Social-Emotional Learning Iterations to Strengthen Programs in India for Gifted Students in Poverty

A nonresidential gifted program for economically disadvantaged students in India (Grades 6 through 12) uses a continuum of services for social emotional learning (SEL) support to prepare students for college admission. The program stands in contrast to the residential gifted schools in India, which have minimal SEL considerations. SEL is deeply integrated with the Sitare Foundation program's design and evaluation by using emotional intelligence assessments and action plans to customize support for its students and staff. During the coronavirus pandemic, SEL training and mentoring of the city coordinators provided resilience models to encourage continued commitment to the program, especially for female gifted students. Three specific examples (student, leader, and coordinators) are presented as illustrations of growth and transformation. Continuous gathering of both qualitative and quantitative SEL data, combined with traditional academic records, is recommended for effective program iterations.

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.

Do Students in Gifted Programs Perform Better? Linking Gifted Program Participation to Achievement and Nonachievement Outcomes

Growing concerns about inequitable access have made public investment in gifted programs controversial in many school districts, yet advocates maintain that gifted services provide necessary enrichment for exceptional students to succeed at school. We provide evidence on whether the typical gifted program indeed benefits elementary students’ achievement and nonachievement outcomes, using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, 2010–2011 kindergarten cohort. Leveraging within-school and within-student comparisons, we find that participating in a school’s gifted program is associated with reading and mathematics achievement for the average student, although associations are small. We find no evidence of a relationship between gifted participation and student absences, reported engagement with school, or student mobility. Black and low-income students do not see the academic gains that their peers experience when receiving gifted services.

Identifying and Serving Gifted and Talented Students: Are Identification and Services Connected?

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.

Equitable Access, Locale, Funding, and the Alignment to Performance Ratings in Texas Gifted Programs

Self-assessments utilizing designated, objective standards are critical in program evaluation. Although 2013–2014 Texas policy mandated districts self-assess their gifted programs using the community and student engagement performance rating system, little is known about how districts determined their self-assessment ratings. Following gifted program evaluation guidelines from the Texas State Plan for Gifted/Talented Students and the National Association for Gifted Children Pre-K–Grade 12 Gifted Programming Standards, researchers used logistic ordered regression to examine Texas districts’ 2014–2015 locale, proportional representation, and budgetary allotments in relation to gifted program self-assessed performance ratings. Results indicate proportional representation of Black and Hispanic students in gifted programs did not influence school district self-assessed ratings. On the contrary, locale, proportion of Black and Hispanic students to the overall district population, and budget allocation did relate to self-assessed ratings of gifted programs. Future research directions and implications for the use of self-assessments within gifted program evaluation are discussed.

School Integration Limits the Ability of Local Norms to Diversify Gifted Programs: A Mathematical Analysis with Implications Related to the Achievement Gap

Several experts within gifted education have advocated for the use of local norms when selecting students for gifted programs, instead of national-level norms. Local norms compare students to the peers in their school to identify gifted students and are believed to produce a more diverse gifted program. However, one limiting factor on the ability of local norms to diversify gifted programs has been almost completely overlooked in the gifted education community. Through a simplified example, I show in this article that local building-level norms are best at diversifying gifted programs when schools are highly segregated. Conversely, I also show that—when achievement gaps are present and a uniform admissions cutoff is applied—using building-level norms in highly integrated schools produce gifted programs that are highly segregated. In short, the use of building-level local norms trades one form of segregation for another. Implications and recommendations for gifted education and beyond are explored. A preprint version of this article is available at XXXX.

A phenomenological study of gifted cross-cultural kids at an international school : exploration of intersecting identities

There are several common characteristics between cross-cultural students and gifted students (Gallagher, 2019; Sheard, 2008). At the same time, there is limited research into practices of international schools when identifying and supporting these highly-mobile gifted students (Gallagher and Curtain, 2017; Robinson, 2006). This lack of evidence suggests that many international schools do not cater for the needs of culturally and linguistically (CLD) gifted students by offering tailored programs for differentiation. Framed within the Third Culture Kid (TCK) identity construct, this phenomenological study investigates the experiences of identified gifted students who are being educated in an elite American-curriculum international school in South America. Utilizing qualitative data, this study seeks to answer the following question: how do gifted Cross-Cultural Kids understand the intersection of their gifted and cross culture identities? This study contextualizes that question inside the organizational environment of the school that used selection criteria based on the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT), the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), and the Renzulli Scales for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students (RSRBCSS) for a gifted program. Through maximum variation sampling, 9 gifted third-culture students from middle and high school who have spent a portion of their academic careers in international schools were selected for interviews.

Information Technology Gifted Program under the National Curriculum Reform of Basic Education: A Case Study on a Senior High-School in Shanghai, China

As the definition of ‘giftedness’ differs by country, policy set to support gifted education differs accordingly. The objective of this study is to investigate the outcomes of the IT Gifted Program offered by Yi Chuan Senior High School in Shanghai. The participants are 24 students who were or had been enrolled in this program. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and documents related to the program. The IT Gifted Program is found to boost participants’ confidence in their abilities in the information technology field. Furthermore, most of the gifted students reported great learning improvements in all academic areas, showed increased confidence in general and were more engaged in both collaborative learning and independent study. Most importantly, positive outcomes in terms of successful admission to higher education institutions are evidenced.

Gatekeepers in Gifted: A Case Study of the Disproportionality of Gifted Black Youth in Elementary Programs

Gifted identification and services, like many aspects of education, are inequitable and disproportionate in favor of White students. Obama Elementary School serves 421 students: 29% are Black and 58% are White; the school’s gifted program is 10% Black and 86% White. Rebecca Johnson, the gifted teacher, brings this to the attention of her principal, who has Rebecca present to the school improvement team. Rebecca receives pushback from a culturally unresponsive and equity-illiterate group. This case study provides teaching notes on gifted identification and services as well as cultural proficiency and equity literacy, and is framed in both gifted education and anti-racism.