DEEP ROOTS: EMPOWERING TEACHERS OF ELEMENTARY GIFTED STUDENTS IN INCLUSIVE CLASSROOMS

Abstract

Elementary students bring many assets with them to school each day. Throughout their formative years, elementary students show leadership, collaboratively solve problems, and persevere through challenges. However, structural and policy issues, including traditional methods of instruction, pose challenges for educators attempting to identify and build upon student strengths. Leaders and teachers often gloss over the need to focus on giftedness as supporting students with learning difficulties often takes priority. Yet, gifted students need our support and attention. The purpose of the participatory action research (PAR) project and study was to engage a team of co-practitioner researcher (CPR) team members in three iterative cycles of inquiry to understand how elementary teachers analyzed equitable and inclusive giftedness and how they planned for equitable and inclusive teaching strategies to support gifted students. The primary methodology was participatory action research (Herr & Anderson, 2014) using qualitative analysis processes in the three cycles of inquiry to determine emergent themes and findings (Saldaña, 2016). I relied on the Community Learning Exchange (CLE) axioms to engage eight educators in authentic dialogue to examine their conceptions of giftedness and how they address the learning needs of gifted learners within general education classrooms. We engaged in root cause analysis to refine a definition of giftedness, explore multiple processes for identifying giftedness, re-examine teacher responses to gifted instruction, and investigate instructional practices to support gifted students in inclusive classrooms. The findings are: (1) intentionally cultivating relational trust by co-generating a space of inclusion and attending to educator preferences is a necessary condition for professional learning; and (2) to address the needs of gifted students in public elementary classrooms, educators shifted their definition, mindsets, and giftedness-related instructional practices. As a result, the processes we used in the study to create holding spaces for adults (Drago-Severson, 2012) are replicable and useful for adult professional learning. Teachers and district leaders can collaborate to identify equitable and inclusive practices that support gifted students in elementary classrooms, depending on the identified needs of learners in the local context.