A column that focuses on those who are beginners to gifted education. This column touches on several basic issues: familiar ideas, new research, and potential changes taking place in the gifted community. It draws on the topics that I teach in an introduction to gifted education course.
Identifying Gifted Multilingual Students: Barriers and Promising Practices
Giftedness occurs equally in all populations; however, research shows that gifted multilingual learners (MLs) are not represented equally in gifted programs (Siegle et al., 2016; Gubbins et al., 2018; Mun et al., 2020; Long et al., 2023). According to the National Education Association (NEA, 2020), MLs (students developing proficiency in multiple languages, including English), are the fastest-growing student group in the US. Despite the growing number of MLs, their representation in gifted programs continues to fall behind not only traditional populations of learners, but also behind all underserved populations, including twice-exceptional, rural, Hispanic, Native American, and Black students (Mun et al., 2020).
