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Hope Needs Opportunity: Developing Scholar Identities Among Underserved Youth with Gifts and Talents — Kristen Seward, Gilman Whiting, Alissa Cress, & Rebecca Johnson

Tuesday, May 21, 2024, 10:45 am – 12:15 pm, Lawrence D. McHugh Hall, Room MCHU 205

Despite decades of research, funding, and efforts to address the underrepresentation of minoritized youth in gifted programming, the persistent problem remains pervasive. Although educators are rightfully concerned with the most effective ways to identify giftedness, promoting higher achievement and motivation in identified students from underserved populations is also concerning (Wyner et al., 2009). This presentation explains the relationships among a teacher rating scale for identifying gifted behaviors, holistic summer enrichment programming, and regular, school-based affective enrichment to identify and serve underrepresented students more equitably. Involving five rural schools serving Diné, Lakota, or Ojibwe youth and two urban schools serving Black and Latino youth from poverty, this study is part of a larger project that provides training for educators in using the HOPE Scale (Gentry et al., 2015) as an additional pathway for identification and training for summer camp counselors and partner schools’ educators in implementing the Scholar Identity Model™ (SIM; Whiting, 2014) through small group discussions. Initial findings regarding the utility of the HOPE Scale and SIM to improve access and equity in gifted programming will be discussed.