College researchers to improve access to gifted and talented education
Kristen Seward (l) and Nielsen Pereira (center), interim co-directors of the Gifted Education Research & Resource Institute (GER2I); and Marcia Gentry (r), former director of GER2I; former professor of Gifted, Creative and Talented Studies
Programs for high-ability students have often excluded young people who are racially and/or culturally different from the dominant groups, have disabilities that serve to mask their strengths, and/or are challenged by socioeconomically disadvantaged circumstances. A new College of Education research project addressing these issues recently received $3.5 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program.
The project HOPE+SIM combines two successful service models with summer and school-year services to help students develop their knowledge, confidence, and scholar identities. The project will make identification procedures and programming available to schools for use with all students and for the express purposes of closing excellence and opportunity gaps and mitigating inequities in education.
The original models combined in this new grant are:
- Having Opportunities Promotes Excellence (HOPE+), which successfully identified and served over 400 underrepresented middle- and high-school students in GER2I academic enrichment programming at Purdue since 2007; and the
- Scholar Identity ModelTM (SIM; Whiting, 2006b, 2014), which helped underserved adolescents see themselves as successful scholars for over two decades.
The proposal for this grant was led by the late Marcia Gentry, former professor of Gifted, Creative, and Talented Studies and director of the Gifted Education Research and Resource Institute (GER2I). Dr. Gentry unfortunately passed away on August 31, but her vision for this grant will be carried out by her Co-PIs. Kristen Seward (now PI), clinical associate professor of Gifted, Creative, and Talented Studies, will head the research team with Co-PIs Yukiko Maeda, professor of Educational Psychology & Research Methods; Nielsen Pereira, associate professor of Gifted, Creative, and Talented Studies; Jennifer Richardson, professor of Learning Design and Technology; Alissa Cress, clinical assistant professor of Gifted, Creative, and Talented Studies; and Gilman Whiting, associate chair of African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University.
“Dr. Marcia Gentry and Purdue’s Gifted Education Research and Resource Institute (GER2I) have made significant contributions to the study of underrepresented populations in gifted education identification and practice, and this important work will continue through this grant,” Seward said.
This continues to be a strategic area for GER2I faculty, as evidenced by the more than $12 million in external funding generated to support this work over the past 10 years.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program is the only federal program that supports evidence-based research and innovative strategies that enhance elementary and secondary schools’ capacity to identify gifted and talented students and meet their unique educational needs.
More information: Gifted Education Research & Resource Institute
Source: Kristen Seward, ksseward@purdue.edu