Culturally diverse students identified as gifted continue to be underrepresented in mainstream classroom. In the global world and in school communities, gifted students span the globe in ethnic and cultural identity. Gifted students of all cultural backgrounds must be challenged in the classroom.
Culturally diverse gifted learners utilize many of the same instructional strategies as their counterparts in gifted programs throughout the world. The basics of teaching these gifted students remain consistent incorporating the following guidelines for maximizing their academic experience.
- A diversity of assessments should be used to provide a definitive diagnosis of the student's exceptional learning potential. Cultural variances should be incorporated in the identification and scoring of assessments. Teachers must be professionally trained to understand and underscore the inclusion of creative and cultural nuances that contribute and highlight a gifted learner's ability, especially if the learner is from a different cultural background.
- Behavioral variances should not preclude the inclusion or identification of students who may be more expressive or interpersonal in the classroom. Gifted students are creative and may be social butterflies in the class due to differences in processing incoming information and presenting learning outcomes.
- Cultural inclusion should be extended into the incorporation of curriculum and instructional implementation. Providing students with multicultural learning experiences and curriculum that includes cultural role-models and social engagements provides a more integrated approach in cross-cultural learning experiences. Assessment constructions must also include a multicultural experiential engagement so that gifted students can be expressive in risk-taking intellectually and presenting their individualized methods of processing the learning experience.
- Students should be encouraged to be reflective and self-evaluative of projects and extracurricular activities that promote cultural inclusion and pride. Challenging culturally diverse students to master academic materials and stay focused on learning goals should be an essential component of the student-student and teacher-student mentorships. Oftentimes students from different ethnic backgrounds are underrepresented because being gifted in today's classrooms is simply not cool. Encourage students to see their giftedness as cool and acceptable in the classroom.
- Don't underestimate the academic intelligence of culturally diverse students in the classroom. Keep them motivated and challenged in the learning goals and objectives being presented and keep momentum in the learning process.
Remember culturally diverse gifted learners are everywhere in every classroom waiting to be acknowledged and included in the mainstream learning process of cultural educational equity and access.