Education of the Special Populations of the Gifted

The first step typically used to identify special populations of gifted is screening by classroom teachers, and it is also the first barrier.

Several studies have confirmed that teachers are not very good at identifying gifted students in their classrooms when they are not trained in the traits and techniques effective at finding them. Without training, they generally refer quiet, well-behaved, well-dressed, high-achieving students. So the first barrier to identification may be the teachers’ lack of understanding of the impact that culture, language, income, and environmental factors have on special populations of gifted students. Often students with these backgrounds are not the model student teachers perceive as gifted.

There have been a myriad of studies conducted on teacher expectations. Many found that student attractiveness, conduct, cumulative folder information, race/ethnicity, gender, and social class were all related to teacher expectancies. Simply put, middle class students were expected to perform better than students from lower SES families. African American and Mexican American students were not expected to perform as well as white students. Gifted girls were not expected to do well in math and science. Underachieving gifted students were not perceived as gifted at all. Young gifted students were not provided with more enriched educational opportunities to keep them stimulated and growing academically. The same is true of highly gifted students. These research results reveal the second barrier to the identification of gifted students from special populations. Teachers may rely on more stereotypic notions about socioeconomic status, race, gender, age, and ethnicity to form initial impressions and lower expectations. If teachers assume that the students are not capable of high-level performance, they are unlikely to give our special populations of gifted opportunities to demonstrate their true abilities.

In a survey conducted by the University of Georgia, 750 teachers were asked to complete a 10 item survey relative to the barriers that keep us from identifying these gifted students. The top reason identified by the majority of participants was bias in standardized tests.