functional definition, but it warrants its own tenet since it addresses the most-discussed issue in the critical gifted education literature: problematic identification procedures and systems (Anderson, 2020;Ecker-Lyster & Niileksela, 2017;Novak, 2022b;Savick, 2009;Wells & Plucker, 2022). This added tenet also builds upon Novak's (2022a) fourth tenet, in which she encouraged teachers to differentiate instruction for students regardless of whether they have received a label or not.…”

“…2022; Novak, 2022b;Savick, 2009). In this conceptual piece, I review the most common systemic barriers in gifted and advanced education and build upon a recently proposed GTCrit framework (Novak, 2022a)-a much-needed foundational theory that is primarily positioned towards practitioners about race and ability.…”