Disadvantaged Gifted Learners At-Risk for Educational Attention

Abstract

Two of the most neglected populations within the rubric of gifted education are (a) individuals whose talents may not be actualized because they are culturally different from the mainstream culture and (b) socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. These populations of students frequently are overlooked for special programs by school districts whose identification procedures fail to find them or whose standards for program entry are above the tested levels that many of these students achieve. Furthermore, even when these students are found and placed in programs, little attention is given to the background cultural and socioeconomic factors that may seriously affect their performance in special programs and their future achievements beyond these programs. Consequently, the following questions warrant attention: 1. Who are these disadvantaged gifted students, and how do we find them? 2. What common and differential provisions should be made for them in schools? 3. What types of additional facilitation of talent development would be most useful to them? These questions are fundamental to examining the problems and issues associated with this population. WHY THE NEED TO FOCUS ON THESE NEGLECTED GIFTED? Many educators and politicians would question the wisdom of targeting resources for such small-incidence populations within the larger segment of gifted students. Studies have shown, for example, that most gifted learners come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds (Sears & Sears, 1980; VanTassel-Baska & Willis, 1988). Thus, we are looking for a minority within the already limited population of gifted learners. But there are important reasons to pursue this issue: