The equitable identification of youth from all cultural, linguistic, and economic groups for gifted programming is a longstanding and tragic problem in gifted education. Many factors contribute to fallible, discriminatory identification practices, including identification based on manifest gifted behaviors alone (as opposed to gifted potential), on high cut-off scores on nationally normed instruments that yield differential results, and on exclusionary procedures where students must meet several criteria for identification or pass through a nomination gate for consideration. This chapter provides guidance for addressing access, equity, and missingness of underserved students in gifted education. Emphasis is placed on talent development, substantial changes to identification and programming, policy, and urgency to address systemic racism as steps critical to developing equitable, inclusive, socially just, and effective gifted education programming.
TopProtocols For Identification: Increasing Equity For Underrepresented Groups
The equitable identification of youth from all cultural, linguistic, and economic groups for gifted programming has been a longstanding and tragic problem in gifted education. Equitable identification has garnered much attention in our field with researchers proposing several solutions and developing numerous instruments to address inequities. Still, inequity persists, and many factors contribute to fallible, discriminatory identification practices, including identification based on manifest gifted behaviors alone (as opposed to gifted potential), on high cut-off scores on nationally normed instruments that yield differential results, and on exclusionary procedures where students must meet several criteria for identification or pass through a nomination gate for consideration. Even promising identification practices like using universal screening and applying local or local-group norms fall short when high cut-off scores on tests that measure manifest abilities are the primary assessments used.
We can achieve greater equity in gifted education programs for underrepresented
populations by supplementing norm-based approaches to identification with additional
information that documents students’ interests, talents, learning [preferences],
expression style preferences, motivation, and executive function skills in singular areas
where there is performance-based evidence of high potential emanating from students’
actual participating in challenging activities. (Renzulli, in press)
Identification that relies heavily on norm-referenced instruments that compare students to others for universal screening or nomination, even when local norms are used, fails to capture the multifaceted strengths, interests, and potentials of individual students (Renzulli, in press).
Of course, identification cannot be divorced from other components of comprehensive gifted programming, including program goals, design, services, and professional development. When these components unhinge, the practice of gifted education is fragmented, indefensible, and very likely, unrepresentative of a school’s demographic groups. Another foundational component, a district’s definition of giftedness, must be created with earnest intention to 1) include the gifts and talents valued in the community and culture, not limited by what standardized tests measure, 2) identify giftedness in every demographic group, and 3) identify emergent and latent gifted potential. States and school districts often adopt the federal definition of giftedness without amending its myopic promotion of manifest behaviors (i.e., “gives evidence of high achievement;” ESEA, 2002), thereby ignoring the need to look for strengths and potentials among all students.
Thought should be given to why we program for youth with gifts, creativity, and talent. Surely such programs should reach beyond achievement of school-based objectives and into realms of developing youth who can and will contribute to and engage in the arts, humanities, and sciences and whose creative contributions will make the world a better place. These goals can best be reached by a talent development approach the embraces diverse cultures, views, and ways of knowing. Such an approach seeks to identify what Sternberg (2020) calls transformational giftedness: “Transformational giftedness is giftedness that is transformative. Transformationally gifted individuals seek positively to change the world at some level—in their own way, to make the world a better place” (p. 230). Developing programs and locating students who have the potential for transformational giftedness should be at the heart of gifted education. When the talent development approach to gifted education is adopted, and when giftedness is locally, inclusively, and transformatively defined, districts have clear paths to develop other programming components, including developmentally appropriate, fair identification or entry processes and domain-specific continuums of services to address a variety of strengths, interests, and talents.