Poster Presentation 9 — A Scoping Review of Differentiated Curriculum for Gifted Students — Laytora Dash, Cindy Gilson, & Benna Haas
Monday, May 20, 2024, 5:00 – 7:00 pm, Student Union Ballroom, Rooms 330/331
Gifted education experts recommend that teachers use research-based curriculum units and lessons that are differentiated to meet the academic and intellectual needs of a diverse range of K-12 gifted students. However, understanding the scope of available research-based curricula and the corresponding outcomes can be challenging. It is also difficult to make comparisons across studies if researchers do not define and operationalize “differentiation” in the same ways. Therefore, the aim of our scoping review study was to compile and then analyze over 2,000 peer-reviewed research studies published across four education databases from 2010–2022 to identify the following: (a) characteristics of research-based differentiated curricula for gifted students (e.g., types, subject areas, grade levels, differentiation strategies, research methodologies), and (b) how the researchers conceptualized “differentiated curricula” in their respective studies. The findings of this study will help gifted education directors, specialists, teachers, and researchers understand the scope of the literature around research-based differentiated curriculum for gifted students. An important research implication of this study is that it will lead to more in-depth systematic reviews that could inform policies related to curriculum for gifted students and next directions for curriculum research.