Parallel Session Proceedings »
3.1.3 General Education Teachers' Understanding of High Potential in Typically Underserved Students
General education classroom teachers tend to have limited preparation in gifted education, yet they are often the first gateway for student access to advanced programming (Callahan, Moon, & Oh, 2014; McBee, Peters, & Miller, 2016; National Association for Gifted Children & Council of State Directors of Programs for the Gifted, 2015). This issue is particularly salient with regard to students from traditionally underserved groups; researchers have consistently found that general education classroom teachers tend to have relatively narrow conceptions of giftedness, and that these conceptions do not necessarily capture behaviors that may be more prevalent in high-potential learners from diverse populations (Miller, 2009; Moon & Brighton, 2008; Speirs Neumeister et al., 2007; Swanson, 2006).
In this study, we are using a repeated interview approach to examine teacher perceptions of giftedness and high potential and how those perceptions may change over time while teachers engage with professional learning focused on recognizing and responding to high-potential behaviors. The teachers involved in the study are general education classroom teachers at grades 1-3 in public elementary schools in a northeastern state. The overall 5-year study will involve at least 80 teachers; 25 teachers have begun participation to date.
The purpose of the proposed session is to report on teacher responses to a baseline interview regarding their understanding of high potential in the students they teach. We focus specifically on two questions. The first asked teachers to describe a specific example of a student exhibiting characteristics of high potential, and the second asked the same question but with a focus on a student from a traditionally underserved group.
The authors conducted an inductive qualitative analysis of teachers’ responses to document teacher perceptions and to explore similarities and differences in responses to the two questions. In our initial coding, we found that some differences did emerge in how teachers described students in the two questions. Teachers often commented on the involvement of the parents or families when discussing gifted students in general, but this rarely came up when discussing underserved students. Teachers also frequently talked about adjusting content for gifted students. When referring to underserved students they mentioned adjusting the context so that students could identify with the material, but for the first question they talked about adjusting the level of difficulty. In the session, we report on the key similarities and differences in how teachers responded to these questions and discuss implications for professional learning.