The Home and Community Connections Model

A major myth of gifted education is the idea that gifted and advanced learners should already possess the knowledge and skills necessary to engage in rigorous learning experiences. This myth reinforces the underrepresentation of historically marginalized groups in gifted programs, as the institution does not value or recognize how they demonstrate knowledge. This chapter addresses that misconception by constructing differentiated learning experiences using students' home and community pedagogies. The Home and Community Connections Model authentically responds to the strengths, talents, and interests of each learner by purposefully designing classroom opportunities that value these areas. This chapter defines the prompts of the Home and Community Connections Model and demonstrates how they can be integrated into classroom instruction. The activation and recognition of potential through students' home and community assets create the access points for equitable educational experiences that challenge deficit-minded beliefs and misconceptions.

Evaluating Gifted Programs

Program evaluation is one of the few areas in gifted education that considers the coherence among gifted education program components across the K-12 spectrum. It increases the visibility of the gifted program while acknowledging the fluidity of change in a given context and engages individuals in influencing the nature and degree of changes that can occur within their system. Two key questions in the gifted field are: To what degree do these programs make a difference in the lives of gifted children? How do we know they are working? Program evaluation is a solid and necessary step in answering these questions. Program evaluation is necessary to drive gifted program improvement. This chapter provides the rationale and literature review on gifted program evaluation as well as research-based protocols for facilitating gifted program evaluations and the commensurate processes for ensuring quality, transparency, and comprehensiveness.

The Blunting of Occam’s Razor: Omnicompetent Reductionism Distorting Conceptions of Giftedness

Theoretical and practical work in gifted education has been dominated by mechanistic precision in measurements designed to select students for gifted programs and guide them through their development. Too much faith in mechanistic precision can become a form of dogmatism that obscures very important, less-measurable dimensions of human ability. This interdisciplinary analysis explores this form of dogmatism while illustrating some ways in which it misaligns gifted education with turbulent, complex 21st-century trends and issues.

Expanding the Conception of Giftedness to Talent Development

To determine if a person is gifted or not, the government sets the criteria of identification since giftedness is an abstract concept. However, the standard has always been decided and affected by the attitudes of the education authority and the allocation of resources. The opportunities for some potential learners to participate in gifted programs are often closed because of high identification criteria on standardized tests, especially intelligence tests. To bridge the achievement and the opportunity gaps between regular and gifted students with disabilities or different cultural backgrounds, educators are encouraged to apply the talent development model to develop hidden potential rather than focus on identification or labeling students as “gifted.” Every child is unique and has strengths and weakness. It is time to change the rigid concept of giftedness and expand the concept to discover multiple talents. The most important aspect is no longer defining intelligence merely as g or IQ.