Career Decision-Making With Gifted Rural Students: Considerations for School Counselors and Teachers

Abstract

Traditional career education activities at the secondary level consist of academic, aptitude, skills, interests, and, less often, personality assessments that assist students in narrowing viable career options. Although this strategy is reasonable, its attempt to objectify the career decision-making process does not address two important components of career decision-making—personal values and social-emotional concerns. Because gifted students possess characteristics, such as heightened sensitivity, multipotentiality, and perfectionism, that might complicate this process, appropriately differentiated career education includes these dimensions, especially during times of transition. Due to gaps in preparation and training, school counselors may feel inadequate in meeting these students’ unique social-emotional needs. For gifted rural students, career decision-making may be especially difficult as parents, school counselors, teachers, and other adults in the community encourage students to leave their small towns to realize their college and career dreams elsewhere. Rural students often experience deep connections to family and place, further complicating this developmental task of adolescence. This study highlights the voices of 19 gifted rural students as they share their thoughts and concerns regarding K-12 career education, values, and attachments to family and community. Considerations for school counselors and teachers who work in rural settings are included.

The Influence of Parental and Self-Expectations on Asian American Women Who Entered College Early

“…Researchers have noted special issues and concerns that may uniquely affect career decision making for gifted and talented adolescents (Colangelo, 2002; Jung, 2017; Jung & Young, 2018; Seward & Gaesser, 2018) such as “early emergence of career interests, career choice and career indecision, personality factors, underachievement, and diversity issues” (Muratori & Smith, 2015, p. 174). Colangelo (2002) recommended considering the special needs of gifted students, particularly multipotentiality for career counseling.…”

Take Care When Cutting

“…Specifically regarding gifted education more broadly than just Advanced Placement opportunities, the approaches we examinedespecially those that best adhere to project-specific needs for nuance-can aid examinations of myriad issues of policy and practice, such as proximitybased obstacles that schools must overcome in their attempts to provide off-site enrichment activities (Badger & Harker, 2016;Greene et al, 2014;Surface, 2016). Moreover, quantifying complexities of proximity as they pertain to rurality and/or remoteness can be used to critique findings about the choices that gifted education students face when they attend rural K-12 schools but seek to fully actualize their educative/career potential, often pushing them to leave home (Seward & Gaesser, 2018). Thus, proximity-based analyses can add a dimension to phenomena such as learning to leave (see Corbett, 2007).…”

Developing a Strong Home–School Connection to Better Identify and Serve Culturally, Linguistically, and Economically Diverse Gifted and Talented Students

“…A number of factors influence families’ involvement with their students’ schools. Time and work schedule, language, familial level of education, beliefs about their students’ intelligence (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011; Trotman, 2001), and conflicting goals for students’ futures (Seward & Gaesser, 2018) may result in familial disengagement. These issues can be exacerbated for CLED families because, “[Generally], minorities are less involved, less represented and less informed, and are less likely to have access to resources, as well as more likely to have problems associated with language, transport, communication and child care” (Hornby & Lafaele, 2011, p. 43).…”

“…Family–teacher relationships can also provide a better understanding of how to support students from at-risk environments in their classrooms (Meyer et al, 2011), which may help teachers develop cultural competence and empathy for students and also remove barriers to referral for gifted and talented services (Mun et al, 2020). As students progress, a strong home–school connection can help families who lack experience in higher education support their students in making informed decisions about college and career options (Seward & Gaesser, 2018).…”